Important meetings

Sometimes I like to treat this blog as a personal one and write down things that might affect in fundamental ways our future… or at least my own future, potentially.

Anyway, I’m currently living in Peru and had a series of meeting over the last two months with the new Electronical Government Office (ONGEI). Can’t say much for now (don’t want to spoil it) but I was in a meeting with the Prime Minister who seemed to agree with my proposal (in the big lines) and told me “you’re not Peruvian, are you?” in a kind of funny way (I managed to get the Peruvian accent so much that my Spanish friends make fun of me now). I’d also like to think I’ve been able to bend a little the shape of the future of the One Laptop Per Child project in Peru (on the side of Good) through my contact with the office’s director, but that was mostly a side-effect of what I hope is coming.

On Tuesday this week, I met with MySQL and MariaDB’s founder/creator, Michael Widenius (see picture). I didn’t really expect to like the guy, but as it turns out I felt soooo much related between the experiences of what happened on the MySQL-MariaDB side and what happened on the D0keos/Chamilo side that I ended up passing a good time. Those two historical events (for the projects themselves) happened pretty much at the same time, as well.

This put me in the usual sharing mood, and I thought about Latinux. Now Latinux is mainly a Latin-American group (it’s at the same time an association and a company and an open-source software start-ups cluster) founded by my new friend (or at least close acquaintance) Ricardo Strusberg (*not* the guy on the left, that’s Santiago Gonzales), with whom I met a series of times during the last 12 months, and with whom we’re mounting the Official Chamilo Teacher and Admin Certifications (first one of them is currently in a review process and should be out before our Chamilo Users Day Peru on the 18th of November, so people will be able to come around, go to the workshop and get certified the same day).

So… coming back to the sharing mood. As it turns out, MariaDB suffers the exact same problems Chamilo does right now (and probably LibreOffice, to some extent). It is better than the software from which it moved away, it has most of the influent people in it, but there is no widespread adoption yet, because the original software kept the trademark and is still luring people into them being the best. Furthermore, the job was initially done so well, with so many people involved in the original projects, that it’s difficult to out-rank them with simple good intentions. A considerable marketing effort is necessary to make people know we’ve changed name, and that we are now better.

One of the reason I’m so fond of that certification effort is that it will definitely give a boost to our project, to have the ability to get yourself certified and prove you are a true professional. If we do it, we’re definitely moving one big step forward in terms of promotion. And so could MariaDB. So I mentioned it to Michael, who immediately agreed this was a great idea, and as I’m writing this post (which is two weeks later), Ricardo has been discussing the details of such a certification and they will be launching it at the beginning of next year all over America and France.

This specific encounter (that might shape the future of MariaDB considerably) was casually made possible by the organizers of the Comtel.pe event, who made it possible for us to meet. So thank you guys!

I can’t believe how things can happen so casually, but one thing is sure: if all of this would have been in another, more popular context, I would already have “casually” met with a bunch of the most popular IT people on the planet (in fact, I have a few practical examples in mind involving friends of mine). So, in a way, Peru is a great place, but there are still other (great) places to be out there.

Sugar Camp Lima 2011

Escribo este artículo solo porque me doy cuenta que por ahora es muy difícil todavía encontrar información sobre el evento relacionado a la imagen (= el software) que se encuentra en las XO, las portátiles del proyecto One Laptop Per Child (Una Laptop Para Cada Niño, o OLPC) que se está organizando para los 18 y 19 de Noviembre 2011.

