[IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback

[Walter Bender]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Bill Kerr<billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks
> <caroline at solutiongrove.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Bill,
>>
>> I'm excited that you are doing pilot.  How old are the kids?  From the
>> blog posts it looks like you have some XOs, are you using SoaS on other
>> computers too?
>
> thanks for the mail, Caroline
> one xo
> standard usage is SoaS, for this course
> year 10 approx 15yo
> course outline involves critical evaluation and building some useful
> software
> details: http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html
>
>>
>> We don't have a system for feedback yet so until people complain about the
>> volume lets talk here on the list.
>>
>> I think feedback falls into 4 categories.
>>
>> Sugar bugs
>> Sugar on a Stick specific bugs and barriers to deployment
>> Activity specific feedback and bugs
>> Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans
>>
>> What seems to work best is to post about problems in general then after
>> discussion post a bug in Trac. Sometimes I find that I just don't understand
>> something or can't find the right button and its not actually a bug.
>
>
>>
>> I have decided that I really want more SoaS pilots so I'm going to focus
>> for a few weeks on problems that are barriers to teachers using SoaS this
>> fall (#2 above).  I would like your input on this.  My current working
>> document is: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO
>
> Just read that, it's a good start, covers a lot of ground
> A few issues (dumb questions, saves time if I put them up here)
> 1) once I have created a stick can I upgrade just one program, such as the
> version of Physics which saves (if so how?), or do I have to wait until that
> version is officially released and then reformat all the sticks - I suppose
> both are time consuming since I have about 20 sticks to do - but the latter
> involves waiting for the official release

You can update individual activities from activities.sugarlabs.org.
You can add new activities from the same site. One caveat: a handful
of activities are installed with .rpm instead of .xo. These cannot be
updated on the fly without jumping through several hoops. This will
change on the next release of SoaS. (See
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Roadmap#Fructose_modules_.28F11.29).

> 2)
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users
> For Window User point 5
>
> "Set the Persistent Storage slider to the maximum so you can save your Sugar
> work onto the USB device;
> (You may allocate as much storage as there is capacity on your device. You
> may allocate less than the maximum, if you want to use some of the device
> storage when not booting Sugar.)"
>
> I ended up setting the Persistent Storage to maximum. Now I'm wondering that
> if I had allocated less than the maximum then could a student copy a file
> from the journal onto the SoaS (rather than their own USB) and it would save
> in some of that non allocated storage. This is an issue because not all
> students bring their own USBs to class. Sometimes there is a need to swap in
> and out of the Sugar environment back to the Windows environment (found in
> most schools) so ability to easily save on a USB is an issue. Actually, this
> ended up being the first major thing I taught my students to do.

As far as I know, this should work, but I haven't tested it. That
said, in the long-term roadmap, we want the journal files more readily
accessible from outside of Sugar. (They are in a "squash" filesystem
right now, not easy to access.)

> 3) the information about failed sticks not rebooting is valuable - some
> sticks have failed for me but I haven't worked out any real pattern yet,
> quite complex to keep track when teaching a class, just tell the kids to try
> a different stick and / or different computer - but the sticks are numbered
> and now each student uses the same one each lesson so patterns will become
> clearer soon

Failed sticks often get a second life, which also complicates things.

> 4) some of my sticks (about half) are card readers 2GB cards, they work fine
> 5) the brand of stick of stick makes a difference, LASERS are very slow (and
> cheapest), KINGSTON seem good
> 6) collaboration did not work out of the box - is it meant to? - I have a
> jabber server from last year which I have yet to setup but will do so soon

It should have worked. Is Internet access working out of the box?

> 7) Had to type about:config into Browse and muck around with proxy settings
> to get internet access - I had never done this before and needed assistance
> http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html

But then it worked?

> 8) I noticed when I loaded Pippy on my dell mini inspiron that the run
> button in the middle of the screen was not visible - ie. does not work with
> all screen configurations (it looked ok on school machines though)

Pippy may still be suffering from some screen-size-related problems.

>>
>> Greg Smith is gravitating towards documenting the lesson plans etc and
>> creating, organizing and prioritizing tickets that will help in actual usage
>> based on field experience (#3 above). So coordinate with him on getting your
>> lesson plans on the wiki and your bugs filed, categorized etc.
>
> I'm not really developing lesson plans for the xo target age group (6-12 yo)
> at the moment, see course outline link above
> Nevertheless, some general curriculum development principles might transfer,
> eg. find tasks that reward initiative, independent exploration
>
>>
>> As you've already seen physics has an active following!  I think your kids
>> are older then the ones we are working with (7-9) but we will be working
>> with slightly older kids (8-11) and science in the fall so I'll be
>> interested in how we can fit it in with their curriculum.
>
> Tony Forster suggested physics modification and that would be a suitable
> goal for my age group
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics
>
> hope that some of this is useful
> cheers
> - Bill
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Caroline
>>
>> --
>> Caroline Meeks
>> Solution Grove
>> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>>
>> 617-500-3488 - Office
>> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>
>
>
>
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>

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org