[olpc-help] Update on XOs in Uruguay (Andrew) and Various thoughts

[Greg Smith (gregmsmi)]

Hi Andrew,

Tell us more about your plans! When do you intend to start, how many
Xos, what kind of infrastructure and support (e.g. servers, BW and IT
staff) and any other details you have would be useful.

You need to find a reliable communication channel with OLPC if you are
deploying soon. Options AFAIK are to e-mail engineering lists:
devel at lists.laptop.org and server-devel at lists.laptop.org or open a
support case at: help at laptop.org

Whichever you choose, make sure to note that you are deploying for a
school and not a Give 1 Get 1 personal user. You may get what you need
on this list too, not sure...

There is a brand new deployment guide at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployment_Guide

It gives some high level suggestion on how to plan. 

To answer your questions as best I can:
On pedagogical aspects.
- That's a tough question. See the deployment guide for a teacher
training that happens at OLPC. I've never seen an invite to that so not
sure how you join. You can see some great activities built with eToys
for Nepal. See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal you can also poke around
their site for more on pedagogy and http://www.olenepal.org/faq.html 

Someone also wrote an extensive overview of deployment and pedagogy for
Ethiopia See:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User_talk:Gregorio#Ethiopia_Roll_Out_Plan
I have no idea if they ever implemented it or what happened but you
could contact the author if interested.

The pedgagogy piece is a whole long thread in its own right.

On Mesh.
It not working right now for many XOs, not sure why. You can collaborate
by using what's called a Jabber server. I think the difference is that
in Mesh all Xos talk to each other and in Jabber everyone talks to
server (aka Jabber = star topology vs. Mesh = full mesh). See latest
OLPC News for a note on recent mesh testing and a hint that more
documentation may be coming: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Current_events

On Flash I don't know about that. Start with the support FAQ:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_FAQ dig down to other software and
flash from there: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Other_software

On your questions below here us my suggestion:
1 - Take a look at Nepal testing plan:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Nepal:_XO_Testing_Plan You can create and
deliver a customized image to all Xos. Its not trivial but you should
plan to do that. The password can be part of that if needed.

2 - The design intends for you to use a "school server" that is a
pre-packaged image from OLPC running on your server hardware. See:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server

3 - I think they fail up front if they will fail at all but no measured
MTBF data available AFAIK. Try one of the lists above or check the
support FAQ for more ideas.

4 - Not that I know of. There is some resistance to this but also some
demand.

5 - Don't know but looks like Michael can help.
 
6 - Great question! I've never seen it raised! No known cases but it's
new HW. If there is a chance I bet it will happen in the South American
forest or a remote Himalayan village or a desert in Africa or somewhere.
We will find out.

In general, anything is possible but not a lot is well known, proven or
supported. I suggest you write down as much as you can about what you
want to do then break it in to: must have, nice to have and optional. 
E.g. 
Must have: internet access, content filtering, caching, list of
activities, sharing between two laptops, etc. 
Nice to have, pedagogical design study, Flash, many to many sharing etc.
Optional full time sys admin in every school :-)

Start with a very short list and focus on the must have and the target
date first. If you have a short time frame, be prepared to drink from
the fire hose and start learning shell scripting ....

Also, plan to document everything you learn on your own wiki page to
help the next guy. Just stake out a page in the OLPC wiki and start
posting.

HTHs. 

Let us know how it goes and what you need to be successful. Lots of
folks will chip in but everyone is busy so ask clearly, early and often.

Thanks,

Greg S

*********************
Hi, we will be piloting the OLPC project in high-poverty areas of South
Carolina, US (to my knowledge, we are the third US state, after New York
and Alabama)

Thank you for sharing your assessment and observations.

It would be also interesting to know what other activities besides
blogging you were able to effectively implement, or planning to
implement.  