Entonces las respuestas a las preguntas más comunes son:

• Qué es? : Se trata de un evento durante el cual se harán la mayor cantidad posible de esfuerzos para generar una imagen software y varias guías para poner en las pequeñas laptops verdes. Esta imagen trae muchas mejoras que hará que los niños puedan (1) usar su laptop más tiempo (ahorra la energía mejor), (2) tener más recursos didácticos en Español y quizás en Quechua y Aymara, también en zonas sin conectividad a Internet, (3) usar su laptop con más tranquilidad, ya que una gran cantidad de problemas técnicos han sido resueltos, (4) conocer más sobre la ciudadanía, la nutrición y una serie de temas que son relevantes para los niños de todos orígenes
• Donde? : Se producirá en el Escuelab, que es un lugar de intercambio en el centro de Lima, a 200 pasos del centro de la plaza San Martin
• Cuando?: Los días 18 (en la noche) y 19 (todo el día) de Noviembre del 2011
• Quienes irán?: Ya tenemos confirmada la presencia de una cantidad importante de actores de áreas de software libre, de tecnologías, de defensa de la ciudadanía digital y del gobierno, así como personas que tienen esta increible oportunidad de conocer el Quechua o el Aymara. Pero lo más importante es que Usted, quien está sensibilizado a este gran problema de la educación infantil en Perú, esté presente para tomar contacto con nosotros y ayudarnos en este gran esfuerzo.

El Gobierno no tiene la responsabilidad de hacer estas cosas. Nosotros como ciudadanos elegimos el Gobierno, nosotros tenemos que mostrarle lo que esperamos de el. Ven y ayúdanos a mostrárselo!

BeezNest estará presente y apoyará como pueda en el evento, a través de su conocimiento y de su ánimo.

Actualización sobre proyecto Chamilo + OLPC

Hacen 26 meses, el proyecto OLPC (a través del apoyo de Sebastían Silva) me hizo el gran honor de aceptar el proyecto D0keos + OLPC oficialmente y de prestarnos 9 XO para un periodo de 24 meses. En esta época, yo era fundador y dueño de la empresa D0keos Latinoamérica. Los objetivos del proyecto eran:

• asegurar la compatibilidad del LMS con las XO
• implementar una manera de instalar el LMS en una de las XO como servidor
• difundir el proyecto OLPC en nuestros eventos

En este largo tiempo (que ha pasado muy rápidamente), han ocurrido muchas cosas, de las cuales les voy haciendo un resumen aquí de forma cronológica

• Junio 2009: recepción de 9 laptops (2 completamente rotas por DHL Perú) y presentación del proyecto OLPC durante el evento D0keos Users Days que organizamos en Lima, con asistencia de 180 profesionales de educación
• entre Junio 2009 y Diciembre 2009: adecuación de los estilos gráficos por defecto de D0keos a la medida de la pantalla de la XO. De viaje a Colombia, un grupo local de OLPC me invita a exponer en uno de los eventos a los cuales participan.
• Enero 2010: siguiendo una serie de eventos trágicos en la organización y comunicación en la comunidad de D0keos, lidero el esfuerzo de formación de un nuevo proyecto que no esté impedido de funcionar por barreras comerciales o por sentidos morales traviesos. Nace Chamilo, que colecta una gran mayoría (alrededor de 90%) de los integrantes activos de D0keos. Al mismo tiempo, la empresa cambia de nombre para BeezNest Latino, el nombre que sigue usando hoy día. Durante el año, escribo mis resultados de pruebas de hacer correr Chamilo como servidor en una XO 1.0. Éxito para esta parte, pero todavía es impráctico, por lo que una conversación con Kiko Mayorga (un actor discreto de la beneficiencia tecnológica en Perú) y Sebastían Silva, imaginamos una solución para entregar una tarjeta SD equipada con Chamilo pre-instalado. Este proyecto todavía no se concluye (mucha información que colectar) pero hay buenas esperanzas de que permita alcanzar el objetivo.
• Todo 2010: un esfuerzo incansable de difusión, de desarrollo y de comunicación dentro de la Asociación Chamilo nos permite lograr más de 300,000 usuarios en un año de existencia. En este transcurso, un evento cada 2 meses nos da la oportunidad de hablar del proyecto OLPC, tocando un público de alrededor de 2500 personas en el año. Vinculos se crean alrededor del proyecto OLPC y empiezo a conocer más de su comunidad.
• Octubre 2010: Hernan Pachas me pide si puedo entregar una versión de Chamilo que pueda correr en las XS: 6500 de estas tienen que ser distribuidas en escuelas peruanas antes de Junio del 2011. Para esto tendría que proponer esta versión antes del 3 de Noviembre. Después de unos problemas de disponibilidad y de comunicación, no alcanza el tiempo y tengo que abandonar. Nunca tendré respuesta de Hernan sobre si todavía vale la pena hacerlo o no… (lástima).
• Julio de 2011: invitado a una entrevista en TV online por el Colegio de Ingenieros de Perú y Marketeando.com, hablamos 10 minutos del proyecto y su implementación en Perú
• Agosto de 2011: el nivel de trabajo por fin comienza a estabilizarse.

