On Friday, Walter Bender, Pablo Flores from Uruguay, and I went to FOSSVT - Vermont's Open Source and Education Conference. We handed out Sugar on a Stick and it worked!
It worked on the eeePCs, it worked on the Dells big and small, it worked on the think pads, it worked on the classmate. It worked on the HP tablet, including the touchscreen! It didn't work on one of the little HP netbooks but that was our only complete fail. We had problems with accessing wireless on a few models. One laptop needed the boot helper CD.
We had a room full of people doing Turtle Art! It was wonderful.
Meanwhile, 3000 miles away, in Washington State, it was working on Dell laptops and desktops in a third grade classroom. Teacher Mark Ahlness has 5 XO laptops, 2 Dell GX270’s, w/1GB Ram, nice big flat panels and 5 Dell latitudes. Here is my favorite quote from one of his emails:
"When I showed my third grade class SoaS on an XO, the first question one girl asked was if she could put that stick in her computer at home… They are ready, if the technology is ready."
I've had many frustrating conversations with people in the last year, who couldn't understand why anyone would want their operating system on a USB. Its nice that this kid got it. All the educators at FOSS VT got it too.
Next Saturday I will be at Healthy Kids Day at the Waltham Y, trying it with kids; this was planned to be the first trial of the Sugar on a Stick beta with kids, but Mark may beat me too it!
http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/mahlness/2009/04/shifting-gears-finding-encouraging.html
It was a Toshiba Portege M400 at FOSSVT
Hey Caroline!
Unless there was another person there with a tablet then it was actually a Toshiba Portege M400 S5032 tablet.
I know because I was the person who had it on Friday! Hey, it was great to meet you and the rest of your team at FOSSVT! I am definitely feeling very excited after that conference and getting to finally meet and talk with other people who know about open source at all. Usually after most ed tech conferences I am somewhat disappointed by most of the content. Usually a bunch of sales guys trying to sell you antivirus or similar.
I would like to seriously consider trying out SOAS for my summer camp with the 6th grade netbooks. We will be using the Dell Mini-9's loaded with Edubuntu which is what they will have during their 6th grade year and so the camp will be mainly about using applications on the netbooks over the summer doing various things but I would definitely love to have them explore various operating systems especially something like SOAS.... Maybe they can be my 6th grade specialists to help out my younger (kindergarten) students learn how to use SOAS...
All the best!
-Nicco
by Nicco Eneidi on 04/13/09
Sound ok?
Congratulations for SoaS2 success! I'm currently trying out Sugar but with my current version [emulation] tam tam sound does not work, and with SoaS2April 4th there is a bug uploading new activities so no tamtam. Can you tell me if these bugs have been fixed for the latest SoaS? [uploading new activities and having sound work for activities that use CSound such as TamTam] thanks!
--jose
by Jose I. Icaza on 04/14/09
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