Although we may not have the same challenges with bandwidth here, we
would certainly have to devise a teacher training strategy. In addition,
we would, as anywhere else, need to align the XO activities to our
curriculum/standards, and attempt further us toward our overarching
educational goals (thus, the pedagogical facet of this project, in
addition to the technical one)  
Is the signal two week?  I just had two XO's play "PlayGo" with each
other, over the mesh, at a distance of about 60 feet.

As of yet we only possess two units, for testing.

Does the mesh speed go down when it is "congested" with dozens of units?

I have downloaded and installed flash, from 
    http://www.catmoran.com/olpc/  

rpm did not issue errors; yet, i don't see any results of the
installation. Web browsing still seems to be without flash capability.

I hear the Opera browser (although not open source) has an XO build,
and, i presume, it is flash-ready(?)

Andrew


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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:13:36 -0400
From: Andrew <andrew2006 at flight.us>
Subject: [olpc-help] Various thoughts
To: <community-support at lists.laptop.org>
Message-ID: <25752859.3730431206760416384.JavaMail.servlet at perfora>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

We are planning a pilot program in South Carolina, US

Here are a few questions I have compiled:

1) root passwords. The two sample laptops we have acquired thus far have
a null string for the root password. Is this the default for each newly
shipped unit? If so, is there any way possible to set root passwords en
masse, automatically?  Or, perhaps, automated to SOME extent?

I have never heard of such a thing. Can a script (run with run
privileges, i suppose), automatically (re)set the root password?

Ideally, of course, each unit should be assigned its own unique password
- but how practical would it be to accomplish that, and then to
implement it?  Tech support would always need to have a look-up table
handy. Could one pull off such a procedure?

2) I have set up a DHCP server & internet gateway that works. However,
when the XOs boot, they do not automatically try to obtain an IP address
from the 172.18.0.1 ("school server").  

What is the best way to ensure automatic dhclient request?

Edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcf-eth0 to say "ONBOOT=yes" ?

Then, in case the server is down during boot, add a crontab to run every
so often, which ensures we have an IP?

Or is there a "cleaner", better way?

3) how reliable are the batteries?  One of the two brand new XOs we got
has a dead battery, a couple of weeks after it came in the mail.

4) Has anyone made a systemic attempt to assess the impact of the OLPC
implementation upon academic progress, with the "control group" being
the XO classrooms? In other words, such a study would have to be
designed in advance, to be sure to collect all the relevant data from
the very beginning.

5) Is it possible to use an external midi input device with the TamTam
activity, to record the midi tracks? (a normal Midi keyboard)

6) insect infestation?  Has anyone reported pests such as roaches taking
up residence in the XO?  I understand it is very tightly sealed.  (There
have been pretty bad cases of infestation in take-home equipment in
school programs in the past.)

thanks

Andrew


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Message: 4
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:02:41 -0400
From: Michael Stone <michael at laptop.org>
Subject: Re: [olpc-help] Various thoughts
To: OLPC Community Support <community-support at lists.laptop.org>
Message-ID: <20080329050241.GA11741 at teach.media.mit.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Andrew,

First, thanks very much for contacting us with your questions. I don't
yet have a very good sense of what your end goals are (or of what your
mental picture of how the laptops will be used is) so I need to ask you
some dumb questions now in order to be able to better help you in the
future.

> 1) root passwords. 

What are you trying to protect by setting a password?

Who is supposed to know the password?

When do you want to set the passwords? (or reset them?)

> I have never heard of such a thing. Can a script (run with run 
> privileges, i suppose), automatically (re)set the root password?

Certainly.

> Ideally...

Please explain why this would be your ideal situation.

> 2) I have set up a DHCP server & internet gateway that works. However,

> when the XOs boot, they do not automatically try to obtain an IP 
> address from the 172.18.0.1 ("school server").

What build are you running?

> 5) Is it possible to use an external midi input device with the TamTam

> activity, to record the midi tracks? (a normal Midi keyboard)

The CSound hackers definitely use midi keyboards with their software.
TamTam is based on top of CSound so even if TamTam doesn't support midi
keyboards today, it can probably be made to do so for a reasonable
expenditure of effort.