[IAEP] SoaS with Rosie's Girls

[Caroline Meeks]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 17:15, Nicco Eneidi<nbotticelli at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Friday, August 7th, I presented Sugar to fifteen girls ages 10-13 who
> > were participants in the Rosie's Girls Summer Program. Rosie's Girls was
> > designed to build confidence in young female students and to introduce
> them
> > to non traditional career paths that they may not otherwise have been
> > encouraged to explore on their own.
> >
> > The time I had with the students was limited (I had to beg my boss to let
> me
> > get away for an hour from imaging computer labs in other schools) and the
> > mobile laptop lab that we used had not had their batteries charged prior
> so
> > we had to quickly steal extension cords from the janitors for power. The
> > camp was held at the local high school so most classrooms were
> unavailable
> > and so we had to set up in the atrium.
> >
> > Using the atrium was a poor choice because it turned out to be a very
> loud
> > room and for someone to hear you from fifteen feet away you almost have
> to
> > yell; once you get a few giggly girls talking to each other it is near
> > impossible to understand anything.
> >
> > I introduced them to Turtle Art, Speak, and the Physics activities.
> Again,
> > time was very limited so I wasn't able to go much into detail about
> things
> > but they were able to spend some time on each activity. Unfortunately the
> > network was down in the building and I wasn't able to bring my own wifi
> > router like I had planned. I think if we had been able to get online or
> at
> > least on the network that some of the things we did would have been able
> to
> > be expanded much better if they got to explore the collaborative aspects
> of
> > Sugar.
> >
> > At the same time all three of the camp counselors had disappeared while I
> > was presenting Sugar and I think part of the noise issue was because they
> > had taken off and the students didn't really know me at all and so maybe
> a
> > sort of "substitute teacher" energy was occuring which made the noise
> issue
> > worse.
> >
> > Some students were into it and I think understood what was going on while
> > others were fairly confused as to what they were supposed to be doing and
> > why. I can imagine going from welding and working on engines one moment
> to
> > playing with a new operating system the next can be somewhat confusing
> and
> > not as exciting (Welding, sparks! fire!).
> >
> > At the end I explained how to to safely handle the flash drives and how
> they
> > may be able to boot from them at home or other locations and they got to
> > keep the drives.
> >
> > Later one of the councelors came back to help me clean up and apparently
> the
> > students were actually quite excited about Sugar and were all talking
> about
> > it in the next classroom. Sometimes it's hard to tell if a kid is into
> > something and they may not show it to your face but later on it turns out
> > they really enjoyed it. I'm still trying to learn how to pick up on these
> > cues and what they mean.
>
> Congrats!
>
> > So, two questions about Sugar for possible future presentations:
> >
> > 1. Can Sugar be run in some sort of ad-hoc mode where laptops with wifi
> can
> > connect directly to each other and create their own network without a
> > central AP/router?
>
> Yes, but this feature is scheduled to land in the next Sugar release
> in about 3 months. That said, you can preview this feature on Sugar
> 0.84 (Strawberry SoaS) by applying the patch linked from here:
>
> http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2009/05/ad-hoc-wireless-networks-in-sugar.html
>
> > 2. If all computers are connected to a network without internet access is
> it
> > true that if you take out of the jabber server address in the settings
> menu
> > that the computers on that section of the local network should see
> > eachother? If so, how well does this actually work? Is it reliable to try
> it
> > with a group of students?
>
> Sugar can use mDNS to discover other machines _in the same network
> segment_. People get confused because the distinction between a
> network segment and the whole local network is not obvious to them.


This is turning out to be a very important concept to explain to
people.  Does anyone know of any educational material that can help
people understand this distinction and how to set up a network
correctly.

We should put this information here:
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Collaboration

>
>
> This is the same underlying technology in Apple's Bonjour, so both
> should work in the same network environment.
>
> That said, we seem to have some reliability issues that are trying to
> track down:
>
> http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/928
>
> Regards,
>
> Tomeu
>
> > For more info about the camp you can check out their site:
> > www.rosiesgirls.org
> > Thank You!
> > -Nicco
> >
> > --
> > Niccolo Botticelli Eneidi
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> > IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
> >
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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