: Thoughts on KDE-Educationals in general

[Sabine Emmy Eller]

Yesterday my kids came home and for the first time they got a list of vocabulary to leran by monday. Needles to say that they will do this with Parley :-)

But like they do it, the whole class needs to do it. At school the kids use Win XP (sic) - at home for now mine use edubuntu. We have to consider that many eachers will not be able to easily install things.

I am asking myself about the following: is there some kind KDE-Educationals live CD or DVD? There are very slim linux versions that can also be run from a stick. Passing an updated CD/DVD each X months is not really difficult.

My question is: how difficult would it be to create a basic system that just runs for example the KDE-Educational applications including the possibility to "read books" (there is no public library here, so if we can get them also books to read ...) where the system remains the same for a long time and we only add contents. So new releases do not necessarily involve re-creating the system over and over again - this could be done maybe once a year or whenever who does it finds it comfortable.

Or is there already something like this existing?

Next point: Localization of UIs
I am not very familiar with KDE localization for now. Through the website I cannot understand in how many languages the applications are already available and how we can translate them into other languages (for example Udmurt). Is there a special team that cares about educationals? Or just the localisation mailing list?

Does the website edu.kde.org exist in other languages?

Sorry for all these questions - I need to get a complete overview (by now I don't even know all the options I have with only Parley ;-) ... RTFM is not really what I like to do ... it creates some kind of hick-up with me. But seriously: we have been hassling around with various applications here and there, trying various ways. I found Parley and KDE-Educationals by chance and immediately the feeling "this is it" came up.

Well I have plenty more things to ask and find out, but let's start here :-)

Cheers, Sabine

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[Sabine Emmy Eller-2]

Sorry used the wrong e-mail address to send out ...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sabine Emmy Eller
Date: Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 10:45 AM
Subject: Thoughts on KDE-Educationals in general
To: kde-edu <kde-edu@...>


Yesterday my kids came home and for the first time they got a list of vocabulary to leran by monday. Needles to say that they will do this with Parley :-)

But like they do it, the whole class needs to do it. At school the kids use Win XP (sic) - at home for now mine use edubuntu. We have to consider that many eachers will not be able to easily install things.

I am asking myself about the following: is there some kind KDE-Educationals live CD or DVD? There are very slim linux versions that can also be run from a stick. Passing an updated CD/DVD each X months is not really difficult.

My question is: how difficult would it be to create a basic system that just runs for example the KDE-Educational applications including the possibility to "read books" (there is no public library here, so if we can get them also books to read ...) where the system remains the same for a long time and we only add contents. So new releases do not necessarily involve re-creating the system over and over again - this could be done maybe once a year or whenever who does it finds it comfortable.

Or is there already something like this existing?

Next point: Localization of UIs
I am not very familiar with KDE localization for now. Through the website I cannot understand in how many languages the applications are already available and how we can translate them into other languages (for example Udmurt). Is there a special team that cares about educationals? Or just the localisation mailing list?

Does the website edu.kde.org exist in other languages?

Sorry for all these questions - I need to get a complete overview (by now I don't even know all the options I have with only Parley ;-) ... RTFM is not really what I like to do ... it creates some kind of hick-up with me. But seriously: we have been hassling around with various applications here and there, trying various ways. I found Parley and KDE-Educationals by chance and immediately the feeling "this is it" came up.

Well I have plenty more things to ask and find out, but let's start here :-)

Cheers, Sabine

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It wouldn't be hard to create such a distro/CD with Suse Studio. Just
needs someone to do it and promote it.


Cheers
Lydia

--
Lydia Pintscher
Amarok community manager
kde.org - amarok.kde.org - kubuntu.org
claimid.com/nightrose
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Am Samstag 03 Oktober 2009 10:45:00 schrieb Sabine Emmy Eller:

> Yesterday my kids came home and for the first time they got a list of
> vocabulary to leran by monday. Needles to say that they will do this with
> Parley :-)
>
> But like they do it, the whole class needs to do it. At school the kids use
> Win XP (sic) - at home for now mine use edubuntu. We have to consider that
> many eachers will not be able to easily install things.
>
> I am asking myself about the following: is there some kind KDE-Educationals
> live CD or DVD? There are very slim linux versions that can also be run
>  from a stick. Passing an updated CD/DVD each X months is not really
>  difficult.
>
> My question is: how difficult would it be to create a basic system that
>  just runs for example the KDE-Educational applications including the
>  possibility to "read books" (there is no public library here, so if we can
>  get them also books to read ...) where the system remains the same for a
>  long time and we only add contents. So new releases do not necessarily
>  involve re-creating the system over and over again - this could be done
>  maybe once a year or whenever who does it finds it comfortable.
>
> Or is there already something like this existing?
>

Afaik no, Edubuntu comes to my mind, but that's a Addon-CD for [K]ubuntu, not
a Live CD.