Hoy: Chamilo ya se posiciona encima de D0keos en muchos aspectos y por lo tanto me da más tiempo para recordar el proyecto y mi compromiso.

No obstante, por ahora hemos cumplido con las 3 metas propuestas, lo que tengo entendido no es tan común en este tipo de proyectos. Pueden ver el procedimiento de instalación de Chamilo como servidor en la XO 1.0 aquí (falta simplificar un poco).

Ahora quedan los tres proyectos adicionales siguientes:

• proveer un imagen de tarjeta SD con un procedimiento para que las XO puedan usarla como sistema de arranque
• desarrollar una “aplicación Chamilo” que permita a las demás XO encontrarla en la red
• desarrollar una versión especial de Chamilo para XS

The Power of e-Learning

It’s been my privilege and pleasure to work in the e-learning field for the last 7 year. Somehow, having a teacher as a mother and a computer scientist as a father, it was kind of a natural outcome that I’d be an e-learning specialist. Getting to know both first-world and third-world educational mechanism (I’m Belgian, lived in Belgium, Germany, the UK and Spain and have now been living mostly in Perú for the last 4 years) was a tremendous experience, and allowed me to view the educational problem as a whole (not without a few great talks from TED confirming my views were not singular illusions). I also got the opportunity to meet with a series of people involved in the One Laptop Per Child project. This whole experience made me realize how much e-Learning (being understood as the provision of automated and interactive course content, be it remotely or locally) can really help education. As such, I’d like to share with you a few commonly found misjudgments about e-learning and why I think they are wrong.

Misjudgments about e-Learning

Fear of machines

The thing is, people fear computers. At best, they think they will never be able to use them the way they should, at worst, they think computers will finally make their work obsolete, triggering their unemployment and a life of poverty. The truth is, in 7 years of implementing e-learning platforms, I have never seen a company or institution obsoleting an employee because of anything related to e-Learning. In fact, the organizations implementing e-Learning end up growing faster, generating access to a wider audience, and finally an increase of staff required to handle this additional audience. e-Learning is not to be feared, it should be embraced and integrated, at a reasonable pace. As a science fiction put it, “If any teacher can be replaced by a computer, they probably should”. The problem is not whether you’ll be replaced or not, it is whether you like your job or not, and make learning a great experience for your students.

Obsoleting human role of teachers

Most of the time, teachers fear this will destroy the human character of in-class teaching, when in fact it is the exact opposite. As the implementations grow in reach, courses are taught differently. The teacher moves from a teaching role to a support role: a role that will allow him to reach better his full potential and that will improve the quality of learning of his students, ending up in higher achievements in the classroom. This, in fact, gives the teacher a more human role, as Salman Khan explains in a TED video about his Khan Academy project.

Quality of education

Yet another fear is that the education provided through e-Learning will be mediocre, at best, because computers cannot reach the inner sense of the learners and answer all their questions. This fear disappears after a one-day training about e-Learning. Once you start using a well-structured system to order and create courses, you realize this couldn’t be more wrong: structuring your courses inside an e-Learning platform make them easier to improve iteratively, easier to share with other teachers to improve as a teaching community, and easier to distribute to students and gather feedback (nominative or anonymous), resulting in faster improvements all over.

Another aspect of an e-Learning system is that most boring and pedagogically useless tasks, if you are a teacher, can be automated: you will be capable of developing auto-evaluation tests that your students can repeat to practice their understanding of the course. Correction of those tests will be automatic, resulting in a 50% to 75% decrease on your correction work (you will still need to review the lowest results and comment on them). This decrease allows you to focus on writing better tests and reviewing the redaction of your courses, so that students will learn better and faster. You will not work less, you will work better, get higher success rates with your students, which will finally improve your reputation and generate corresponding advantages.

