Update & Introductions
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Charles Cossé
Jun 1, 2017, 1:04:01 PM6/1/17
to NetDispenser
Hello Everyone,
It's great to see you all as group members, thank you for joining! We collected 57 email addresses during our poster session at PyCon, and I believe that a few more of those will be joining in due time.
Briefly, I'd like to re-explain the vision behind the project. The NetDispenser has one core capability that no other learning platform has: the ability to elicit a strong effort from kids while they complete activities. This happens because they realize that the fastest way to get online is to get the work done efficiently, which translates to "making an effort". Through well-designed activities this can be accomplished repeatedly and consistently, independent of the subject. So, to realize its full potential, the platform needs a variety of credit-earning activities covering a variety of subjects. I am proposing to stimulate the development of such activities through a direct-funding model in which parents distribute their monthly subscription among developers of their choice. This can develop into a self-sustaining ecosystem with value going in both directions between parents and developers. The rest is details.
All of the activities shown at the PyCon demo (available here) were developed outside of this platform, the point being that a developer's work can be multi-purposed, and that it's a simple procedure to modify an existing activity to implement a credit-earning scheme and integrate with the NetDispenser. Of particular interest is the Sugarizer platform, which is a web version of the Sugar platform developed for the XO laptop and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. I began resurrecting this project in 2017 by developing an activity for Sugarizer in order to understand how one could port apps from Sugarizer to NetDispenser. Good news: it was easy! Sugarizer has over 20 web activities already and growing. Those 20+ activities were all ported from Python and the Sugar platform, where there is a large archive of Python activities.
The first priority, as I see it, is to get people actually using the NetDispenser. Yesterday I went through the entire procedure of building a CreditMeter starting from a blank SD card and the GitHub repositories. It took longer than expected (6 hours), such that I think the best way to get people using the platform is to distribute SD images, rather than build from scratch. I've got a good working 8G image that I can clone and send via mail. I haven't tried to compress it but I don't think it'll compress below the 4G file size limit at GitHub. For now I've got some copies ready to post to anyone who wants, just let me know. International is no problem as it's just a micro SD card.
Each one of you surely has a wealth of skills and experience, as well as a shortage of time. If you do have a few minutes and don't mind introducing yourself that would be great! I'd be very interested to know a bit about you and how this project might benefit you, so please feel free. Anything at all -- questions, answers, ideas, suggestions or anything else. I've made the group permissions so that any member can issue invitations to anyone who might be interested to join. Again, thank you for being here and looking forward to building some useful software!
Wishing you a great day,
Charles Cossé
It's great to see you all as group members, thank you for joining! We collected 57 email addresses during our poster session at PyCon, and I believe that a few more of those will be joining in due time.
Briefly, I'd like to re-explain the vision behind the project. The NetDispenser has one core capability that no other learning platform has: the ability to elicit a strong effort from kids while they complete activities. This happens because they realize that the fastest way to get online is to get the work done efficiently, which translates to "making an effort". Through well-designed activities this can be accomplished repeatedly and consistently, independent of the subject. So, to realize its full potential, the platform needs a variety of credit-earning activities covering a variety of subjects. I am proposing to stimulate the development of such activities through a direct-funding model in which parents distribute their monthly subscription among developers of their choice. This can develop into a self-sustaining ecosystem with value going in both directions between parents and developers. The rest is details.
All of the activities shown at the PyCon demo (available here) were developed outside of this platform, the point being that a developer's work can be multi-purposed, and that it's a simple procedure to modify an existing activity to implement a credit-earning scheme and integrate with the NetDispenser. Of particular interest is the Sugarizer platform, which is a web version of the Sugar platform developed for the XO laptop and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. I began resurrecting this project in 2017 by developing an activity for Sugarizer in order to understand how one could port apps from Sugarizer to NetDispenser. Good news: it was easy! Sugarizer has over 20 web activities already and growing. Those 20+ activities were all ported from Python and the Sugar platform, where there is a large archive of Python activities.
The first priority, as I see it, is to get people actually using the NetDispenser. Yesterday I went through the entire procedure of building a CreditMeter starting from a blank SD card and the GitHub repositories. It took longer than expected (6 hours), such that I think the best way to get people using the platform is to distribute SD images, rather than build from scratch. I've got a good working 8G image that I can clone and send via mail. I haven't tried to compress it but I don't think it'll compress below the 4G file size limit at GitHub. For now I've got some copies ready to post to anyone who wants, just let me know. International is no problem as it's just a micro SD card.
Each one of you surely has a wealth of skills and experience, as well as a shortage of time. If you do have a few minutes and don't mind introducing yourself that would be great! I'd be very interested to know a bit about you and how this project might benefit you, so please feel free. Anything at all -- questions, answers, ideas, suggestions or anything else. I've made the group permissions so that any member can issue invitations to anyone who might be interested to join. Again, thank you for being here and looking forward to building some useful software!
Wishing you a great day,
Charles Cossé
Vidyaratha Kissoon
Mar 13, 2018, 5:06:46 PM3/13/18
to NetDispenser
Hi I am Vidyaratha Kissoon, living in Guyana. I have an interest in FOSS use though I am currently dealing with some other matters, so I will be lurking in the group.
C. Cossé
Mar 15, 2018, 10:41:35 PM3/15/18
to NetDispenser
Hi Vidya, as Guyana's strongest FOSS advocate I hope that this project can compliment your own agenda and create opportunities for would-be developers in Guyana. Thanks for posting and very glad to see you here!
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