> Next point: Localization of UIs
> I am not very familiar with KDE localization for now. Through the website I
> cannot understand in how many languages the applications are already
> available and how we can translate them into other languages (for example
> Udmurt). Is there a special team that cares about educationals? Or just the
> localisation mailing list?
>
Translation stats for kdeedu you find here:
http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable-kde4/package/kdeedu/

KDE releases are usually shipped with around 50-60 language translations, but
not all of them have a fully translated kdeedu modul.

There is no Udmurt translation team, neither in KDE/Gnome or elsewere.
If anybody wants to translate kdeedu applications, please do it inside the kde
translation teams. Avoid separate/independent translations as done in
Launchpad/Rosetta, that is a complete desaster and has often destroyed the
existion translation for kdeedu application like e.g. KTurtle.

We have no special translation team for kdeedu, only some translators / team
coordinators (like me) interested in edu on this list. And of course the I18n
coordinator Albert Astals Cid (KGeography maintainer) is subscribed here.

> Does the website edu.kde.org exist in other languages?
>
> Sorry for all these questions - I need to get a complete overview (by now I
> don't even know all the options I have with only Parley ;-) ... RTFM is not
> really what I like to do ... it creates some kind of hick-up with me. But
> seriously: we have been hassling around with various applications here and
> there, trying various ways. I found Parley and KDE-Educationals by chance
> and immediately the feeling "this is it" came up.
>
> Well I have plenty more things to ask and find out, but let's start here
>  :-)
>
> Cheers, Sabine
>

--
Burkhard Lück
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On Saturday 03 October 2009 10:14:13 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> It wouldn't be hard to create such a distro/CD with Suse Studio. Just
> needs someone to do it and promote it.
>
>
> Cheers
> Lydia
>

Hmmm.  A whole distro and reboot seems a case of overkill for one or two apps,
and I think there are already projects like Edubuntu aimed that that sort of
thing.  I know the KDE on Windows project is still beta-quality but that seems
a slightly better way to go, but it is a lot to install and there are initial
trust issues to get over.  I wonder if there's some way to run KDE Windows
from a USB stick like Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com/)?  That would
seem an ideal solution to me.

John.
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For sure you can run KDE windows from a stick. The only problem is that the installation has to be in PATH. So you will need to run something like a bat that adds the installation to PATH first.



Casper

------Original Message------

From: John Layt

To: kde-edu@...

ReplyTo: kde-edu@...

ReplyTo: John Layt

Subject: Re: [kde-edu]: Thoughts on KDE-Educationals in general

Sent: Oct 3, 2009 14:34



On Saturday 03 October 2009 10:14:13 Lydia Pintscher wrote:

> It wouldn't be hard to create such a distro/CD with Suse Studio. Just

> needs someone to do it and promote it.

>

>

> Cheers

> Lydia

>



Hmmm.  A whole distro and reboot seems a case of overkill for one or two apps,

and I think there are already projects like Edubuntu aimed that that sort of

thing.  I know the KDE on Windows project is still beta-quality but that seems

a slightly better way to go, but it is a lot to install and there are initial

trust issues to get over.  I wonder if there's some way to run KDE Windows

from a USB stick like Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com/)?  That would

seem an ideal solution to me.



John.

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https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-edu



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[Sabine Emmy Eller]

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 2:34 PM, John Layt <john@...> wrote:

On Saturday 03 October 2009 10:14:13 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> It wouldn't be hard to create such a distro/CD with Suse Studio. Just
> needs someone to do it and promote it.
>
>
> Cheers
> Lydia
>

Hmmm.  A whole distro and reboot seems a case of overkill for one or two apps,
and I think there are already projects like Edubuntu aimed that that sort of
thing.  I know the KDE on Windows project is still beta-quality but that seems
a slightly better way to go, but it is a lot to install and there are initial
trust issues to get over.  I wonder if there's some way to run KDE Windows
from a USB stick like Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com/)?  That would
seem an ideal solution to me.

John.

