AMADIS

What is AMADIS

The AMADIS is an environment where the user finds a place for development of learning projects, publication of his own productions and communication with his partners.It try to break the hierarchy between the teacher and the student, in the perspective that everybody have something to contribute for the virtual communities that they belongs. Thus, the learning does not occur only throught school education, but, mainly, for people cooperating in research projects.

The environment does not privilege only schools and universities.It was developed for the society in general, as it constructs a bridge between that they desire to share its knowledge with that they need to learn. This way, he environment was projected not only for presential learnings with determined time, but also for progressive learning at distance. Thus the privileged process of Digital Inclusion by AMADIS is not restricted to the computer science education, but make possible the development of meaningfull tools, that each one can make its own way to appropriate the technology to recreate their reality. This new design that AMADIS proposes to Virtual Learning Enviroments, makes it a powerfull tool to informal learning spaces. The system has been successfully used to create a network of poor comunities in Brazil, so they can change experiences of how to use the computer as a tool to change their social reality.

Technical specifications

The current stable version of the Amadis is 1.6. It was developed using PHP5 script language, MySql 5.0 and all webdevevelopment suite(js, css, html, etc). Your structure is composed by five distinct areas(Webfolio, Projects, Communitites, Workshops and People) and each one have a couple of features to make interaction and content management. The tools of Amadis is divided in two parts, interaction tools(chat, forum, IM, guest books, etc) and content management tools(blog, comments, news, page hosting, library, etc).

For several motives the Amadis is passing for a refactoring, your implementation no more made using the PHP5, now it is developed using Django and Python, because the Amadis don't had a good structured code. Think about this, the following structure is designed for the new Amadis, and was thought for use with Journal integration:

• A core structure that in charge for load modules and maintain the nodes, comments and tags organized.
• A modular structure that permits a expansion of the Core through of new libraries and modules, is very similar with the Drupal modules structures, with a little more sophistication.
• More information about the Amadis structure will released soon.

Google Summer of Code Proposal - WebJournal

Abstract

The proposal is to extend the functionalities of the actual Sugar Journal to a Web Application, named WebJournal, where children will be able to share their objects to a wider public in the Internet. This idea was developed through the observation of the students needs while using the XO in the context of the Porto Alegre OLPC trial school, in Brazil. During this year at the Luciana de Abreu school, many children used their laptops intensivaly at home, but the contents stayed locked into the machines. Sharing their work with their mates and teachers, is an important part of the students life at school. Yet the actual Sugar interface have many features for synchronous sharing, it haven't a solution where kids can publish their work to a wider audience, such as their parents and community. Publishing their production on the Web, increase the possibilities of share knowledge, not only into the school, but all through networks of schools across the country and even the world. Situations like this happened in 2007, when students from the Luciana de Abreu school in Brazil interacted with children of the Ceibal project pilot school in Uruguay.

The WebJournal Proposal

Motivation

This proposal is based in a real experience into the school. With the objects living into the laptops, is very difficult to teachers follow the cognitive process of the kids or just make comments. Even if a children share an activity through Sugar with their teacher, this process can be onerous in time, making very difficult to them use this approach to an entire classroom (sometimes with more than 50 students). Teachers usually follow their students works at home or in the inverse shift. Organizing the kids objects in a WebJournal is a way to approach this issue, making possible for the teacher to observe the student work over time.

In the last year, the AMADIS Virtual Environment was used as a sharing and interaction strategy for the teachers, parents and students of the Luciana the Abreu school. However, some problems have occurred with the traditional publishing method (through upload forms), that proved hard to be used by young children. For example, usually when a child submit a html page she hopes that the images go together. It's hard to a children understand why it doesn't happen. Through a careful exam of situations like these, I understand as important the building of a solution that makes straightforward the publishing and sharing of objects win the Web.

Architecture

For the WebJournal development, will be used the Django Python Framework, this choose is based in the compatibility and reuse of the existing code library of the OLPC Development. As above, the Amadis was used like a communication tool in the Luciana de Abreu School, in the new version of the environment, a new proposal using Django too, make be able to a modular development. This new AMADIS version, designed and developed for me under Juliano Bittencourt's orientation, permitting the children to make some productions like a weblog, upload of the image, video, sound, etoys projects and scratch projects, beyond that promote learning projects construction using wiki pages, can be usefull like a base of the WebJournal system.

Deliverables

In the end of the project the Journal should be able to send registered files to a school WebJournal, making possible the other visits any object produced from the children.

• A web application named WebJournal that organize the published objects of all students in a School, following some specifications;
  • A interface to write and read comments;
  • A way to delete or view different versions of the object;
  • A simple filter by type and date, to help found a specific object;

• A new version of the Sugar Journal that can submit objects to the WebJournal, following some specifications;
  • A way to transfer a file from the Journal to the WebJournal (possibly a button in the Journal: "Share in the Web");
  • Warning interface in the Journal, that warning the kid when a new comment was written;
  • A download interface to get WebJournal stored on the WebJournal;

• A page in the OLPC Wiki reporting the use of the new features by children in the school context.

Schedule

• Apr 21 - May 5: This period will be used to contextualization about the Sugar development and to make a reading of the journal code.
• May 5 - May 26: This period will be used to make the button "Publish/Share" works, based in the studies of previous month.
• May 26 - Jun 9: The web interface for comments will done.
• Jun 9 - Jun 23: The Journal warnings to new comments and download/view comments will done.
• Jun 23 - Jul 7: Download of old journal entries to the laptop.
• Jul 7 - Aug 11: If all well done, the new Journal will to field test.
• Jul 21 - Aug 11: Test Report, documentation of process, code documentation, code cleaning. Finish, go to party!!

Any disagreement with my timeline can be adjusted with a little conversation. I don't have idea the real size of this work, then I am extending the periods to avoid some problem with schedule. But I still open for suggestions.