[Olpc-socal] OSSIE Updates

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hello OLPC-SoCal list members,

I have a few interesting items to share about open source software in education.  I hope that others on this list will also share interesting news about OSSIE.  

CUE Conference This Weekend
First, an event that takes place in Palm Springs this weekend, the 2010 CUE (Computer Using Educators) conference.  There will be an "Open Source Pavillion" next to the exhibit hall where there will be presentations  and various open source educational software items will be showcased.

http://www.cue.org/conference/opensource/

It is a pretty expensive conference, but the "Exhibit Halls only" ticket is an affordable $25 for one day (Fri 3/5 or Sat 3/6). There are some ngos in the exhibit hall, but they all had to pay for their space (OLPC/SugarLabs doesn't have that kind of funding). However, the Open Source Pavillion is accessable through the exhibit hall.

If you are unable to attend in person, you can do it virtually via "CUE Unplugged" and Classroom 2.0. All you have to do is sign up for Classroom 2.0 and learn to use the Eluminate Conferencing tool.

While Eluminate is not Open Source, the founder and head of Classroom 2.0, Steve Hargadon, is one of the country's biggest Open Source advocates in education.  In addition to doing Classroom 2.0, he is the one in charge of the Open Source Pavillion at CUE. Eluminate supports his efforts by providing free conference "rooms" (and any individual can also sign up for a 3-seat virtual office with them).

The conference goes for 3 days and Steve has listed some of the presentations that will be featured. Some are hour long regular sessions and others are 30 min shorter sessions.  If you scroll down to Friday you will see that I am doing a 30 min session from 3:15 to 3:45 pm  (PT) on Friday afternoon.

This is a great opportunity for those of you who are not working in the classroom to see what today's teachers are really interested in.  Many of these sessions offer great ideas that can be adopted/adapted to Sugar and other open source projects.

Here's the link:

http://www.cueunplugged.com/

Making Your Own Sugar On A Stick (SoaS) simplified for Linux users.  
Making your own SoaS on a machine running Linux is getting easier. While they are still working on it,  here is a link to what is going on at the "Linux Live USB Creator."

http://www.linuxliveusb.com/index.php?option=com_flyspray&Itemid=55&do=details&task_id=135

Argentina uses SoaS to train educators for the upcoming 60,000 XO-1.5 deployment in the provence of La Rioja.
Exciting things are happening in Argentina.  The provence of La Rioja has ordered 60,000 XO-1.5 machines. Some of you had a chance to try one of these at SCaLE 8X where Rob Savoye and I each had one. 

Here is a link to some photos from the training sessions in La Roija. If you look closely, you will see Sugar running on the PCs::

http://picasaweb.google.com/godiard/LaRiojaFebrero2009

If you read Spanish and would like more information about OLPC and Sugar Labs in Argentina, send me a reply to this email.  I'll send it next week after the CUE Conference.

Remember, to reply to the entire list, you will have to enter <olpc-socal at laptop.org> in the address space. If you do not do that, your reply will only go to the author of the message to which you are replying.

Have a great weekend. Hope to see some of you at CUE, either in person or virtually at CUE Unplugged.

Caryl

 		 	   		  
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