_______________________________________________

Hi, I am just reading and I had something like portable apps on my mind, but: you won't find easily a school or kid that uses a USB stick here. It will be VERY hard to get teachers install something besides the preinstalled Word and Paint etc. of Windows XP home on the school computers. Therefore having a life CD/DVD where nothing is being installed and where they do not need to provide USB-Sticks or whatever seems to be the best way to start off with.

People here where I live are more likely to copy a CD/DVD than sharing information on a stick.

My kids have Edubuntu 9.04 installed and talk "Linux" to friends and teachers - well ... they are the only ones in the whole village and probably I also can include the two nearby villages, so we count around 15.000 inhabitants, to use Edubuntu. There are some teens and twens using Linux (mainly Ubuntu) but these are really rare to find.

I believe that once people are accustomed to the software and like it then we probably have all doors open and can go the "please download and install" way, but before that: it will be really difficult. And now consider that I live in an EU country. Most of the people we will have to deal with live outside EU. And most of these will access educational contents via very old computers having really bad or actually no Internet connectivity and very often we will find that the mobile phone actually is "their medium".

If we talk about the North of Europe and the bigger cities things are differet, but these are the minority of the global market - the majority is, considering education and contents, in a much worse situation.

Suse Studio could be worth a try.

Cheers, Sabine

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[Ben Crawford]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

>From: Sabine Emmy Eller <s.eller@...>

>To: kde-edu@...
>Sent: Sunday, October 4, 2009 1:51:43 AM
>Subject: Re: [kde-edu]: Thoughts on KDE-Educationals in general
>
>
>
>On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 2:34 PM, John Layt <john@...> wrote:
>
>    On Saturday 03 October 2009 10:14:13 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
>    > It wouldn't be hard to create such a distro/CD with Suse Studio. Just
>    > needs someone to do it and promote it.
>    >
>    >
>    > Cheers
>    > Lydia
>    >
>
>    Hmmm.  A whole distro and reboot seems a case of overkill for one or two apps,
>    and I think there are already projects like Edubuntu aimed that that sort of
>    thing.  I know the KDE on Windows project is still beta-quality but that seems
>    a slightly better way to go, but it is a lot to install and there are initial
>    trust issues to get over.  I wonder if there's some way to run KDE Windows

>    from a USB stick like Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com/)?  That would

>    seem an ideal solution to me.
>
>    John.
>    _______________________________________________
>
>
>Hi, I am just reading and I had something like portable apps on my mind, but: you won't find easily a school or kid that uses a USB stick here. It will be VERY hard to get teachers install something besides the preinstalled Word and Paint etc. of Windows XP home on the school computers. Therefore having a life CD/DVD where nothing is being installed and where they do not need to provide USB-Sticks or whatever seems to be the best way to start off with.
>
>People here where I live are more likely to copy a CD/DVD than sharing information on a stick.
>
>My kids have Edubuntu 9.04 installed and talk "Linux" to friends and teachers - well ... they are the only ones in the whole village and probably I also can include the two nearby villages, so we count around 15.000 inhabitants, to use Edubuntu. There are some teens and twens using Linux (mainly Ubuntu) but these are really rare to find.
>
>I believe that once people are accustomed to the software and like it then we probably have all doors open and can go the "please download and install" way, but before that: it will be really difficult. And now consider that I live in an EU country. Most of the people we will have to deal with live outside EU. And most of these will access educational contents via very old computers having really bad or actually no Internet connectivity and very often we will find that the mobile phone actually is "their medium".
>
>If we talk about the North of Europe and the bigger cities things are differet, but these are the minority of the global market - the majority is, considering education and contents, in a much worse situation.
>
>Suse Studio could be worth a try.
>
>Cheers, Sabine

As a secondary teacher and an avid IT user/tester I have a few thoughts on this.

Using suse studio to create a different distro:
While this sounds great and could be successful, I would worry about support if people were to encounter difficulties.  Imagine if you will a new user trying this distro out and it not working right away.  Where would they go for assistance?  Most likely their searches are going to lead to places where they find themselves unsure about things.  In my opinion it would be a better use of our efforts to offer our support to existing distributions and encourage kde-edu that way.

Having said that, I realize that edubuntu is no longer packaged as a single iso, but rather as an addon to ubuntu making it much harder to test out using a live CD/DVD (or even live usb stick).  Perhaps our efforts here could be best utilized in supporting a few distributions and making a live version with the kde-edu packages included available using rBulder (or a similar tool).

