Re: 3. HOW - Content

[Misha Eydman]

Just thought I would share, RACHEL project has setup an online server which contains all the resources they put on their Pi devices. Feel free to look around: http://rachelfriends.org/previews/rachelpi_64EN/.

If you are not familiar with this project, here some info about them: http://pi.worldpossible.org/

[Moodle Muse]

I met with some people a few weeks ago who showed me an OLPC laptop and explained the initial interface, I found a video and info so you can get an insight too ...

http://one.laptop.org/about/software

http://laptop.org/en/laptop/start/activities.shtml

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/ (Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under the

Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License v3.0 or any later version.)

Basically the desktop  offered kids a very simple range of tools to create and view content:

• Writing and drawing (with different colours , lines and pens pencils)
• Calculate and Measure
• Capture and edit images / video
• eBook readers
• Chat / Communicate
• Learning Games

There is a huge community of Developers that have been working on these Sugar activities for years. It was suggested that we could consider the possibility of installing Linux and the Sugar OS on Android tablets. Which would mean we have thousands of ready made activities. Most of the icons and activities for early childhood are language independant.. "Originally developed for the One Laptop per Child XO-1 netbook, Sugar runs on most computers. Sugar is free/libre and open-source software"

Or we could tap into this network of developers and ask them to convert the proven concepts into HTML5 ,Android or iOS versions. They probably are programmers in real life and know multiple platforms.

[Moodle Muse]

Oh and when I tried to open the XO laptop I was reminded of this video about a Medieval Help Desk... 

Apparently I was faster than others but still had to really push my brain to figure it out:) It was not like any other Laptop I had seen!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

I have been thinking about how to open and display the content and activities and trying to remove my assumptions.  The idea of a book with turning pages may even be tricky!

 Maybe a TV with a round dial  for different channels? (You even get some maths practice!)  In most eLearning the hurdles that stop people are navigating back to Index pages and authentication. 

I met with a number of teams who are developing offline LMS and the user profile / password issue kept coming up. In the Scenario with World Vision the laptops are owned by one person and have a high degree of trust. So everything is wide open and easy access (Ideal!) Where as the other scenario was within prisons - so the opposite applied. 

So we need to imagine our learners and I am seeing three different scenarios - how we approach this with first stage will differ . Maybe we can think of it as designing three separate platforms that are stepping stones up to the ultimate offline LMS? All of the content for ten years of schooling won't go on one device so we have to split it up anyway. 

Nat