[IAEP] OLPC in Science-Subjects --- NEED HELP!!!

[mokurai at earthtreasury.org]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 9:05 pm, Yamandu Ploskonka wrote:
> Sascha, I am afraid Johanna is merely being honest to what is a very
> widespread misconception. Even Walter Bender has challenged me to invent
> a charcoal-based printer.
> And that was in response to my assertion, which I am happy to repeat any
> time it is needed, that the lack of printer support by the XO is indeed
> a very valuable feature, not a bug.

Agreed.

> I do agree with you about the huge and totally unnecessary waste of
> energy and water that printing would entail.
>
> However, most teachers and so-called education systems are paper-based.
> That is one among many ugly realities we have to deal with, a cognitive
> dissonance that hinders the success to a new POV for education.
> Moreover, even when digital-based, people are not "on the same page", a
> still valid expression...  It was recently mentioned by a Uruguayan
> teacher that the forms that are being sent to be filled out by teachers
> by their national administration are MS Office documents, thus cannot be
> worked (easily) in the XO!

I don't suppose PLAN Ceibal can influence other parts of the government
when it would upset their careful arrangements. But what will happen when
these millions of children get out of school and into the world of work
and government?

> Of course I insist you are right that from a real education point of
> view printing is mostly irrelevant, *compared to* the possibilities of
> collaboration, the web, etc.  But that is, *compared*... :-(.  If
> teachers and students are not using those opportunities either, then it
> is only natural that only what is inked on paper is worth anything.
>
> So, are they using those opportunities?
>
> a simple example: by the end of 2009, Uruguay had over 366.000 laptop
> <http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Ceibal>s or so in the hands of
> teachers and students, and available to be used by their families, etc.
> *However*, by May 15 of 2010, there were only 162 Wikipedia
> <http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_en_espa%C3%B1ol#Colaboradores>
> "colaboradores" from Uruguay! One for every hundred teachers, or one per
> every 2.000 students and their families...

Yama, you and I should create a set of lesson plans in English and Spanish
for language students to translate Wikipedia pages, and for students of
every subject to improve Wikipedia pages in Spanish. My plan is that in
the beginning, every student gets assigned the same page to improve, and
the class votes on which of the various improvements gets made as a class
contribution. Individual students and whole classes should have user
accounts in order to provide correct attribution of contributions. Later
on, students can be assigned to pick a page needing work, with a
requirement to show what needed improving, what improvements were made,
and how the student knows that they are improvements. The last requirement
will require students to learn how to evaluate source material, among
other things.

> As long as we cannot change this kind of approach to the XO or any other
> such tool, teachers will, indeed, "need" to print.
>
> On 05/12/2011 03:19 PM, Sascha Silbe wrote:
>> Excerpts from Johanna Wener's message of Thu May 12 21:08:31 +0200 2011:
>>
>>> The big problem I have is, that everything that the children do on the
>>> olpc
>>> could not be used for learning because there is no way to print their
>>> works
>>> out.

It is straightforward to share Journal entries between XOs. That needs to
be a lesson for children, and part of teacher training also. Printing is
not necessary.

>> I expect others to reply to the educational part of that sentence (i.e.
>> is there a better way to reach your goals than consuming lots of energy,
>> water and trees?).
>>
>>> We tried to make a screenshot and send it by mail - doesnt work!
>> What exactly have you tried and how did it fail?
>>
>> Walters brand-new Portfolio activity [1] has support for exporting
>> selected, annotated Journal entries as HTML. You could save it to a USB
>> stick, open the HTML file on a computer with an attached printer and
>> print from within the browser.
>>
>> If you install CUPS on the system running Sugar (probably an XO judging
>> from the subject), you can use a browser other than Browse to print
>> locally. Or you can copy the Journal entry to the regular file system
>> using copy-to-journal and print using the "lpr" command from within
>> Terminal.
>>
>> A whole bunch of other options would combine the following:
>>
>> 1. Acquiring a printable file:
>>     a) take a screenshot by pressing<Alt>+1
>>     b) some activities can export as PDF
>>     c) some activities can export as HTML
>>     d) some activities use a file format that can be read by non-Sugar
>>        applications (e.g. Write uses ODT, native file format of
>>        LibreOffice nee OpenOffice)
>>     e) Write 73 can export to PDF, so you could try using the clipboard
>>        to import content into Write and export as PDF
>>
>> 2. Transferring the file to Gnome or a different computer:
>>     a) copy to a USB stick, SD card or USB hard disk using the Journal
>>     b) using copy-from-journal from within Terminal to copy the Journal
>>        entry to the home directory (so Gnome can access it)
>>     c) using datastore-fuse [3] to access the Journal entry from within
>>        Gnome (experimental - you might need help from a techie)
>>     d) uploading the files to some web site (Moodle, wiki, photo
>>        gallery like Flickr, pastebin site, ...) and accessing that site
>>        from the computer with the printer.
>>
>> 3. Printing from within Gnome or on a different computer running a
>>     desktop system other than Sugar:
>>     a) for PDF and ODT just opening the file and printing from within
>> the
>>        PDF viewer resp. word processor should usually work well enough.
>>     b) for HTML use a browser. You might need to tweak some options to
>>        get pretty output. I've seen browsers cutting a line of text in
>>        half; hopefully that's fixed by now.
>>     c) Gimp is pretty good for printing images, though it could be a bit
>>        overwhelming.
>>     d) CUPS understands several file formats natively (including
>> images);
>>        just type "lpr name_of_the_file.jpg" (without the quotes).
>>
>>
>> I'd love to tell you to download the Print activity [2] and print
>> directly from within Sugar, but unfortunately I haven't managed to get
>> it to work yet. However, the above options hopefully get you unblocked
>> now; we can work on better solutions later.
>>
>> Sascha
>>
>> [1] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4437
>> [2]
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-August/thread.html#18173
>> [3] http://git.sugarlabs.org/datastore-fuse
>>
>>
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-- 
Edward Mokurai
(默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/