Edubuntu and Teachers and More... fresh thread

[David Farning]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Jonathan Carter <jonathan at zanix.co.za> wrote:
> Hi David
>
> On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 8:32 PM, David Groos <djgroos at gmail.com> wrote:
>> That other thread was getting too ungainly though full of cool stuff.  Here
>> is a fresh space for an update...
>>
>> I joined Ubuntu-education listserv and sent out an, "Anyone here?" post and
>> in not too much time got 21 replies :)  So there are lots of people there
>> who are interested and come from a variety of ubuntu and education
>> perspectives.  To initiate something I wrote up a project I needed to write
>> up for my own learning and posted it to my blog.  Then sent off a post to
>> the list with a link to the blog post and asking for ideas on how to improve
>> the project.  Hope I get some ideas!  If you are interested in seeing an
>> example of how I put my edubuntu thin clients use in my classroom you can
>> check this blog post--and add your ideas for improving the project as well
>> if you would!
>
> It's indeed great the response you got. When I initially received your
> mail I just marked it as unread again so that I can respond to it a
> bit later when I had more time, just to see it grow ever bigger :)
>
> I'm not sure if you're familiar with the history of the list. About 2
> years ago Canonical had manager who was in charge of all things
> education. His idea was that Edubuntu was to be just the OS and
> install disc and that the Ubuntu Education community should be a
> seperate community on its own. Since he left Canonical never really
> appointed an education manager, but we've had some friendly people
> working there like Belinda who's always been there giving support and
> motivation. The list pretty much went quiet, but I do believe it can
> still be useful. We considered merging it with edubuntu-users, but I
> think that there might be many educators who are interested in
> discussing education with ICT without getting into the technical
> details.
>
> We haven't made any final decision on this list, and there was at
> least one person showing interest recently in putting some effort into
> putting some energy into it. For the next Edubuntu release we're
> working on making it a strong base technically for building on in the
> future. I believe it will be the best Edubuntu release yet. After that
> though, we'll try to focus more on the educational side again. We'll
> need input from educators all over and people who understand education
> well, and I think this list could work great for that kind of
> communication.
>

To follow up on Jonathan's response,

I have recently, early December, started working on a Ubuntu based
Education product called Ubuntu-Sugar-Remix. _Early_ alphas are
available at http://people.sugarlabs.org/dfarning/ .  I stepped down
from Sugar Labs to focus all of my energy on this project.

I am starting with a very tight focus.  Leverage the strength of the
the Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Ubuntu's reputation among educators with
the Sugar Learning Platform as developed by One Laptop Per Child and
Sugar Labs to create a product which OEMs or hardware resellers can
install on laptop and netbooks.  The 'just works' ISO which educators
can install and use for free is an awesome side effect:)

Very generally, the product is:
1. Dual desktop - Sugar for the younger kids and gnome for the older kids.
2. Can be run from a USB stick or installed on a hard drive.  There
are some significant benefits (and challenges) of running from a usb
stick which can be used on various computer at home or at school while
retaining data between session (persistence).
3. The product is distributed as a single ISO.  Advances in boot from
external usb device and price drops in usb sticks are eliminating the
limitations that were imposed by the 770MB, readonly CDs.
4. Complies with standard Ubuntu policies.  Extra Credit for everyone
if we can make this product valuable enough that Canonical would
include in among their supported products:)

david