[Marketing] Follow-up XO Laptop/Sugar

[John Tierney]

Hi Caroline,

>>What grade levels are they doing one-to-one with? 

He was referring to if they were to put in place a one-to-one initiative his choice for a device and OS would be different
than the XO and Sugar. I get the feeling they want to take advantage of previous investments, so they need a platform

to take advantage of all the licenses they have purchased. Only if they could start from scratch!

>>Does
Oakland country still have free wireless for all? As I recall they are
one of the countries leaders in broadband and wireless and a pretty
wealthy area.

They have connected all the schools but the actual
plan for free wireless never became a true reality because its not a
supportable
model. The area that Oakland Schools serves goes from wealthy to very economically disadvantaged with areas that border Detroit
and the City of Pontiac and everything in between.



>>I think Sugar on a Stick competes well with
virtualization where you have students without internet access at home
and schools without good bandwidth.  That is most of the US except
wealthy suburbs and a few cities that have really invested in broadband.

Do you see a situation where Sugar on a Stick acts like a backpack for the students work and while at school it is able to work
with the virtualized desktop Sugar environment and provides the backup services we would like to see?



>>I do agree that technically we could get it
work with virtualization and it would be great if someone was working
on that but I don't know anyone who is.Does the work that some in the community have done with virtualbox fit into this solution or is this a whole different approach?

>>Unless I'm confused about my demographics Detroit might be a better target.

The idea is to get things started with Oakland Schools ISD and then look to partner with
Wayne County ISD which works with the Detroit schools. I have brought to their attention
the Investing in Innovation Funds grants that the Department of Education recently announced
and they are looking into the possibility of applying for a pure innovation or strategic grant with
open source being a key piece of the puzzle. I've attached article that explains Investing in Innovation
grants.

Best-

JT



>>Good luck! no one said it was easy. :)
>>Caroline

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:39 PM, John Tierney <jtis4stx at hotmail.com> wrote:







Hello All,

This email is from Marc Dubois who is Career Focused Education Technology Manager for Oakland Schools ISD who
helps support and deliver services to the 29 school districts in Oakland County, MI. It gives you an idea of the


technical direction large US school districts are going in. For this particular situation it would seem Sugar running
in a virtual machine would be the answer? Do we have something presently available that fits this scenario?


Would Sugar delivered through a virtualized desktop work along with Sugar on a Stick? 

Any suggestions on what I should get to Marc to test/take a look at would be helpful. In this situation Sugar's
ability to run alongside all the other applications in a larger system seems to be the key. Not being a technical


guru I need some guidance in this area. 

The BMMT refers to Business, Management, Marketing, and Technology Instructors who I will be meeting with
here in the near future to discuss creating an Open Source curriculum for High School students at the four


technical schools they operate. Hacking and testing Sugar will be high priorities for me to get embedded into
the curriculum structure. Their idea is to test drive some things at the four technical campuses and then offer 


them to the districts when they are refined. Figuring this out gives access to the 199 elementary schools they
serve.

Along with the two XO's I lent him, I also gave him a Sugar on a Stick and Sugar on a SD card to test out. 



Your thoughts would be appreciated!

John Tierney



Subject: RE: Follow-up XO Laptop/Sugar
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:28:19 -0400
From: Marc.DuBois at oakland.k12.mi.us
To: jtis4stx at hotmail.com


CC: Mary.Kaye.Aukee at oakland.k12.mi.us
















John – Thanks for following up.  With the start of
school we’ve been very busy.


 


The XO laptops are being used by the BMMT instructors at the SE
and NE campus – I’m hoping they’ll have lots of insight for
you when you meeting with them via Mary Kaye’s meeting.


 


I haven’t had any time to review them myself but the
research I’ve done leads me to believe that they sugar OS would not
really support the type of applications we deliver to the students.  So, I
don’t see this OS or device as being part of the infrastructure that Oakland
Schools Career Focused Education delivers to students like a one-to-one
initiative.   I’ve also installed the Sugar OS on a netbook and
again think that we’d go with a more standard XP, windows 7 or virtual
client to support our applications.  We are undertaking the virtualization
of our devices used by students and plan to provide student access to applications
and data via a browser interface in the classroom and at home.  Perhaps a
different computing device would be more appropriate in this situation.


 


I do, however, hope that our BMMT instructors will jump on this
as a great teaching and learning tool as part of an open source
curriculum.  That is out of my scope but I’m sure you’ll have
a good experience with the BMMT instructors.


 


I also appreciate your loaning the devices to us.  At any
time I will be happy to return them to you.  They are hopefully being used
by the BMMT instructors.


 


Thanks again,


marc


 


Marc DuBois 

Technology Manager, Career Focused Education 

(248) 209-2183 






From: John Tierney
[mailto:jtis4stx at hotmail.com] 

Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 11:53 AM

To: Dubois, Marc

Subject: Follow-up XO Laptop/Sugar






 


Hi
Marc,



Just wanted to check in while I await next meeting with Mary Kaye Auckee and

BMMT Group.



I was wondering if you might have some time in next couple of weeks to meet and
discuss some 

of the technical implications for you and the other IT Administrators in moving
down or thinking

about moving down the Open Source path. Would also like to get your feedback on
XO and Sugar.



Please let me know what might work for you.



Best-



John Tierney

Educational Outreach-Sugar Labs

#248-613-7392


 		 	   		  


-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax


 		 	   		  
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