[IAEP] Looking for suggestions

[James Simmons]

Brett,

You might want to check out a couple of FLOSS Manuals I put together.
The first one is finished, and is about developing Sugar Activities.
The second is in progress and is about finding, using, creating and
publishing e-books.

http://en.flossmanuals.net/ActivitiesGuideSugar/Introduction

http://en.flossmanuals.net/ReadingandSugar/Introduction

Personally I think that Sugar is suited to high school students, and
could be made more so with a bit of work on the Journal.  My Activity
Sugar Commander shows some ideas of what a more grown-up version of
the Journal might be like.

The new XOs will ship with both Sugar and GNOME, a desktop environment
like Windows but without the viruses.  This should make them quite
appealing to older students.

If you learn how to make e-books as described in the second book you
can use them on several different platforms, including those cheap
Android tablets that are coming out.  There are lots of free e-books,
many of which would be of interest to high school students.

Let me know what you think.

James Simmons


> Date: Sun, 1 Aug 2010 18:50:18 -0500
> From: Brett Neese <brneese at brneese.com>
> Subject: [IAEP] Looking for suggestions
> To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org, olpc-open at lists.laptop.org,
>        grassroots at lists.laptop.org
> Message-ID:
>        <AANLkTinh5X_9BXmP6OGn=yLMfo-kD_VVx3J=GCWkKA0B at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Hi there,
>
> I'm looking for some advice. My name is Brett Neese, and I'm currently a
> high school student at a school in Iowa, USA (although I'm planning on
> graduating early in December 2010). I have been working on a little project
> (in its current incarnation, it's more of an idea, really) I'm dubbing
> Project coEL. See, the OLPC project is great -- I think what you are doing
> in developing countries is terrific; I commend your efforts to bring
> computing to the poorest children in the world -- but in my opinion there
> are a few flaws; namely the fact that most developed countries, such as the
> US, don't currently have a large-scale XO deployment. While I understand
> that the need for these laptops in developing countries is MUCH greater than
> it is in the US (and I'm not trying to sound like greedy, rich, American or
> anything, either) , I also know from being a high-school student myself
> (albeit one with some learning difficulties) that the US needs some of this
> type of technology as well, especially for others who, like me, sometimes
> have trouble learning. My other issue is the fact that currently the Sugar
> user experience is in no way optimized for the high school learner. I think,
> from my experience, that if deployed in the US, the high school/secondary
> school student could benefit the most from this sort of technology and it
> could trickle down to the elementary level.... but, at present, the UX is
> not optimized for the way teachers teach and students learn in today's
> world.
>
> So those are my problems with OLPC. However, I don't think these issues are
> such in that we can't work together, either now or in the future. My overall
> "vision" for coEL is to bring a specially-designed hardware and software
> ecosystem to every high school in the US. You can read more about the
> overall vision in coEL's blog -- it's at http://projectcoel.tumblr.com/
> <http://projectcoel.tumblr.com/%20>-- but in short it's a specially designed
> open-source laptop in the hand of every highschooler, along with the
> appropriate backend server and other hardware, a highly open and extensible
> API/SDK -- many of the same technological goals as the XO laptop -- which I
> why I'm asking for your help. You have great hardware, I'd love to build off
> of it, but in my opinion, your software is lacking, though with the XO-3
> concepts floating around, and your recent partnership with Marvell, its only
> going to get better.
>
> I'll be honest, I don't program. I don't know anything about hardware R&D,
> nor know anything about education at an administrative level. I?m just a
> 17-year-old high school student who, quite frankly, hates school and wants
> to make a difference in the world. I do, however, know a little bit about
> design; I interned at a mobile UX agency last year.
>
> But, in general, what I'm asking you, OLPC staff and volunteers, is this --
> what can we do, together, to help make this vision become reality?
>
> More specifically, I want to start a grassroots effort, but I'm not quite
> sure where to go from here.  Should I apply to the contributors program?
> Start a regional group? How? Participate in the IRC chatrooms? Edit the
> wiki? Any other suggestions/advice?
>
> In closing, I just wanted to thank you for reading this email. I realize its
> a little lengthy, and greatly appreciate your time. Please forgive me if I'm
> speaking out-of-turn here, and excuse me if I sent this to the wrong lists
> -- please forward this message on to the relevant lists if that is the case.
>
> Again, thanks so much,
>
> Brett Neese