[IAEP] [support-gang] An Opportunity to bring vital content to the Sugar/XO world - Needs technical help.

[Caroline Meeks]

I think Walter is taking the weekend off.  He is doing the actual
negotiations with IFL.  I'm sure we'll hear from him on Monday with a
definitive answer.

But my definitely understanding is that IFL is going to DONATE the content.
The $50 to $100 is for the hardware.  People with XOs and Sugar don't need
the hardware.

I am only interested in this project if the content is free and that is my
understanding of how its going to work.  If I'm confused then I'm really
sorry sorry.

I think I've got it right though.  I've worked with nonprofit education
organizations as part of Solution Grove's work. Specifically when I worked
with Concord Consortium part of the grant process is you have to have a plan
for how what you are creating with the grant money will reach a large number
of children.  Concord Consortium puts pretty much everything they create up
on the web open source.  If organizations like Concord can say they will
reach hundreds of thousands of kids by sugarizing their activities and
putting it up activities.sl.o then I think they will start writing that into
their proposals.  Understand that this won't happen overnight. First we have
to prove its a way to reach kids, then the nonprofits and granting
organizations have to notice, then the new proposals with sugarizing have to
get written, accepted, completed.

So based on my experience, its a good business decision for IFL to give
Sugar thier content for free if it means they can say on their next grant
that the work they have done previously has reached a million kids.

Also their $100 little box was innovative and cheap a couple years ago. One
of the profs from Standford who works on this project spoke to one of my
classes, his current interests are around getting educational content on
even cheaper devices such as cell phones and used gaming devices, like the
gameboy.

Sorry not to be clearer on the fact I believe we are going to  get this
content for free with freedom to distribute.

On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 8:17 PM, Caryl Bigenho <cbigenho at hotmail.com> wrote:

>  Hi Caroline,
>
> I agree that content is something we desperately need for Sugar and the XO.
> But, I don't quite understand your proposal.  Is Innovations For Learning
> offering us their software for free to adapt?  If so, what language is it
> in?  Is the source code available?
>

We have copies of the Gnash based activities and Tomeu has gotten them
working on Sugar.

I assume they will give us the source code for the server based .exe. The
fact its currently a .exe is not that promising for reuse.

>
>
> Or, is this something you think our volunteer programmers should try to
> reverse-engineer and create for Sugar and the XO?
>

Yes, or more likely for the XS.  My first thought on how to approach it is
to rewrite the server/teacher software as a Moodle plugin.  But that is not
the only possible approach.



>
>
> Caryl
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:27:28 -0400
> From: caroline at solutiongrove.com
> To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org; server-devel at lists.laptop.org;
> support-gang at lists.laptop.org
> Subject: [support-gang] An Opportunity to bring vital content to the
> Sugar/XO world - Needs technical help.
>
>
> We have an opportunity to bring a program of K-2 English Reading and Math
> content to our Sugar users for free.
>
> http://www.innovationsforlearning.org/software_demo.php
>
> Ignore the teachermate hardware and the $100 a machine price tag. The
> concept is we make this available for Sugar for free.  So if you have XOs or
> a machines you can use with Sugar on a Stick, you can use it for free.
>
> If you watch the Classroom management video you'll see they have aligned it
> to major Basal Curriculum programs or it can be used without. It can
> differentiate instruction for groups and students.  This is vital
> functionality.  We need to port this to the Sugar world, probably by putting
> it on the XS, maybe as a module in Moodle.
>
> Tomeu has done some work on making the activities work in Sugar, but I
> don't think anyone has looked at how we enable classroom management.
>
> Why I think this is important:
>
>
>    - When I listen to feedback from the deployments, they all talk about
>    the need for content.
>    - When I see for myself what its like to use Sugar in a school, I think
>    we need an on-ramp for teachers.  This program would be an easy way to get
>    the teachers to start using Sugar and computers without going very far
>    outside of what they already know. Its aligned with the major curriculum
>    programs they are already using.  My belief is if they take the first step,
>    and use Sugar, they and their students will explore further.  Too much
>    technology sits in the classroom closet. This seems like it would be used by
>    lots of teachers, not just the most technological ones.
>    - This could be a model for other nonprofits for how to use Sugar to
>    distribute content they have created for our age level.
>    - It would be an excellent selling point for teachers trying to bring
>    Sugar into their schools.
>
> Please help us find someone (or a team) who has time and skills to tackle
> the technical challenge of porting/recreating the classroom management
> component.
>
> Thanks!
> Caroline
>
>
> --
> Caroline Meeks
> Solution Grove
> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>
> 617-500-3488 - Office
> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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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