Is there a way that I can create classroom exercises (much like a course book), share them with everyone in the class, have the kids do the exercises, and send them back to me so I can review them, and give the kids feedback?
Share with Neighborhood:
Using this feature, everyone is editing the same document, and therefore cannot do their own work.
A mischevious student could erase the entire worksheet, and the teacher would not even know who was responsible. Doesn't work
Send to:
Using this feature, a teacher is able to send a worksheet out, and have students edit independently. When each student is finished, they can SendTo back to the teacher. In a classroom of 30 however, it is impractical to "Send to" 30 different computers, as there is no way to mass send out. Then, the teacher has to "accept" 30 incoming files, which do not even all fit on the frame. Works, but is not easy or practical
Does anyone know of an activity that allows for such "workbook" style teaching? Is there an aspect of sugar we have yet to discover that makes a good solution?
Comment from Sandra @ Small Solutions Big Ideas (http://smallsolutionsbigideas.org)
ReplyDeleteThis is an application used by many US schools also (it is open source - Creative Commons Licensed) called moodle. It is a browser based tool that provides a set of menus and options for teachers to create courses, assignments, questions, upload student work and grade it, send emails to invididual students or a group. File managementis part of it. There is an on-line demo of this software: http://demo.moodle.net/
This application will run on the software called XS or the "School Server". This server could be any laptop modestly powered I believe. The wiki has information on this.
The XO School Server, or XS, is a Fedora Linux-based operating system distribution designed to be deployed alongside XO-1 laptops and wireless access points. While XO-1 laptops may be (and often are) used in school environments without the school server,the school server software provides some features that may be desirable to XO-1 deployments.
Sugar collaboration for over 30 laptops: without access point networking or a school
server, the practical limit for simultaneous collaboration over the mesh is 30 laptops --10 on each wireless channel (1, 6 and 11). Adding a wireless access point (no XS) will also support up to 30 laptops, now all on the same channel. Adding a school server with 2 access points can accommodate up to 100 laptops. This increased capacity is due to the school server's "ejabberd" service, which acts as a central hub for delivering information between laptops.
XO automatic backup: the XS can automatically back up the Journals of the XO-1s registered to it and provides a web interface for restoring individual documents from journal backups.
Caching: Using XS' "Squid" service for web caching, sites which have been cached will be transferred directly from XS to XO, increasing access speed and reducing the amount of data downloaded from the Internet. This is especially important for sites with satellite connections and metered bandwidth.
Access to content: the XS can be used as a repository for content (e.g., PDFs,Wikipedia snapshots, videos) too large to include on each XO-1's 1GB flash storage. Withtheir laptop registered and connected to the school server, a child can access the local
schoolserver homepage easily from the Browse activity.
With some preparation, dynamic web services (e.g., Moodle, Mediawiki, blogging software) can also be offered via the XS. An important consideration is the learning curve of the software and how students, teachers and technical supporters will be expected to interact with this system
Quick Facts on the XS
The XS software provides:
reliable collaboration over 30 laptops, web caching, extra content on the server-side, XO backups
More information about the XS
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server - School server page on the OLPC wiki
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Recommended_Hardware - Hardware recommendations for
school servers
http://docs.moodle.org/en/OLPC_XS_installation - Instructions for installing Moodle on
the XS