4 ms·

"but then they didn't cram a ton of books in each OLPC!" Why do you say that? The content packs used in the deployments are customized to local language and cu

"but then they didn't cram a ton of books in each OLPC!" Why do you say that? The content packs used in the deployments are customized to local language and culture. Translating and sourcing the included materials was and continues to be a huge undertaking and the burden of that fall mostly to the local team and government liasons. You'll hit language barriers pretty quickly trying to keep up with most of those teams, but the links are around. EG: http://www.olenepal.org/ http://www.olenepal.org/, http://www.olpcmexico.org/ http://www.olpcmexico.org/ well, I do. apologies for projecting. Looks like Mexican school kids might get XO-4 before me. #firstworldproblems

VikingCoder 13y ago
I'd love to see a list of the included materials that you're talking about. Browsing the wiki, I'm not impressed.
- adricnet 13y ago
  Before we descend to argument by contradiction ... what language or culture are you interested in seeing (evidence of) content for? For Spanish, Science and Math there are: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:102 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/ca... For XOs with network access (including just to a classroom network) included activities allow students to add books. http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 And the Vivtar tablet include non-free educational content from many licenses in English and Spanish (for the Americas): http://xotablet.com/#features http://xotablet.com/#features Wikpedia subsets in local language are included in the XO images I've seen, though I don't have detailed links to those handy (It's on my XO). Does that help?
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    Yes, it helps, but I'm afraid it proves my point. (I'm happy to just look at the English Sugar Labs.) Maybe I'm just missing it, but I see learning activities, not books. I'd like to see lectures and/or text books. For instance, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra. I think Khan Academy has a nice map of their materials: https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard Wikipedia subsets are nice to have, but they're not Course Material. It's a good reference, not a teaching book, filled with problem sets, etc.
    - adricnet 13y ago
      I agree. CJB commented elsewhere in this thread ( cjbprime) and he knows better than I do what went on back then. I think that creating educational content is an incredibly important thing, and that it should be freely distributable to all and translated and localized broadly. It's a huge undertaking. There are a few projects around trying to do things like this (against the impressive might of the textbook publishing industry) and I wish them the best of luck. OLPC will be only one benefactor of such efforts, and KA is certainly a great project. Another hub of free educational content and tools is is Moodle. XO Server ships Moodle with content packs, but again, I'm not sure what is in them, sorry :/ You can start near here to check on them: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition links to http://schoolserver.org/ http://schoolserver.org/ hth and thanks for discussion, adric

VikingCoder 13y ago

I'd love to see a list of the included materials that you're talking about. Browsing the wiki, I'm not impressed.

adricnet 13y ago
Before we descend to argument by contradiction ... what language or culture are you interested in seeing (evidence of) content for? For Spanish, Science and Math there are: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:102 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/ca... For XOs with network access (including just to a classroom network) included activities allow students to add books. http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 And the Vivtar tablet include non-free educational content from many licenses in English and Spanish (for the Americas): http://xotablet.com/#features http://xotablet.com/#features Wikpedia subsets in local language are included in the XO images I've seen, though I don't have detailed links to those handy (It's on my XO). Does that help?
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  Yes, it helps, but I'm afraid it proves my point. (I'm happy to just look at the English Sugar Labs.) Maybe I'm just missing it, but I see learning activities, not books. I'd like to see lectures and/or text books. For instance, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra. I think Khan Academy has a nice map of their materials: https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard Wikipedia subsets are nice to have, but they're not Course Material. It's a good reference, not a teaching book, filled with problem sets, etc.
  - adricnet 13y ago
    I agree. CJB commented elsewhere in this thread ( cjbprime) and he knows better than I do what went on back then. I think that creating educational content is an incredibly important thing, and that it should be freely distributable to all and translated and localized broadly. It's a huge undertaking. There are a few projects around trying to do things like this (against the impressive might of the textbook publishing industry) and I wish them the best of luck. OLPC will be only one benefactor of such efforts, and KA is certainly a great project. Another hub of free educational content and tools is is Moodle. XO Server ships Moodle with content packs, but again, I'm not sure what is in them, sorry :/ You can start near here to check on them: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition links to http://schoolserver.org/ http://schoolserver.org/ hth and thanks for discussion, adric