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List:       kde-edu-devel
Subject:    Re: [kde-edu]: plasma edu
From:       Thomas Thym <ungethym () mevin ! net>
Date:       2010-07-15 20:18:13
Message-ID: 201007152218.13479.ungethym () mevin ! net
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Hi,

I am pleased to see the activity in KDE EDU. It seems that there were a couple of \
discussions and BoFs during Akademy but I am not sure if the KDE-EDU people were \
enough involved. (Just my impression after some discussions with KDE-EDU people.)

Still motivated from Akademy I interviewed my sister (a teacher for 1st till 4th \
grade in Germany) about the use of computers in their classes. A short summary:

1. IT-environment.
They need a cheep, easy to deploy and maintain IT-infrastructure as a basic \
environment for their 1-5 computers in the classrooms to offer their students access \
to the Internet and computers.

2. A platform to collaborate.
(I don't like the idea, but at the moment) They use IT to control the students. There \
are some (commercial, closed sourced) webbased services that offer some tasks for the \
students and the teachers get informed about the activity of their class. Some \
services include the option to compete against others (in your class). The \
possibility of real collaboration (beyond classroom boundaries or creating something \
or learning together) is not practiced at her school. 

3. Training software.
They use some individual training software (like math- and vocabulary trainer) to \
offer the possibility to practice alone. To have those applications on mobil phones \
would be nice, esp. when they have gaming elements. At the moment they only use (buy) \
software that is approved by the education department and delivers exactly the \
content that is defined by the education department.

4. Non-IT rulez
IT is only a small element in education. The main part is done "offline".

(5. They don't care about the OS as long as it's Windows. Yes, there are still many \
prejudices  and MS is visiting the teachers regularly with special offers of Windows \
and Office (less than 50 EUR) for them.)

I planned to do some interviews here in Switzerland, too, if you think this \
information helps us further. 

Cheers,
Thomas


On Wednesday 14 July 2010 21:52:07 wrote Aaron J. Seigo:
> hi everyone :)
> 
> at Akademy we had a very good meeting of people involved with various school 
> deployments of the KDE Desktop v3 and/or KDE Plasma Desktop. we decided to try 
> and do two things:
> 
> a) bring some of the unique efforts that are currently going on downstream in 
> these projects upstream, allowing them to use the KDE community's resources as 
> a point of collaboration for them. this will hopefully allow our large (and 
> small!) edu deployments to share their efforts as well as get their work into 
> more downstream-agnostic forms (allowing them to more easily shift OS if 
> needed)
> 
> b) provide a unique Plasma Workspace offering that educational deployments may 
> choose to take advantage of. this means upstream work on the Plasma Desktop 
> that has a specific aim for the educational desktop needs, bringing us closer 
> to our downstreams and giving our downstreams new tools they can't get 
> elsewhere.
> 
> at the meeting we decided on a few things:
> 
> * the best place to run this project is from the KDE Edu community. 
> 
> this is why i am sending this email to kde-edu@ and not plasma-devel@. it's 
> more relevant for educational deployments (plasma-devel is fairly high 
> traffic, techical and not overly useful for edu focused work :), and hopefully 
> will bring all of our edu resources closer together. we hope that by providing 
> a good edu experience on top of Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook, we can also 
> find new opportunities for KDE Edu software (and vice versa)
> 
> 
> * we need to write documentation of what we want to achieve and where we are 
> right now, this will go here for now:
> 
> 	 http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Classroom
> 
> we did this with netbook (http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Plasma-
> Netbook) and it was a very successful approach, even as our initial design 
> evolved over time.
> 
> 
> * we want to keep our sources together, but not bound to the KDE SC release 
> cycle for now. therefore, we are proposing to put our code into 
> trunk/extragear/edu/. no such directory currently exists. we will make it.
> 
> 
> * in addition to gather work down for existing edu deployments, we intend to 
> deliver a set of components (plasmoids, containments, javascript layout 
> templates) that will run inside a standard Plasma Desktop shell. we want to 
> have a first release around the same time as SC 4.6. the central idea is to 
> have a set of simplified, lockable panel layouts paired with a desktop widget 
> layout that can be customized by the teacher that leverages the Activities as 
> debuting in Plasma Desktop 4.5. each class session will get an Actvity, which 
> the classroom lead (e.g. teacher) can populate with applications, files, etc. 
> when a student logs in, it will fetch the Activities for the class sessions 
> they are in.
> 
> 
> * we require input from teachers using KDE software to provide feedback and 
> consultation on the above idea and as it progresses as a software product
> 
> 
> current action items:
> 
> * get the Plasmoid from the Portugal deployment in svn
> 
> * get the javascript layout that mimics the java bar used in Brazil in svn
> 
> * flesh out the design document so we can begin getting teacher feedback and 
> start working on it
> 
> 
> ok, that's probably enough for one email. :)
> 
> i hope that the KDE Edu team is ok with us joining/invading your space to run 
> this project. your input is not only welcome, it is desired. i'd say it's even 
> critical to this becoming a success. open the floodgates! :)
> 
> 
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