[olpc-nz] Request for help from Maranatha School in Lower Hutt

[Tim McNamara]

Hi Tabitha,

I've taken a look at the thread on the MLE group [1]. I thought a longer
email would aimed at clearing up some of the confusion would be beneficial.
Are you able to forward this on?

*About me*
I have been involved in global QA efforts for over a year. I'm currently one
of Sugar Labs Google Summer of Code Coordinator for 2010,

*OLPC/Sugar: 2 sentence introduction*
One Laptop Per Child is an educational programme that emphasises
constructivist learning, especially in the developing world. With computers,
it's easy to update learning materials and provide increasing levels of
educational complexity.

*Terminology*
Just to clear up terminology - OLPC is the organisation that supports the
One Laptop Per Child programme. XO is the make of the PCs that run the Sugar
Learning Platform. Sugar is the zoom interface, that centres all the focus
around the learner and her activities and friends.

*Support*
Every XO is running Fedora. Sugar is a set of pure Python modules that hide
this. It's likely that IT support staff have probably encountered Red Hat
Enterprise Linux in servers. Therefore, it's highly likely that there is
support there.

*Sugar on a Stick (SoaS)*
If you're thinking about using Sugar - you don't need the laptops. The whole
operating system can run on a USB stick.

*Sugar on your current PCs*
Like any Linux distribution, Sugar will sit happily next to your current
operating system. If you're running Ubuntu, "apt-get install sugar" will
allow you to run Sugar from the login screen.

*Mesh networking*
XOs support the 802.11s (draft) standard. You've probably heard of the b, g
and n (draft) standards. The s standard allows the internet connection to
bunny hop between computers in the mesh.

*In schools*
XOs are supported by the school sever. The school server automates
registration, backups of the machine. It also includes Moodle & several
tools. Basically it does most of the things that educators in New Zealand
would expect a pupil-facing server to do, but specialised towards the XO.

In a school environment, I wouldn't rely on mesh networking. It's quite
demanding on CPUs. When XOs mesh with over about 7 PCs, there is a notable
reduction in performance. Wifi wireless access points work really well.

Tim McNamara
 http://www.timmcnamara.co.nz
 http://twitter.com/timClicks

[1]
http://groups.google.com/group/mle-reference-group/browse_thread/thread/35748498b4ce01f/8ed0c9b964b9fd19


On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 9:28 PM, Tabitha Roder <tabitha at tabitha.net.nz>wrote:

> Hi NZ volunteers
>
> Can we please help Craig: craigm at maranatha.school.nz
>
> Craig posted this request for help on
> http://groups.google.com/group/mle-reference-group/
>
> Can anybody help me with sugar.  I ran it at home on our school netbooks
> through a cable ok but through Smartnet at school I don't know what settings
> it wants or if it can go wireless.  I'm hoping to get the junior teachers
> into it initially.  Is there a tech page, cause I can't find it.
>
>
> Maranatha Christian School is just out of Lower Hutt so hoping a Wellington
> volunteer can help out.
>
> Thanks volunteers
>
> Tabitha
> Cell +64 21 482229
>
> _______________________________________________
> olpc-nz mailing list
> olpc-nz at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-nz
>
>
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