[IAEP] Learn activity

[Tony Anderson]

Hi,

I am glad you were able to get it to work. I am still trying to figure 
out a more robust way to do this. Perhaps, I could set up an online site 
somewhere (e.g. karma.sugarlabs.org) so that the content can be obtained 
from that site (in lieu of a school server).

Those lines in the code are left-overs from a debugging effort. I'll 
remove them in learn-52. They actually are 'harmless'.

In saying that the usb drives will not be mounted in /media do you mean 
they will be mounted somewhere else or that automount will be disabled?

The problem with Firefox is the same as all previous attempts to provide 
a Firefox activity. The parent class, activity.py creates a top-level 
window. However, ported programs as Firefox create their own
top-level window. This shows up on the frame as a grey smudge. The 
solution is probably a move to webkit; however, the webkit installed on
the Sugar build I am using (852) is not current and does not support svg 
in html5.

The activity is unfinished and has been constantly evolving based on 
experience at the deployments. The 'authoring' elements, for example, 
are relatively new and untested.

The role button (staff, p4, p5, and p6) allows simulation of the way the 
activity works in a deployment. There the students and staff are
identified. Staff can access any lessons on the system and can add or 
modify lessons. The students have access only to the lessons for their 
level and, instead of the edit button, have a check mark which allows 
them to commit the results of an activity and move on to the next.

The only obvious effect of changing the role is that the Laboratory
button is not visible in p4, p5, and p6. You will also see that the
second level menu (showing courses for p4, p5, and p6) is omitted and 
the activity moves directly to the milestone ladder.

In the examples in Explore, the first milestone has examples of basic 
activities which can be created directly in the activity. The second 
milestone are examples of lessons using Sugar activities. The third 
(Memorize), fourth (Turtle Art), and sixth (British Council) should 
work. Actually, the British Council example does not launch a Sugar 
activity. The first will work if ShowNTell is installed. The second, 
Quiz example and fifth, Wordsearch example will not work at the moment.
Both of these activities need an update so that they can work with a 
bundle loaded from the Journal.

The reason for the green (actually cyan) and blue tops is to show 
whether the activity has been downloaded from the usb key (school server).

The unit of transfer from the usb (schoolserver) is a milestone. In the
milestone ladder, the light blue (cyan) color shows a milestone which is 
not available on the XO. Clicking on the milestone downloads it. The cap 
is then blue. This requires the usb key to be mounted (or a connection 
to the schoolserver). However, milestones in blue can be used without 
the usb key (or connection to the schoolserver). This is in some ways 
the core feature of the activity. It allows the students to take home 
their lessons while using the school server to provide the storage 
capacity not available on the XO.

The Laboratory is intended for use by teachers (staff). It is not 
visible in the student role (p4, p5, or p6).

The easiest way to return to Learn after launching another Sugar 
activity (the Khan academy video is played by the Jukebox activity 
because at the moment I am unable to get audio with the <vidoe> tag)
is to quit the launched activity (Jukebox). Naturally, you could switch 
back to Learn on the frame).

Thanks again for your time and patience. If you have any suggestions for 
improving the documentation, install process or the activity, they will 
be greatly appreciated. You have already given me plenty to do.

Thanks,

Tony


On 06/20/2012 12:13 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> On 2012-06-19, at 20:53, Tony Anderson wrote:
>
>> 5. Make sure the Kls_demo_1.tar.bz2 file is unpacked on a usb drive.
>> The Learn activity checks all the mounted drives for a folder: kls.
>
> That was the missing puzzle piece. I's still weird to require the USB drive even after I copied everything to the activity's content folder already. Why?
>
> In any case, it looks like I was mislead by these lines in your code:
>
>          cmd = 'cp -r ~/Documents/karma'
>          cmd = cmd + ' ~/Activities/Learn.activity/content/'
>          subprocess.call(cmd,shell=True)
>
> Also note that in the new OS, USB drives will not appear in /media anymore.
>
>>> Even after I fixed all that manually, it still does not work. The activity itself fails to start and show anything useful. It appears to only launch the web server and Firefox. In a separate window. Not fullscreen. Firefox shows only a directory listing, not the lessons. Quitting Firefox leaves the web server running.
>> If we can surmount the install problems, it should show the main screen seen in the screen shot on the website.
>
> With the "kls" directory unpacked on the USB drive it works, indeed. But the other problems are still there - Firefox is not actually wrapped, it appears in a separate, non-Sugar window, whereas the activity window itself is not used.
>
> But now I can comment on your original mail:
>
>> The sample content includes two milestones each for English, Mathematics, and Science developed and used by the teachers at École Saint Jacobs in Kigali, Rwanda.
>
> So the activity is in use already? It seemed quite unfinished to me.
>
>> A button on the home page allows users
>> to experience the activity with staff priviliges and as a student in P4, P5 and P6.
>
> The "p4" button does nothing here.
>
>> There is also a 'Laboratory' subject where teachers can
>> prepare milestones and lessons for the coming term. The Laboratory also
>> support French to enable the French teacher also to create course materials.
>
> Don't see the "Laboratory" subject.
>
>> The Explore subject is intended to provide extra-curricular courses which students can study to earn badges. At present it contains examples of various types of lessons including a Khan Academy video and associated exercises as well as a story (with audio) from the British Council. Learn is capable of launching Sugar activities.
>
> Found the audio lesson in Explore/examples/1/4.
>
>> The examples
>> in ms02 require that ShowNTell, Quiz, Memorize, Turtle Art, and the Jukebox activity be installed. (Jukebox is used to play the Khan video).
>> If the activity launched by a Learn activity is not installed, it throws an exception.
> 
> With "ms02" do you mean "Explore/examples/2"? But clicking the green box does nothing. Same for the 3rd box labeled "Khan". The first box has a dark blue top for some reason, the others are light.
>
> Oh. Trying again the tops now are blue too, and I can get to those lessons. Not quite sure how to get back from the Khan practice though (except for closing the tab). Is this just a local copy of some webpage from Khan academy?
>
> - Bert -
>
> .
>