<div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Caroline Meeks <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:caroline@solutiongrove.com">caroline@solutiongrove.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Hi Bill,<br><br>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?</blockquote><div><br></div><div>thanks for the mail, Caroline</div>
<div><br></div><div>one xo</div><div>standard usage is SoaS, for this course</div><div>year 10 approx 15yo</div><div>course outline involves critical evaluation and building some useful software</div><div>details: <a href="http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html">http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/course-outline.html</a></div>
<div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">We don't have a system for feedback yet so until people complain about the volume lets talk here on the list.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><br>I think feedback falls into 4 categories.<br><br><ol><li>Sugar bugs</li><li>Sugar on a Stick specific bugs and barriers to deployment</li>
<li>Activity specific feedback and bugs<br></li><li>Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans</li>
</ol>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. </blockquote>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">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: <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO" target="_blank">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO</a></blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>Just read that, it's a good start, covers a lot of ground</div><div><br></div><div>A few issues (dumb questions, saves time if I put them up here)</div><div><br></div><div>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</div>
<div><br></div><div>2)</div><div><a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry#Windows_Users</a></div><div>For Window User point 5</div>
</div><blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 19px; ">"Set the <i>Persistent Storage</i> slider to the maximum so you can save your Sugar work onto the USB device;</span><br>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 19px; ">(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.)"</span></blockquote>
<div class="gmail_quote"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 19px; "><div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br></span></span></div></span></div><div>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 </div>
<div><br></div><div>4) some of my sticks (about half) are card readers 2GB cards, they work fine</div><div><br></div><div>5) the brand of stick of stick makes a difference, LASERS are very slow (and cheapest), KINGSTON seem good</div>
<div><br></div><div>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</div><div><br></div><div>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</div>
<div><a href="http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html">http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/connecting-to-internet-through-soas.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>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)</div>
<div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">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.</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>I'm not really developing lesson plans for the xo target age group (6-12 yo) at the moment, see course outline link above</div><div><br></div><div>Nevertheless, some general curriculum development principles might transfer, eg. find tasks that reward initiative, independent exploration </div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">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.</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>Tony Forster suggested physics modification and that would be a suitable goal for my age group</div><div><a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics</a></div>
<div> </div><div>hope that some of this is useful</div><div><br></div><div>cheers</div><div>- Bill</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<br>Thanks,<br>Caroline<br><font color="#888888"><br>-- <br>Caroline Meeks<br>Solution Grove<br>Caroline@SolutionGrove.com<br><br>617-500-3488 - Office<br>505-213-3268 - Fax<br>
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