This improved bettering capability is often overlooked, as the first reaction is only fear. However, once the fear barrier has been passed, some guidance will help you to understand how to make it easy to improve your content (guidance to be sought from e-Learning training/consulting providers).

Not cost effective

Of course, it all depends on how you are willing to use your system. Some organizations use e-Learning as a complement to their normal teaching, to enable access by a wider public, so the return on investment for them is really easy to measure. Others reduce costs of classical teaching by limiting printed materials and increasing rooms availability. We’ve recently been reported US$14,000 savings by not printing cooking lessons’ material for 800 students, in only 4 months time! The most difficult to calculate ROI comes from organizations implementing e-Learning to offer a better infrastructure to their students and avoid students leakage by getting leveled with their competitors. This is generally due to getting late in face of the competition, and the objective their is not a quick ROI calculation, but rather not getting obsoleted as a whole organization.

e-Learning platforms crash all the time

Apparently, many e-Learning consumers report e-Learning platforms are unreliable and tend to be unavailable when they need them. To be fair, that might happen with any platform. This is why you need the right service provider to help you. Many platforms are available for free (yes, that’s $0), but the system must always be provided by a reliable service provider. In our experience, and for a 7500 students university (now 11,000), our system has been down for a total of 12 hours (unplanned downtime) in 3 years time (36 months). That’s about 20 minutes per *month* of unavailability, and it was mostly due to changing the whole infrastructure to handle more users.

e-Learning systems are used to “spy” over the teachers

While it is true that systems like that generally make a lot of tools available to track the users (teachers *and* students), the initial objective is only to make it easier for everybody to help and be helped by others. If you fear somebody will use that to spy on you, this probably means you would fear any kind of peer review and, as such, you are concerned yourself about doing a good job. An e-Learning platform will give you tools and guidelines to stop worrying and get out of this unnecessary fear.

Useless for developing countries (where it’s most needed)

Another, more moral, misjudgment, is that e-Learning cannot reach developing countries because it would require infrastructure that is not yet available to these countries (i.e.: reliable power supply and Internet connexions). Well our recent experience in Peru and Uruguay, as well as a series of TED videos about the OLPC project tend to prove the contrary: even the more rudimentary access to learning content and technology will allow students to learn faster and better. This is the whole concept of OLPC in Peru, for example. Following the now 2-years old results of a public exam of the teachers population in Peru, only 4% of new teachers had the required level of reading and mathematics in a population of 18000 new teachers candidates. This is believed to be a representative figure (10%) of the total number of teachers in Peru (about 280,000). If the teachers do not have the level required to teach the kids, what is the solution? Only re-teach the teachers and hope this time it will work better? How much time will that take? Another solution is to provide the students with sufficient learning content and at least provide them with the possibility to learn by themselves. In Peru, the One Laptop Per Child project smartly provides 20,000 texts in Spanish from Wikipedia on every XO laptop. Another TED video, by Sugata Mitra, explains how kids teach themselves when provided with the opportunity to learn (and Educational Technology). There is also a nice video about the results of the OLPC project in Uruguay by the government responsible Miguel Brechner Frey (as well as a series of videos of teachers in Uruguay using our platform).

Complexity of systems

Finally, people in first contact with e-Learning systems (which generally involves passing through the previous barriers, but sometimes is taken as a “true fact” through peers comments, without even putting the effort of trying it by oneself. In any case, Chamilo (the platform we develop) is widely recognized in our user base as being much easier to use than any other e-Learning platform, simply because it is more intuitive and does not require much training to get started. Some have commented that moving from [other platform] to Chamilo was like evolving from water to air, reducing training time for teachers from 40 to just 7h!

It is difficult to explain just how important ease of use is, to the whole e-Learning implementation business. Not only does it drastically reduce cost of implementation, it also accelerates implementations, boosts content creation (teachers feel they can create almost anything easily) and increases students participation (whatever their age).