KDE on Windows:
I have tested this numerous times and this project has come along way and I would like to see it continue to develop.  However, I have been reluctant to inform them of some of the fantastic programs available in kde-edu because it is more than they can handle.  It isn't easy for them to get up and running even with KDE on Windows.  If we were to bundle individual kde-edu programs as standalone executables on Windows I think we could/would have better results and could grow the user base.  If you are skeptical about this I would suggest you look at a great program that does this fairly well, the GIMP.  I have many colleagues who do use this because of the ease with which they can install and run it.

Virtualization:
Having only recently suggested this to colleagues I am finding that they are able to adapt quickly using this strategy.  Running VirtualBox they are able to run all the kde-edu programs they want and about the only extra concepts they need to remember is to use the host key for various functions and that stuff inside the virtual machine is generally not accessible outside the virtual machine.


I would like to add my sincere appreciation and gratitude to all of those who continue to work on kde-edu and open source.  As a teacher I have had many occasions in which these programs have assisted a great deal in my teaching.  Keep up the excellent work!

Ben

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[Sabine Emmy Eller]

Hi, I also wanted to answer to this mail in particular:

> I am not very familiar with KDE localization for now. Through the website I
> cannot understand in how many languages the applications are already
> available and how we can translate them into other languages (for example
> Udmurt). Is there a special team that cares about educationals? Or just the
> localisation mailing list?
>

Translation stats for kdeedu you find here:
http://l10n.kde.org/stats/gui/stable-kde4/package/kdeedu/

KDE releases are usually shipped with around 50-60 language translations, but
not all of them have a fully translated kdeedu modul.

There is no Udmurt translation team, neither in KDE/Gnome or elsewere.
If anybody wants to translate kdeedu applications, please do it inside the kde
translation teams. Avoid separate/independent translations as done in
Launchpad/Rosetta, that is a complete desaster and has often destroyed the
existion translation for kdeedu application like e.g. KTurtle.

We have no special translation team for kdeedu, only some translators / team
coordinators (like me) interested in edu on this list. And of course the I18n
coordinator Albert Astals Cid (KGeography maintainer) is subscribed here.

Well it is very clear that each application should have only ONE place where its translation is maintained. The problem with languages like Udmurt, Neapolitan, many African languages is that there are only very few people who could work on a UI. It would be anyway a fulltime job and those who do the job should be paid in order to be able to do only that. The problem here is sponsors :-) If you do this only with volunteer contributions it takes ages to get a language on the way. Well, sponsors are needed (one of the reasons why I added the possibility to get donations - hopefully something comes in that can be used for such jobs - for some African languages only very few is actually needed -  but ... it will always be just a drop).

What probably makes most sense to start off with is getting single applications in local language where the localization effort is not too much. For Udmurt for example the general UI, until a community grows around the language, could remain in Russian, while certain single applications could get their UI in the local language.

Btw. I am in contact with Martin Benjamin of the Anloc project http://www.africanlocalisation.net/ - they are creating the basic locales for approx. 200 languages right now, of course not all of them took off, but I see that way of doing things as a good starting point: those locales will be available in xml format so that they can be transformed into TMX and therefore used in CAT-Tools like Virtaal to do .po file translations. 

Anloc will also be used to create starting points for Parley for many African languages :-)

I am subscribed to the localization mailing list, but I have that 24 hours/day problem ... if I only could extend to at least 48 (actually 72 would be better). So I need to concentrate on some few things until we find people who maybe take over the contents creation lead for specific languages.

Well all for now - I could go on writing for quite some time, but it would not help much :-)

Have a great Sunday!

Sabine

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[Sabine Emmy Eller]

Using suse studio to create a different distro:
While this sounds great and could be successful, I would worry about support if people were to encounter difficulties.  Imagine if you will a new user trying this distro out and it not working right away.  Where would they go for assistance?  Most likely their searches are going to lead to places where they find themselves unsure about things.  In my opinion it would be a better use of our efforts to offer our support to existing distributions and encourage kde-edu that way.

Support can be done only on a very local level: this is why I said doing it here for the school of my kids and for neighbours would not be a problem.

If there are existing distributions (which is much more interesting, because it means I could concentrate on contents alone): I will be happy to use them. But: how do we get the data in? Having to give additional CDs to pass along the data ... hmmm ... but it could be a way ... it is more likely to have people copy a data file to their computer than to install an application. So if we run from a DVD which can access the local hd, then things are already somewhat better, in particular if we distribute not only .kvtml files, but eventually also e-books on that data cd/dvd which IMHO is much easier to maintain as well.

