using XO for Internet Math Tutoring

[Stanley Sokolow]

Martin,

Sonya wanted me to reply on her behalf.   I have written a brief explanation
of our attempts to "just install Flash" on the XO with the ex-factory, that
is, the factory installed, operating system.   I just sent it to the
developers' list.    What someone like Sonya needs is an OS on the XO that
has Adobe FlashPlayer installed ex-factory, or easily added by downloading
it, but the story of Flash on the XO is not so simple.  Since OPLC's
developers seem to want nothing to do with the proprietary, but free to use,
FlashPlayer, and since Gnash isn't even running a close second place to
FlashPlayer, someone who wants to use Flash-based web applications is stuck
unless he/she knows enough about computers to go around Sugar and get
FlashPlayer and a browser that plays nicely with it.  She was hoping to
create a tutoring capability that works within Sugar, but building it from
scratch using Python and Sugar just isn't feasible nor cost-effective when
web apps already exist to do what she needs, just not within Sugar.

I'm hoping that when the new version of Fedora for XO-1.5 is released, a
backport to XO-1 will also be released, and that it will support
FlashPlayer, the real one from Adobe, without requiring the user to be an IT
expert.

Stan

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Martin Langhoff
<martin.langhoff at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi -
>
> just install Flash. You don't need anything from me or OLPC.
>
> kind regards,
>
>
> martin
>
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 3:39 PM, Sonya Sokolow <sonyasokolow at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 4/12/10 12:40pm CA time
> >
> > Hi Martin,
> >
> > I am Sonya Sokolow, PhD, owner of Internet Math Tutoring (IMT):
> > http://www.internetmathtutoring.com .  I also maintain the blog about
> using
> > XO's in Africa and India for IMT:
> http://www.internetmathtutoring.com/olpc
> > .
> >
> >  In my experience, having a web cam and an interactive white board as
> tools
> > for internet math tutoring make the teaching very much more effective
> than
> > having only type chat or delayed email responses.  I use
> http://www.Vyew.com
> > as an interactive whiteboard.  It is flash-based.  I use an SD card on
> the
> > XO  which my husband Stanley Sokolow made for me.  I hope that soon in
> the
> > future I won't have to use the SD card  anymore.  That is, I am hoping
> that
> > the XO's will become compatible with Flash.
> >
>
>
>
> --
>  martin.langhoff at gmail.com
>  martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>
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