Conclusion

It has become increasingly clearer to me over the years that, by implementing e-Learning and empowering teachers and learners, the quality, availability, “engageability” and completeness of content will increase drastically. The first implementation is the most complicated of all, because it requires an open mind, but the paradigm shift, from “teaching teacher” to “supporting and inspiring teacher”, can be a very smooth progression to which any teacher can participate and contribute at his pace. Furthermore, the progressive increase in availability of shareable content (see the Khan Academy) will make it easier for teachers around the world to re-use high quality content and to contribute to building missing content for a complete “learnable” resources database.

There are many ways to start implementing an e-Learning system, and all of them can be successful if you have the right partner. Let us know if you need help at info@beeznest.com.

Howto install Chamilo with lighttpd on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Let’s say you want to install Chamilo on your netbook for a demo… Because Apache uses a lot of memory (and so does MySQL), it is generally considered a good practice to try and use something a bit lighter for your web server

This procedure might also work, with a few minor alterations, for OLPC’s XO laptops. The operating system of these little marvels are RedHat based, so you will have to use yum instead of apt, but the rest remains relatively similar.

An important source of information for the first part of this article is Martin Drake’s blog article about how to install and configure lighttpd on Ubuntu 10.04.

So if you want details, go to Martin’s blog. I’m going to head straight to the point and make a résumé of the commands you need to launch…

• sudo aptitude update

• sudo aptitude install lighttpd php5-cgi mysql-server mysql-client php5-gd mercurial php5-mysql

• cd /var/www

• sudo mkdir chamilo

• sudo chmod -r 0777 chamilo

The following command might take a very long time (usually above 10 minutes to download), so maybe you want to use CTRL+SHIFT+T to launch it in a separate terminal.

• hg clone https://classic.chamilo.googlecode.com/hg/ chamilo

• sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload

• lighttpd-enable-mod simple-vhost

• cd /etc/lighttpd/

• sudo vim lighttpd.conf

copy paste this at the end:

$HTTP["host"] != "my.chamilo.mob" {
  server.document-root = "/var/www/"
  server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"
  accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/access.log",
  server.error-handler-404 = "/index.php"
}
$HTTP["host"] == "my.chamilo.mob" {
  server.document-root = "/var/www/chamilo/"
  server.errorlog = "/var/log/lighttpd/my.chamilo.mob.error.log"
  accesslog.filename = "/var/log/lighttpd/my.chamilo.mob.access.log",
  server.error-handler-404 = "/index.php"
}

• sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload

• sudo vim /etc/hosts

copy-paste this:

127.0.0.1 my.chamilo.mob

Load http://my.chamilo.mob in your web browser and follow the normal installation procedure of Chamilo.

That’s it, you’re running Chamilo on lighttpd now! Congrats.

¿Te perdiste el Dokeos Users Days ?

Si no pudiste asistir al primer evento de e-learning en el Perú Dokeos Users Days, pues ya tienes disponible en nuestro canal de youtube Los videos de aquel evento.

Descrubriendo la XO/OLPC

Como lo he mencionado antes, D0keos Latinoamérica acaba de recibir un prestamo de 6 XO para el desarrollo de un proyecto de integración D0keos-OLPC.

Este articulo es el reporte de lo que estoy descubriendo, para que sirva a los demás.

Las XO corren Fedora

[olpc@xo-4B-D2-A3 ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
OLPC release 9 (Joyride)
[olpc@xo-4B-D2-A3 ~]$ uname -a
Linux xo-4B-D2-A3.localdomain 2.6.25-20090223.1.olpc.69098d87d56945c #1 PREEMPT Mon Feb 23 13:37:03 EST 2009 i586 i586 i386 GNU/Linux
[olpc@xo-4B-D2-A3 ~]$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.25-20090223.1.olpc.69098d87d56945c (dilinger@fc6.laptop.org) (gcc version 4.1.2 20070925 (Red Hat 4.1.2-27)) #1 PREEMPT Mon Feb 23 13:37:03 EST 2009

Se puede instalar nuevo software con yum

No conozco muy bien a Fedora, así que pensaba que iba a tener que encontrar mis propios paquetes con rpmfind, pero parece que yum lo hace todo. En el caso de querer instalar a Apache:

yum search httpd

yum install httpd.i386

Parece que esto se conecta a los repositorios de laptop.org, para recojer los paquetes correctos (y sus dependencias) directamente. Indican en el wiki.laptop.org que se puede tambien poner los paquetes necesarios en una llave USB.

