IIAB: Difference between revisions

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= Our Ecosystem =
= Our Ecosystem =


School Servers come in many forms, from tiny offline digital libraries to giant LMS (learning management systems). Here are some of the better known, for developing world communities:
School Servers come in many forms, from tiny offline digital libraries to giant LMS (learning management systems). Here are some of the better known approaches, for developing world communities:


* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server
* http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server

Revision as of 14:24, 28 February 2016

This IIAB XSCE content does not reflect the opinion of OLPC. These pages were created by members of a volunteer community supporting OLPC and deployments.

Download and Install XSCE
Green and white machine.jpg
OLPC XO-1.5, XO-1.75 or XO-4
Online Install
Intel NUC, x86 PC or Laptop
Rapid Offline Install (6.0 RC1) Online Install
Rpi-logo.jpg
Raspberry Pi
Offline image copy to SD card Online Install

Welcome to the School Server Community Edition (XSCE, or http://schoolserver.org), a global project where volunteer professionals are taking the One Laptop per Child movement into a new decade, enabling quality learning among the world's poorest children.

Please see our summary brochure. Likewise Internet-in-a-Box is our close partner in making content as rich as possible, for all, in more than 10 countries as of 2015. Commercial support for our free software is available for those who need it, through freelance consultants as necessary.

Most important: contributors of all kind are invited to contribute your talents to kids and schools worldwide, in any way you find meaningful!

Our FAQ

Global community volunteers keep our Frequently Asked Questions (and answers!) fresh thanks to organic input from folks just like yourself, always welcome!

Our Product

XSCE provides rich content and reliable communication to schools, libraries and classrooms. In everyday usage, a well-designed school server brings laptop and device collaboration to life, to bring kids the very best learning opportunities imaginable:

  • Content – make the best educational media available to your kids and teachers.
  • Classroom connectivity - install quickly like a home WiFi, or extend it across your school.
  • Internet gateway – control Internet costs with laptop/device policies you choose.
  • Maintenance – reinforce laptop/device auto-updates, so teachers can focus on teaching.

Get started by downloading and installing the latest, using February 2016's fresh Install Doc:

Quick Install of XSCE 6.0 will be possible starting late February 2016, following our Toronto Summit, including many new features for educators and administrators. For example Elgg for students and ownCloud for teachers are two capabilities tested in Malaysia in March 2015. Downloadable images are increasingly available (even on CentOS 7 now!) but drop us a line if you need assistance!

XSCE 5.1 was released July 27, 2014. Read the full announcement and release notes to learn about its capabilities. The list is impressive: Samba filesharing, XOVis visualization of student work patterns, vnStat traffic-monitoring console, better Internet-in-a-Box searchability, customizable web-filtering requested by many schools, OpenVPN remote access, and a new module for automated field-testing.

Earlier, XSCE 5.0 was released Jan 22, 2014 introducing ansible progress for developers especially (announcement). XSCE 5.0 RC 1 was released Dec 17, 2013, formerly known as 0.5 RC 1, and XSCE 0.4 on Oct 3, 2013.

Our Project

XSCE is a community-based project developed and supported by volunteers from around the world.

Our heartbeat is a weekly call Thursdays 10AM NYC Time, and a 24hr live chat channel described further below. See the Agenda/Minutes for a history of past topics or to add a topic for a future week. Please email Adam Holt (holt @ laptop.org) to coordinate adding you to the call.

Several times per year we try to meet face-to-face, for as much as a week of design and hacking. During these sprints (so far all hosted in the northern hemisphere) we work like crazy to get features complete, so they're ready for feature freeze, happening just after the hack sprint. All are welcome, of course if you are the sort that likes to stand on a soapbox and preach, we may ask you to take a turn in the kitchen ;)

We welcome open community tools of diverse kinds, supporting contributors of all kind. Join our IRC live chat directly on the web by entering channel #schoolserver. Or, any IRC chat software can be connected to irc.freenode.net to join this same channel.

Our primary mailing lists are server-devel@lists.laptop.org for software architects and unleashkids@googlegroups.com for educators and implementers. New contributors of all kind are strongly encouraged to ask questions! Affiliated digital library projects include http://internet-in-a-box.org and Pathagar. We try not to lose sight of the world's poorest schools which (1) lack broadband (2) are unable to afford pay-per-view ebooks (3) are wary of advertising/manipulation of our youngest citizens.

Education is inherently political: how can we each invest our lives nurturing the most meaningful learning communities in the face of self-interested governments/corporations/unions/religions, each trying to help, but also dominate? As such please consider our 70-person "xsce-devel" Google Group, where all contributors are invited to join in non-published discussion: to join please just send a short note about your school/server/experience/ambitions to holt @ laptop.org. Implementation conversations on civic learning realities are sorely needed at every level, but reality check: OLPC's long history makes clear that humanitarian policymaking is not always best served by "e-male" posturing traditions on open source mailing lists. In short, educators are far too busy for another flame war. As such we seek a more friendly balance, by including more educators' and female voices, thanks to an invigorating & organic interplay between public and private community spaces!

Finally, our bug tracker has moved from https://sugardextrose.org/projects/xsce to https://github.com/XSCE/xsce. Likewise our technical and user documentation, while crucially evolving at an early stage, can and should be critiqued and refined by all!

