[IAEP] SoaS with Rosie's Girls

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 04:25, Caroline Meeks<solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 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

How does Apple explain that a printer is seen only if in the same
network segment? (or iChat or any other of their services that use
mDNS).

Regards,

Tomeu

>>
>> 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
>> >
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>
>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
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