 

Having said that, I realize that edubuntu is no longer packaged as a single iso, but rather as an addon to ubuntu making it much harder to test out using a live CD/DVD (or even live usb stick).  Perhaps our efforts here could be best utilized in supporting a few distributions and making a live version with the kde-edu packages included available using rBulder (or a similar tool).

See above.
 

KDE on Windows:
I have tested this numerous times and this project has come along way and I would like to see it continue to develop.  However, I have been reluctant to inform them of some of the fantastic programs available in kde-edu because it is more than they can handle.  It isn't easy for them to get up and running even with KDE on Windows.  If we were to bundle individual kde-edu programs as standalone executables on Windows I think we could/would have better results and could grow the user base.  If you are skeptical about this I would suggest you look at a great program that does this fairly well, the GIMP.  I have many colleagues who do use this because of the ease with which they can install and run it.

KDE on Windows runs fine, but even a quite experienced user, a colleague of mine in VH who still is on Windows had some questions on what to choose etc. So it is not a software problem, but eventually a documentation? (It could well be that I simply did not see the documentation ... as I said I am on Ubuntu and we resolved via IRC).

Yes, having applications work like the GIMP would be great. Though I don't have a clue on what this can mean in terms of organisation and programming.
 

As for the rest of the mail: this is far from the reality here and therefore not applicable.

Cheers, Sabine

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Moin,
On Saturday 03 October 2009 10:45:00 Sabine Emmy Eller wrote:
> I am asking myself about the following: is there some kind KDE-Educationals
> live CD or DVD? There are very slim linux versions that can also be run
>  from a stick. Passing an updated CD/DVD each X months is not really
>  difficult.
>
> Or is there already something like this existing?
>
Have you heard about the opensuse-education project?
http://www.opensuse-education.org/

They provide a repository for the openSUSE distribution and also a live-
CD/DVD. They even provide images for VMware/VirtualBox.

This project also provides support for the distribution (Bug-Tracker at
novells bugzilla, mailing-list, irc-channel)

You can also find information in the official opensuse wiki here:
http://en.opensuse.org/Education

and in German:
http://de.opensuse.org/Bildungswesen

These pages also provide some links to other projects, that do related things.

bye then
julian


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[Anne-Marie Mahfouf-2]

On Sunday 04 October 2009 18:12:37 Julian Baeume wrote:

> Moin,
>
> On Saturday 03 October 2009 10:45:00 Sabine Emmy Eller wrote:
> > I am asking myself about the following: is there some kind
> > KDE-Educationals live CD or DVD? There are very slim linux versions that
> > can also be run from a stick. Passing an updated CD/DVD each X months is
> > not really difficult.
> >
> > Or is there already something like this existing?
>
> Have you heard about the opensuse-education project?
> http://www.opensuse-education.org/
>
> They provide a repository for the openSUSE distribution and also a live-
> CD/DVD. They even provide images for VMware/VirtualBox.

where are these CD and DVD isos?

Anne-Marie


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Am Sonntag 04 Oktober 2009 19:09:09 schrieb Anne-Marie Mahfouf:

> On Sunday 04 October 2009 18:12:37 Julian Baeume wrote:
> > Moin,
> >
> > On Saturday 03 October 2009 10:45:00 Sabine Emmy Eller wrote:
> > > I am asking myself about the following: is there some kind
> > > KDE-Educationals live CD or DVD? There are very slim linux versions
> > > that can also be run from a stick. Passing an updated CD/DVD each X
> > > months is not really difficult.
> > >
> > > Or is there already something like this existing?
> >
> > Have you heard about the opensuse-education project?
> > http://www.opensuse-education.org/
> >
> > They provide a repository for the openSUSE distribution and also a live-
> > CD/DVD. They even provide images for VMware/VirtualBox.
>
> where are these CD and DVD isos?
>

http://www.opensuse-education.org/download/ISOs/

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[Sabine Emmy Eller]

> > >

> > > Or is there already something like this existing?
> >
> > Have you heard about the opensuse-education project?
> > http://www.opensuse-education.org/
> >
> > They provide a repository for the openSUSE distribution and also a live-
> > CD/DVD. They even provide images for VMware/VirtualBox.
>
> where are these CD and DVD isos?
>

http://www.opensuse-education.org/download/ISOs/

--

Yes, I am downloading this as well. I just was in the OpenSUSE-Education chat, talking with Julian. And it looks like this is really a good way to go.

I can test the live CD on 3 different computers at home and see also what happens at school (will hand it over to the computer science teacher of my kids and maybe try it out together with her).

If that works smoothly I really see good chances in going ahead this way.

Cheers, Sabine

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