Solo 1GB de disco

Bueno, no sabía mucho sobre las XO. Pues aparece que tienen una memoria (tarjeta Flash?) de 1GB, y que la mitad ya está usada por el sistema pre-instalado, dejando menos de 500MB para trabajar.

Configurar idioma

Cambiar el idioma del sistema (que por defecto viene en Inglés) es super sencillo. Dar clic derecho en el símbolo XO, escoger “Configuration panel” y después “Languages”. Ahí, seleccionar (en nuestro caso) Spanish (Peru). Se necesita reiniciar para tomar estos cambios en cuenta.

Conectarse a distancia con SSH

Aquí empiezan las cosas un poco más técnicas, digamos. Aunque el servidor openssh esté pre-instalado, es necesario cambiar la contraseña del usuario “olpc”, que por defecto usa una contraseña no válida “!!”, a algo que usted va a recordar. El hecho de tener una contraseña invalida, en sí, permite deshabilitar la conexión a distancia a través de SSH (osea… es seguro), por lo que darle una contraseña debería ser con una contraseña no fácil de averiguar, porque ahí usted esta dando la posibilidad a cualquier persona de conectarse a su laptop, y desde ahí la persona puede pasar como root y hacer lo que quiere.

[olpc@xo-4B-D2-A3 ~]$ su
bash-3.2# passwd olpc
Cambio de contraseña para el usuario olpc.
Nueva contraseña UNIX :

Bueno, una vez cambiada la contraseña, lo único que tiene que hacer es averiguar la dirección IP de la laptop para conectarse a ella:

bash-3.2# /sbin/ifconfig |grep “inet adr”
inet adr:192.168.1.104  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Masque:255.255.255.0
inet adr:127.0.0.1  Masque:255.0.0.0

En este caso, 192.168.1.104. Entonces, desde otra maquina, puede conectarse con:

$ ssh olpc@192.168.1.104

Nombre único para cada XO

Parece que cada XO tiene un nombre único: cuando uno hace un cat /etc/hosts, aparece un número de tipo xo-4B-D2-A3 o xo-4C-3C-36, que parece ser el nombre único de la máquina.

Problema con los símbolos backticks (`) de MySQL

Parece que hay un problema con el backtick de MySQL en línea de comando, que tiene la mala implicación de no poder crear un usuario específico para Dokeos… (más sobre esto más tarde)

Instalación de Chamilo

La instalación de Dokeos se puede hacer de la manera siguiente (como root o usando sudo)

bash-3.2# yum install httpd.i386 php.i386 mysql.i386 mysql-server.i386 php-mysql.i386 php-mbstring.i386 php-gd.i386

bash-3.2# cd /var/www/html/

bash-3.2# mysql_secure_installation

bash-3.2# wget http://chamilo.googlecode.com/files/chamilo-1.8.8.4.tar.gz

bash-3.2# tar zxf chamilo-1.8.8.4.tar.gz

Considerando que en general la XO se usa en primarias, es muy poco probable que se use más de dos o tres idiomas. En sí, todas los demás idiomas pueden ser eliminadas, borrando la carpeta correspondiente y las entradas de lenguajes en el fichero chamilo-1.8.8.4/main/install/main.sql

bash-3.2# cd main/lang

bash-3.2# rm -rf french_unicode swahili yoruba hebrew ……

bash-3.2# cd ../install

bash-3.2# vi main.sql

(ahí, buscar “swahili” por ejemplo y eliminar todos los idiomas que fueron eliminados por carpeta)

