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Hi Sora,<br>
<br>
There needs to be a database of XO users (both students and staff).
The staff can then have 'teacher' priviliges. The system will also
know what grade the student is in and so what course material is
relevant.<br>
<br>
My plan is that where XO's are shared, that each user should go to
the 'About Me' and change the nick to their username. The advantage
is that no extra programming is required and the system will be
restarted (terminating activities started by a previous user as well
as registering the new nick).<br>
<br>
Naturally, where there is a single user, the username and the user
nick would be the same. <br>
<br>
Essentially what is happening is that the activity stores a session
record showing when an activity was started, stopped, and what
outcome was recorded (simplest, it was run). The session records are
captured on the school server and displayed to the teacher. The
model for this is the coach report in Khan Academy Lite.<br>
<br>
A credible representation of what is available on the school server
is now available at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http:www.projectbernie.org">http:www.projectbernie.org</a>. <br>
<br>
I would recommend the English Children's Literature collection from
OLE Nepal's Pustakalaya and the <br>
'stories' in the English Learning for Kids from the British Council
(example of audio with text). The school server also has a
collection of 40 more stories not on the web site.<br>
<br>
Synchronizing the audio with text is difficult. There is a
capability called SMIL (smile) which has this capability but I have
not had time enough to get it working. My thought was to have
reading work similar to Karaoke.<br>
<br>
Incidentally, the Talk English component on the school server also
provides a wide range of simple English text associated with audio
clips.<br>
<br>
Tony<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 02/23/2015 01:19 PM, Sora
Edwards-Thro wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CACfXvP8_BG1ZPScAbYnOsGw3HU8KhTYgiQPbV2j3FCX5xJCjeQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Thanks, Tony and James. Replies to both your messages
below: </div>
<div><br>
</div>
On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 8:42 PM, James Simmons <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:nicestep@gmail.com"
target="_blank">nicestep@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">The goodreads website <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.goodreads.com/" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com</a> might
be useful. </div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Yes, and features like getting recommendations about what
to read based on what you've already liked and being able to
add books to a "want to read" list would be great. I
especially like the "want to read" list because it implies it
gives you a way to identify something as interesting and then
move on instead of feeling obligated to dive right into it. Of
course, the experience of downloading a text to your
computer's journal to read later might replicate that. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I wrote a free book the might be of some use to you:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://archive.org/details/EBookEnlightenment"
target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/EBookEnlightenment</a></div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> Thanks for passing this on! I ended up reading through the
whole thing because everything inside is relevant to this
project (even the parts on scanning in paper books). </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>A few questions: </div>
<div>You mention that the text-to-speech works for plain text
and ePubs; does that mean it doesn't work for PDFs? I would
test this on my personal XO, but I'm waiting for my charger to
arrive in the mail...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>On another note, at one point you mention that in the Read
Etexts activity "highlighting may lag behind the words being
spoken." Does this activity actually highlight the words as
the computer is reading them? Using the text-to-speech
function built into the Frame of later versions of Sugar, I
haven't seen it do that. </div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 9:03 PM, Tony
Anderson <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:tony_anderson@usa.net" target="_blank">tony_anderson@usa.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> Hi, Sora<br>
<br>
The idea would be that a comments on a book (accession)
would be linked from the accession record.<br>
There is also a Django app (kls), which provides a
record for each XO user (student or staff) and a record
for each XO (inventory). The comments made by a user
would be linked also to the user. In this way it would
be easy to look at all comments and rankings by a user
or to look at all comments and rankings for a given item
in the library.<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sounds great. It's good to hear that accessions can be
linked to one another; that also got me thinking about how
we can accommodate books accompanied with audio on the
server. Currently, when students want to listen to audio
for a book, they have to start the audio in a separate
window and then flip back to the book to read along. It
isn't too much of a hassle, but it would be nice if it was
easier. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Would you provide a log-on for each user? With our
particular course we'll be enrolling only 20 students in
each class, so everyone will have access to their own XO
and will use the same computer each day. We figured that
means we can skip a log-in step and just identify teachers
and students by the computer they're using to access the
server. I know other deployments are using the same set of
XOs for the whole school, so they might need a log-in;
we're just hoping to have one less page for students /
teachers to click through before class can start. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <br>
Like most of my projects, this one is 90% complete. The
comment link is needed. I plan the comments/rankings to
look like those in Pustakalaya (<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.pustakalaya.org" target="_blank">www.pustakalaya.org</a>).
