[SoaS] SoaS Fedora Spin webpage

[Sean DALY]

By the way, we always talk about the XS School Server in our public
communications for several reasons:

* We've identified filtering online access as a key concern of
teachers and parents; education buyers and education IT staff need to
know that a software solution is available which can be configured
with a filter

* Sugar on a Stick in any deployment needs tech support, the kind that
also configures access to wifi, worries about how to replace lost or
damaged sticks, etc.

* The Intel Learning Series teacher tools are stiff competition for
any non-XO Sugar deployment, in particular the new Education Appliance
classroom server box by Critical Links:
http://www.intellearningseries.com/product-info/
http://education.critical-links.com/education/export/sites/default/docs/education-datasheet.pdf
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/the-intel-educational-appliance-where-do-i-get-one/3771

* Teachers are adopting Moodle, to the point where Microsoft supports
it with GPL'd software
(http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=128648 ,
http://www.educationlabs.com/projects/moodleproduct/Pages/default.aspx)

* There is an upper limit to effective collaboration using ad-hoc
networking; I'm not sure what the limit is, but I believe it's a small
enough number of machines to concern teachers

* Martin has consistently worked to support Sugar on non-OLPC hardware.

Always keep in mind that our two main barriers to adoption are Sugar's
unfamiliarity and installation difficulty. Knowing that a school
server exists will motivate teachers to overcome these barriers.

Here's a suggestion to address your concern about testing: add a
qualifying "your mileage may vary" phrase: "Installation and
configuration of an XS School Server requires an IT administrator. For
more information, please visit
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/School_Server and
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server"

Sean


On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mel - our marketing policy has been to say "K-6" or "ages 5 to 12"
> (http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=press&article=20090316&language=english#20090316)
> or "children" or "young learners" because the Microsoft / CMPC offer
> is so poor in that range. Of course, that doesn't exclude any age
> group (including seniors and computer beginners of all ages), but it
> needs to be clear that the focus is on grade-school children. Part of
> the planned media campaign for the XO-1.5 involves promoting the dual
> desktop with Gnome, better suited to teenagers.
>
> Martin - any comment on the XS School Server text?
>
> thanks
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:
>> Since SoaS is now a Fedora Spin, we also get a shiny Fedora Spin
>> webpage, courtesy of the Fedora Marketing, Design, and Websites teams:
>> http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/
>>
>> Not all the wiki/other links pointed-to from this spin page are fully
>> built up (for instance, our openhatch link needs more work), but there's
>> time to do that before the release date of 5/18, and we needed to get
>> this specific website itself up today (Fedora's freeze date).
>>
>> Thanks to Sean Daly for graciously stepping in with last-minute patches
>> to the content on very short notice! You can see Sean's changes here:
>> http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=fedora-web.git;a=commitdiff;h=5812da649b6c132b43b51b72f09c56dff236076b
>>
>> There were two changes requested that I did /not/ make, and wanted to
>> note here for transparency (and also pushback, so that people can tell
>> me if they think I'm wrong in doing so. :)
>>
>> * I left the age range from grades K-8 (requested: K-6) because of
>> positive feedback from middle school teachers, and also because of the
>> project's history of targeting a broader range
>> (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Our_market#Child_is_a_nebulous_term.3B_what_is_the_exact_age_range_you_are_targeting.3F).
>>
>> * I love this paragraph, but I haven't seen tests run with Sugar on a
>> Stick and the XS - and until we have that, I'm hesitant to put that in:
>> "In a classroom setting, this automatic saving to each pupil's stick can
>> also be backed up to a school server, solving any lost stick problems.
>> The XS School Server (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server), also
>> based on Fedora, can provide content distribution, homework collection,
>> Moodle integration (http://docs.moodle.org/en/OLPC_XS_installation), and
>> filtered access to the Internet."
>>
>> You may also notice that the webpage does not contain the SL logo,
>> because we generally do not use trademarks in our Fedora Spin webpages,
>> since everything we put out needs to be freely redistributable and we
>> don't want to dilute anyone's mark. Instead, it features a banner
>> created by Melanie Kim, adapted from a banner by Mo Duffy made with
>> artwork by Maria Leandro, all contributors from Fedora Design.
>>
>> In general, enjoy the shiny and please shoot comments and feedback and
>> such this-a-way. ;)
>>
>> --Mel (wearing my Fedora Marketing hat in this email as well as my Sugar
>> Labs one)
>> _______________________________________________
>> SoaS mailing list
>> SoaS at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
>>
>