Moodle on the olpc School Server
Moodle on the olpc School Server: Overview - This case study
investigates how we can support, through the learning management
system Moodle, digital literacy in the internet age when
connectivity is not always possible.Background - One Laptop Per
Child (olpc) are deploying laptops called XOs running Sugar, a
Linux based learning platform. Many olpc deployments have School
servers running a specially designed Moodle install to support
those deployments. The School Server used in this study, known as
XS, runs a Fedora Linux operating system, customized to complement
the olpc laptops and run with little or no maintenance. The XS
provides connectivity, shared resources and services, allowing
asynchronous interaction, larger storage capacity than that on the
laptops, and advantages in processing power. It also provides
networking infrastructure for the school and supports various
wireless network setups, including standard Access Points.This is a
case study of two deployments in the Pacific region that use
Moodle. The two primary schools are on Savaii in Samoa, where year
4, 5 and 6 students have been given olpc laptops. Since these
schools do not have internet access, they were provided with
offline slices. The school server was used to provide students and
teachers access to Moodle, a local copy of Schools Wikipedia, a
library of e-books and a range of activities for use on their
laptops. Discussion - In terms of education it was found the school
server, running a tailored version of Moodle learning management
system, provided flexible communication, collaboration and
publishing environment. However, finding appropriate e-resources to
download was hard work.
Photo of me at moodle event
Photo of olpc NZ community
Neighbourhood view
When the XO registers on the XS it creates an account in Moodle
and in the backup system. This is required if they are to access
resources from the XS. There is no password physical access to the
XO laptop grants access.
Browse
This is the Browse homepage, they click Local schoolserver or if
there was internet they could use the Google search function. In
Samoa we changed the default homepage in Browse to show the
students quick links to Moodle, activities, books, and their local
Wikipedia.
This is the XS homepage. It is the Moodle frontpage with courses
on the left and some quick links to resources on the right.
The Activities link lets the students choose the
activities/games that they add to their laptop, opportunities to
develop your skills in areas of student choice
Ebooks
Download from server onto laptop take home and read with family
or read at school with friends. Hard to find a good collection of
libre ebooks on short notice. Projects that do collect ebooks don't
make bulk download easy.
Wikipedia slice
On server vs on laptop
Backup and restore Journal
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/JMArfIS7cNM4bAtfH4_blQ
Research into digital literacy skillsAfrica coke bottle, PNG
cargo culture... blind faith
John Seely Brown navigational literacy sea of information...
digital being (in the future reliant on a sense of location)
examples might be are you looking at government info or 12 year
olds blog?Walking into a new culture disoriented, incapable of
operating in new environment
George Siemens connectivism how learning is connected to ideas
of networks and patternsRicher opportunities to recognise
patternsLibrary versus one book starting to see similarities and
differences, the patterns emerge(download book knowing
knowledge)
I and We learning; personal learning environments are not always
online
challenges
Challenges
Open content and licenses
Many wikis have permissive licences, but do not provide an
export function. Spidering is technically difficult and frowned
upon by many admins. We failed to make a copy of the olpc wiki and
suffered when not connected to the internet as a result.