Unfortunately, that app currently only works in the
internet version. I also have not added the 'url' links
capability to add other items. Look at Rachel as an
example of how the Gutenberg collection could be
organized into collections for greater accessibility (by
the way, this sort of direct link is far less demanding
on the server than the current search method).<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm glad someone's thinking of how to structure large
amounts of resources in the future. That's not exactly our
situation, since we're only dealing with 300 - 500 books
in an extracurricular program that doesn't have to tie
things to curriculum. Sorting of some sort will be
important, but I guess my own priority at the moment is
giving teachers and students the tools to share great
reading materials with each other. Thanks for giving some
advantages of the direct-link system so that even a
non-techie like me can understand why it might be useful (
; </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> Tony <br>
<div>
<div class="h5">
<div>On 02/22/2015 09:42 AM, James Simmons wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Sora,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
The goodreads website <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.goodreads.com"
target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com</a>
might be useful. You can do rankings of books,
reviews, have threaded discussions, post
favorite quotes, interact with G+ and Facebook,
and other things that the words "reading
socially" would suggest.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I wrote a free book the might be of some
use to you:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://archive.org/details/EBookEnlightenment"
target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/EBookEnlightenment</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It is also available on the web. Here is
the chapter on the Pathagar book server, which
might be of interest:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://en.flossmanuals.net/e-book-enlightenment/the-pathagar-book-server/"
target="_blank">http://en.flossmanuals.net/e-book-enlightenment/the-pathagar-book-server/</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>James Simmons</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at
4:45 PM, Sora Edwards-Thro <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:sora@unleashkids.org"
target="_blank">sora@unleashkids.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Thanks for the additional
input, everyone. James, Gonzalo, Tony,
some responses below:
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><span>On Sat,
Feb 21, 2015 at 4:14 PM, James
Simmons <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:nicestep@gmail.com"
target="_blank">nicestep@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>The catch is it only works
with plain text files. </div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
</span>
<div>Yes, my original thought was we
could convert PDF to plain-text
files and just use the Write
activity to do highlights and such.
But, some of the content we're
working with is not OER (that's what
happens when you need high-quality
books in a specific language), and
I'm not sure if they'll be okay with
us manipulating the files like that.
We've got to choose how many battles
to fight with them. Thanks for
passing this tool on - looks like
it's better suited than the Write
activity for reading. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote"><span>On
Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 2:51
PM, Gonzalo Odiard <span
dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:godiard@sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">godiard@sugarlabs.org</a>></span>
wrote:</span><span>
<blockquote
class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px
0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>I am available to
work (on contract)
in these features if
you are interested.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thank you for the offer, Gonzalo.
Fortunately, we do have some money
raised to pay programmers. Right now
I'm just trying to identify which
tasks to ask people to tackle. Bear
in mind that this is my first
experience with software
development; thanks for being
patient,everyone, as we try to
figure out what is and isn't doable,
and what is and isn't worth doing. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 7:52 PM,
Tony Anderson <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:tony_anderson@usa.net"
target="_blank">tony_anderson@usa.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">Also
on the list is a 'comments'
capability so that learners can
make comments and give rankings
for the books they read from the
school server library and which
would be linked to the book entry
on the school server.</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra">Do you currently
have a system in place for organizing
books on the schoolserver? I know on the
Haiti IIAB release we have a searchable
copy of Project Gutenberg; I don't know
how easy it is to add entries to that.
In the past, we just added books by
creating another link that goes to a
page with a list of the PDF files
available. But since we're looking at
adding at least 300 more books, plus
whatever the texts the students are able
to write, so searching by title would
be nice / necessary. We're also looking
for sorting by level and topic. Finally,
the ability to comment and give rankings
is essential if you want students to
start reading socially. If you've made /
plan to make any headway on the above,
I'd love to hear more about it. Thanks. </div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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