Cambridge Friends School/Meetings/2009-03-14

Highlights

What happened this week

Please add any notes you have about the CFS pilot from this week here, including relevant links when possible.

• Wednesday, March 11, 2009 - the Olin repair center received fresh parts stock to prepare for (among other things) the possibility of a first wave of CFS repair requests.
• Friday, March 13, 2009 - Colin ran the first Gurufest at Olin College with Mel as the guest; a productive work sprint session ensued (largely non-CFS-specific work, with the exception of testing and configuration on the XS that will be deployed at CFS).

What's happening next week

Monday, March 16, 2009 - Katelyn, MacKenzie, Mel, and Jeff will be at CFS reflashing the XOs with the final build and Activities the students will be using when they first receive their laptops on Wednesday. We may not be able to utilize more volunteers for this setup (after a point, it becomes less efficient to have more people), but will edit this page if that situation changes.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - Apparently not deployment day. However, Elsa, Rick, and Mel did some work at the MIT Stata Center...

• Instructions and files for replicating the CFS XO build setup are up at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cambridge_Friends_School/Tech#Testing - thanks to Yifan for the original writeup and the IMSA students for making the customization stick! You can now try out the exact Activity selection that the 6th graders will be using in class.
• Setting up and sending usage instructions for a project management tool (well, the instructions are coming, anyway).
• new deployment volunteer orientation, round N (Rick to write this up and send to the list so we can replicate SOP more easily next time)
  • customization key howto
  • Rick wisely pointed out that since we're structured for an 100% part time volunteer deployment effort, we should figure on spending 25%-50% of our 'work' time in training - and that's ok, even good!
• Mel is coming down with RSI, so Elsa graciously offered to do follow up on...
  • Monthly teacher meetings from the Cosi's meetup
  • New uni groups and how to work with each other
  • Questions for the CFS loop team (like "when is deployment?")
  • Updating the teams on Boston pilots and getting contact info on each

Upcoming dates

Friday, March 27, 2009 - Elsa is coordinating an "intro to sugar-core hacking" session for people who want to get a development environment set up and get their feet wet in sugar-core development by fixing a bug. Basic python programming knowledge necessary, some pre-session homework. More details coming, help welcomed, especially from experienced Sugar developers. (Mchua is guessing this will be held on Olin's campus in Needham MA.)

Support teams status

If you're part of a group doing CFS-deployment-relevant activities, please create a section and post what you're up to!

XS

• CFS's server is ready to deploy - the XS team just needs a date to come and do it. See #Questions.
• Ejabberd (which, among other things, lets non-XO laptops running Sugar collaborate with XOs on Activities) is working thanks to the efforts of Xy and Yifan, but has not yet been tested to our satisfaction.
• Moodle (a course materials management system) is working thanks to the efforts of Xy and Yifan, and has been thoroughly tested by Jeff and Monje.

Curriculum

• Sandra and her team are ready to go, but needs a first visit date and teacher contact information; see #Questions.

Repairs

• Xy and his team have just received fresh parts stock and are ready to handle any type of XO repair that might come up.
• We need to figure out how broken laptops will be delivered to Olin for repair and then back to CFS.
• Xy and Jeff would like to train interested CFS middle school students on how to update software and repair their own laptops so that CFS has its own first line of defense against broken XOs.

Development

• Members of the Development support team have had several rounds of experience designing, developing, and deploying custom-made Activities, and are ready to take requests.

Questions for the loop team

Add questions that you have about the deployment here!

• NEW - from Mchua 06:58, 17 March 2009 (UTC) When is deployment day, and what are the prerequisites for it to happen?
• What's happening on deployment day?
  • Have the teachers agreed with - and helped to design - the "kids get laptops" event?
  • Have the parents been informed?
  • How will the students be told about the laptops and the responsibilities they will have by being part of this deployment?
  • Are volunteers welcome to come observe and/or help out? This is the moment we've been waiting and working towards, too!
• What are good dates/times for the XS team to come set up the server at CFS?
• What are good dates/times for the XS team to come and work with teachers on how they can use the server (if they choose to)?
• When is a good weekly day/time (or days/times) that the Curriculum team can come to serve as in-classroom technology specialists?
• What are the deployment's upcoming needs (particularly during next week when you'll be away)?

Help needed

Posts things you need help with - make sure to leave your contact info. To take a task, email olpc_boston@lists.laptop.org with which thing you're interested in helping out with.

• XS team needs networking details about the current CFS setup - what kind of system is the XS going to be placed behind? Need someone networking-savvy to meet with the CFS IT person and ask questions on our behalf. Contact Xy.
• Development team's sugar-core development sprint project needs experienced sugar-core hackers to (asynchronously, remotely) identify good easy first tickets for newbies before the 27th, and to be on IRC or at the event during the sprint time. See #Upcoming dates, contact Elsa.