Our Ecosystem

School Servers come in many forms, from tiny offline digital libraries to giant LMS (learning management systems). Here are some of the better known approaches, for developing world communities:

Our Community

Our community is made up of people just like you. If you are interested in the project please reach out to any of our members to learn more about us.

Our History & Inspiration

How did XSCE's design evolve? Progress only makes sense when we learn from the past...

NEW: SEE WEEKLY UPDATES!

Jul 2014 Agenda

XSCE 5.1 was released July 27th 2014, with announcement and release notes here!

Jun 2014 Agenda

XSCE 5.1 release imminent. For Intel NUC at minimum, and hopefully many other platforms tested soon too...

Jun 2014 Agenda

George Hunt begins active Fedora 20 development on low-end Intel NUCs like the Celeron 2.4GHz dual-core, evaluating this WiFi-enabled all-inclusive unit's toughness for deployment across many Haiti schools later this summer.

May 2014 Agenda

Progress accelerating on XSCE 5.1 thanks to Tim & George. Implementation in Haiti, Ghana, Nepal, India anticipated late summer. June's weekly progress summaries will be posted in our weekly minutes.

Apr 2014 Agenda

Learning about Martin Dluhos' visualizations of kids' usage patterns in Nepal. Transition to new download site http://download.unleashkids.org. New page added for Volunteer Microtasks.

Mch 2014 Agenda

User acceptance testing accelerates in Haiti & Malaysia, gathering requirements from OLE Nepal for XSCE 5.1, 5.5 or 6.0. Hardware/power planning matures, around Cubox and competitors.

Feb 2014 Agenda

Planning gets serious for XSCE 5.1 and XSCE 6.0 around our late Feb meetup in Los Angeles, alongside a greatly improved version of Internet-in-a-Box. Current and Planned Features nicely detailed in separate tables on the /Features page.

Jan 2014 Agenda

Internet-in-a-Box incl full-text-search refinement with XSCE 5.0; implementation intensifies in Haiti; XSCE 5.1or 6.0 brainstorming/groundwork.

Dec 2013 Agenda

XSCE 5.0 release approaching, alongside Internet-in-a-Box with fulltext search of Wikipedia! Prep intensifying for Haiti deployments (Jan 2014) and Nepal hopefully sometime early in 2014.

Nov 2013 Agenda

v5.0 culmination -> 5.1 or 6.0 definition hack sprint, Nov 18-20 in Malacca, Malaysia, in conjunction with OLPC Basecamp 2013 (Nov 16-18) whose enlivening blog lays clear our humanitarian commitment.

Oct 2013 Agenda

XSCE 0.4 released October 3, 2013. v5.0 "crystallization" hack sprint Oct 21-23 in San Francisco (formerly known as 0.5) following SF's Summit (Oct 18-20), in conjunction with Internet Archive's Books in Browsers Summit Oct 24-25

Sep 2013 Agenda

v0.4 release final testing. Haiti implementation of XSCE 0.4 at two schools, for the new school year.

Aug 2013 Agenda

XSCE 0.4 RC1 released August 24. Prep for final release! Haiti implementation late Aug and early Sept. Utilite and/or TrimSlice custom hardware early prototype shipping to beta experimenters.

Jul 2013 Agenda

v0.4 Sprint July 8-12, 1hr north of Winnipeg. v0.4 spec gaining precision, bringing stability & configurability to most XOs, x86, 64-bit Fedora, RPi? Pathagar bookserver & Internet-in-a-Box integration also expected.

Jun 2013 Agenda

Version 0.3 released! Prep July sprint! Volunteers can buy XO-4 Touch Laptops if they will help test XSCE & http://internet-in-a-box.org etc.

May 2013 Agenda

Very successful Toronto-area Sprint May 8-13,with Braddock Gaskill all the way from LA! 0.3 RC1 unleashed May 14; RC2 May 28? India prototype installed.

Apr 2013 Agenda

Prep v0.3 May sprint. Los Angeles interfacing with Caryl Bigenho's http://localfi.org and Braddock Gaskill's http://internet-in-a-box.org.

Mch 2013 Agenda

Boston meetup Mch 1-4 with Sameer Verma, Anish Mangal. Early pre-field test connects an orphanage from Haiti.

Feb 2013 Agenda

Toronto/Waterloo area Sprint Feb 6/7 to 10/11.

Release of XSCE 0.1 Stable and 0.2 Coming.

Jan 2013 Agenda

Proposed Core Spec and Priority Tuning.

Dec 2012 Agenda

Jamaica implementation sprint (delayed).

Nov 2012 Agenda

Centred around Toronto area hack sprint Nov 10-18:

Expand testing+UX with Anna Schoolfield, Tim Moody & Seneca College students' packaging with York Univ/Seneca College Professor Chris Tyler.

Meet with Anish Mangal and Nathan Riddle near Detroit etc to discuss wider community integration.

Oct 2012 Agenda

Working w/ Alex Kleider's model classroom @ http://olpcSF.org/summit & http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugarcamp_SF_2012.

Sep 2012 Agenda

Toronto area hack sprint Sept 16-23, incl public demo Saturday Sept 22.

Subpages

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