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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Spark and KDE and Tablet-Projects for Schools in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony/Germany
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2012-03-05 11:21:52
Message-ID: 4957765.pJCAqF5Ygd () freedom
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On Saturday, February 25, 2012 10:31:13 Daniel Rohde-Kage wrote:
> in March or the beginning of April the administration publishes the terms of
> contracts in the 'Schulverwaltungsblatt Niedersachsen', available in the
> internet. I will post the exact date here. From my experience it's pretty
> tough to join this without a company with at least some experience in this
> kind of process as a backer, but maybe we can come up with some creative
> solution.

We could also find one or more companies willing to help take this on. I'm 
having some discussions with companies based in Germany this week while at 
CeBIT that may be able to help.

There is also the company that is underwriting the tablet venture, though it 
is based in the US. As one of the people involved with that company, I'd be 
happy to offer my participation sa well, though my German is extremely limited 
still I do live near-ish these days (die Schweiz)

If there is any way we can help with the process, lease let me know.

> hardware - what can I physically do with this machine? How many features are
> implemented (usb-ports, camera, accu-life...) support

I'm not familiar with accu-life, but the rest of the usual suspects are there 
(USB, camerca, SD card, audio out, microphone, etc.) with the exception of 
bluetooth.

However, what is perhaps even more interesting is that we are not limited to a 
single hardware device. It is possible to offer different hardware feature sets 
(and tablet sizes); what varies will be the price and timing.

This means that the stakeholders, in this case the school system, could 
paricipate in the requirements for the hardware.

At the volume common with schools, we are also able to offer customizations to 
the software (custom pre-loaded content, default backgrounds and splash 
screens, etc.) as well as some branding options (e.g. the school's name on the 
device itself) at no extra cost.

> - who cares for the
> users, really the most important aspect for schools, which are no
> IT-companies and would like to/must have an easy-care system (e.g. what
> about restoring a corrupted system?) software

Yes, we can provide this.

> - under iOS the app-store is
> pretty well equipped, so how many of the great KDE-edu-applications are
> usable with this system?

That's a very good question. We have not yet done a full assessment of this. 
We know that they all run and work, the question is how well do they work in a 
touch environment. Some work very well (e.g. blinken :) but we have not fully 
tested some of the more complex ones and expect there to be some issues.

We will not be able to compete with iOS on apps: they simply have a huge head 
start there. However, we do have a good number of applications and they are 
Free software as a bonus. We do expect the number of applications to grow once 
the device is available, however.

In your first email you noted that there was no office suite. We are shipping 
Calligra Active, which has excellent (best of class, in fact) suport for 
Microsoft Office documents in addition to its native ODF format.

There is also the "killer app" that is Plasma Active. With one activity per 
subject / class, teachers and students could effectively use the tablets in the 
educational environment: the student would simply switch to the activity for 
the class and have all the content and related information already right there 
for them with the tablet immediately prepped to be the perfect system for that 
specific class. This is a feature set that iOS simply does not have, nor does 
it look likely to have it any time soon.

> content - which contents can be accessed and
> produced(!) on different systems  - the advancing of apple goes toward a
> closed e-book-market for schools.

We feel the closed market is a very bad direction for everyone, except Apple.

On launch, we will be offering the full catalog from Project Gutenberg, but 
even more interesting perhaps to a school system is that the add-ons store can 
be easily customized to their needs. They could even self-host their own 
content store, or have us host it for them. In either case, they would be able 
to manage and/or provide their own content for the students.

This means that they do not have to worry about what students will have access 
to on their tablets: they will know because they have complete control over 
what is available in the Add Ons app on their tablets.

Combined with per-class Activities, teachers could easily offer access to the 
content relevant to that class via the Add Ons app and have a very dynamic, 
easy to use device tailored for the classroom in question.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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