Opcionalmente, para definir un nombre de host (recomendamos aquí usar el nombre del usuario de la máquina), se tiene que definir un VirtualHost en la configuración de Apache, y definir este nombre en el /etc/hosts

bash-3.2# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

bash-3.2# vi /etc/hosts

bash-3.2# /etc/init.d/mysqld start

Por alguna razón, parece que MySQL no puede iniciarse bastante rápido para su propio plazo de inicio (“Timeout error occurred trying to start MySQL Daemon”). El problema viene del script de inicio (/etc/init.d/mysqld) y no directamente de MySQL (aunque el problema que demore mucho en cargar, sí). Para actualizarlo, solo se tiene que editar el fichero

bash-3.2# vi /etc/init.d/mysqld

y mirar para una variable STARTTIMEOUT que tiene un valor de 30, y ponerla a 120. Esto podría ayudar, o no. En mi caso, estoy todavía en este problema, investigando, porque si MySQL no funciona, va a ser muy difícil de integrar Chamilo a una OLPC (tal vez usando SQLite?).

bash-3.2# /etc/init.d/httpd start

Ignorando el problema de creación de un nuevo usuario (no está bien eso pero en ausencia de mejor forma…), se puede dirigir el navegador (o lynx pero se tiene que instalar primero) al http://localhost/chamilo-1.8.8.4/ para instalar Dokeos. Por supuesto, hay mejores formas de hacerlo (más limpias), pero por ahora no es el objetivo. Esto no funciona todavía (conexión denegada). Estaremos actualizando esta documentación dentro de poco.

No determinado

Todavia tengo que encontrar

• como conocer la dirección IP de otro XO cerca (a partir de su nombre en el mapa)
• como instalar un servidor Chamilo como una “actividad” de Sugar, para que “compartir” sea en realidad iniciando una conexión a través del navegador de Sugar al servidor Chamilo del otro lado

OLPC project, Escuelab and Dokeos/Chamilo

Today I went to the Escuelab in the centre of Lima to meet with Alberto, Kike Mayorga and Kiko Contreras.

My visit was apparently taken with great interest and they’ve video-interviewed me for some time to talk about DOKUDA and my projects with Dokeos and the OLPC (now updated to Chamilo and the OLPC). Apparently, the idea to have Dokeos/Chamilo run on one of the XO itself was never thought about, and that seemed to be an announcement of uttermost interest to them that this *could* be done at all. They suggested I try straight away (which I did) but my knowledge of Fedora was a bit limited at this point to know where exactly to download the packages. I did try some rpm -q and yum install commands, but without success (yum install apache seemed to trigger the download of something unrelated, I’ll have to investigate this further). Although this is unrelated, I saw that one could actually run Ubuntu on these (not that I have intentions of trying that shortly).

Apparently the problem that would be solved by the install of Dokeos on one of the XO is that when the government is sending XOs to remote areas, it also sends them with a PC pre-installed with Linux, which is supposed to serve as a server for the XO. However, people in remote areas cannot manage them, so someone around tells them “That thing is useless, just install Windows to be able to use it”, and they do. Of course, this is an illegal copy of Windows in most cases.

This brings two moral problems:

1. Children are curious. When they’ll want to know how the system works, Windows won’t give them the ability to analyse this.
2. Children want to share. How will the teacher deal with the student wanting to share some proprietary software which most certainly costs about one year of his parents’ revenue? Make him a software pirate at the age of 6 without letting him know about it?

Installing Dokeos on one of the XO’s (where Windows *cannot* be installed) ensures the system can remain there and is “transportable” (they can go on a walk and write about what they’re doing into Dokeos directly if the teacher goes with his XO as well). The only problem so far would be the disk space (and possibly the RAM, but Dokeos uses very little RAM per script loading).

Sebastian Silva apparently is also part of the “team” but is currently in Bolivia if I understood well.

One of the plans of the team is to setup a bus trip in remote areas equipped with the laptops in order to update the systems, reinstall the PCs under Linux and explain them how to use them. That sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll be tracking that project.

Escuelab already confirmed they *did* want to come and show their projects during the e-learning event at the end of June (DOKUDA)