[vox] OLPC Conference review. was Proclamation, wine, laptops and learning!

[Kevin Schultz]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the write-up.

On Sun, Oct 24, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Brian Lavender <brian at brie.com> wrote:

> I went to the OLPC conference and I really enjoyed it. The great thing
> about this conference is that were dedicated OLPC attendees from around
> the world, technical and those doing deployments.  Without a doubt, there
> is great opportunity with OLPC and with that a lot of work to do. But,
> at the same time, a lot of work has been done (shoulders of giants to
> build upon). The conference had a great "grass roots" feel. Numerous
> people contributed to make it happen, and there was no overlooming
> corporate twist you sometimes feel at conferences.
>
> I still have yet to write an application for OLPC. I would say that was a
> shortfall of the programming session I went to. There were links to howtos
> and online videos, but I would have really liked to have seen "hello
> world". I did do a little digging afterwards, and most coding is done in
> Python and it appears that GTK works under the hood using PyGTK. I hope to
> soon write a simple app and run it on OLPC. There is also the integration
> aspect of OLPC. OLPC has what is called Sugar on a Stick. If you download
> the iso image for OLPC, you can burn create a bootable USB stick using
> the Fedora Live USB creator.
>
> https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/
>
> I am running Ubuntu which has a "Startup Disk Creator" similar to
> Fedora's. Somehow, I thought I might be able to create sugar on a
> stick using Ubuntu's program, but this was not the case. So, someone
> created me a stick. But, once again, how was I to code a program with
> OLPC booted on my system. Yet, another neighor of mine mentioned that I
> could install Sugar in my Ubuntu. A few moments later, I installed it,
> but there seemed to be problems. I am not sure what they were, so I
> am still have yet to write "Hello World". Even another Sugar developer
> lamented that some of the integration was a ways off and work could be
> done in this area. I hope to write a "Hello World" soon as there seems
> to be a number of resources on the Wiki.  Not to mention, I would like
> to see TuxPaint on OLPC. The thing with OLPC seems that packages
> contain the all the dependencies, so this may be a challenge.
>
> I also learned about libusb while listening to a USB temperature probe
> that is being used with OLPC in Uganda. I had not realized that USB
> support in Linux had been moved to user space. OLPC uses the Linux kernel.
> Some day down the road, I hope to check it out in detail. I'll add it
> to the wishlist. At the same time, OLPC implements a security model in
> case your laptop is stolen that I would like to dig into and see how it
> is implemented.
>
> It was also interesting to hear those who were doing implementations of
> OLPC at schools and their experiences. One of the people who has worked in
> Haiti told me teachers feared the laptops would replace them. I responded
> that that would be quite a feat deserving the Loebner prize. And, we
> also heard some details about an implementation in Birmingham, AL and
> her experiences and struggle to make OLPC a success.
>
> There was much more that I could recount upon. Those who didn't go, you
> missed out!
>
> brian
>
> On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 09:41:32PM -0700, Sameer Verma wrote:
> > We have had an incredible two days thus far at the OLPC San Francisco
> > Community Summit 2010. Mayor Gavin Newsom declared October 23, 2010 as
> > One Laptop per Child Day in San Francisco!
> > http://blog.laptop.org/2010/10/22/october-23-is-olpc-day-in-sf/
> >
> > Here are some photos from the events and sessions.
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/sets/72157625222079022/ and
> > http://picasaweb.google.com/tuxwingsgroup/Olpc#
> >
> > You can join us online tomorrow at 11:30AM and 13:45pm Pacific.
> > http://www.ustream.tv/channel/olpcsf-community-summit-2010
> >
> > cheers,
> > Sameer
> > --
> > Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> > Associate Professor, Information Systems
> > Director, Campus Business Solutions
> > San Francisco State University
> > http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> > http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
> > http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
> > http://is.sfsu.edu/
> > _______________________________________________
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> > vox at lists.lugod.org
> > http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox
>
> --
> Brian Lavender
> http://www.brie.com/brian/
>
> "Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to
> show their absence!"
>
> Professor Edsger Dijkstra
> 1972 Turing award recipient
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