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7/18/2017

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The past week or so, designed a website to give information about Siena's Informal STEM program, which our FLOSS camp was a part of. We had to learn a fair amount of coding in html and css to make it look respectable. Dr. McColgan is looking into hosting the website. We're also beginning to think about designing phase 2 for FLOSS Desktops (FLOSS II). We need to establish where the students reasonably should be and should know, and where FLOSS II should take them. Pat mentioned the Hour of Code events as a sort of goal ("You can't do Hour of Code without a computer"), but the students becoming developers and coders should definitely be the endgame. Our thinking for both FLOSS I and II is that in FLOSS I, we get them hooked on working with computers, both hardware and software, and introduce them to basic coding (HTML, CSS, small amount of javascript maybe), using open-source software to do so. And maybe by the end of FLOSS II, they have some idea of how deve...
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7/10/2017 We reviewed pre/post-assessments from the FLOSS Desktops camp, discussed how we could have made the camp better and how we could have better assessed the skills and knowledge the kids picked up over the week. Overall, the kids seemed to claim more confidence in their knowledge about the inner workings of the computer. There were very few "I don't knows" responses on the post-assessment compared to the pre-assessment they took on Monday. We found, however, that the format we chose for compiling their responses to certain questions made comparing and assessing difficult. We also talked about finding a balance between hardware and software. Having been the creation of OSI, the curriculum focuses heavily on open-source software and less on the hardware, the physical thing sitting in front of them that they most likely were more interested in. Their age levels all varied but they also came from families who had computers (most were gamers), and I think they were...
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6/26 - Experience so far

Lindsay and I were invited to participate by Dr. McColgan and Dr. Colesante in early May. My personal reason for getting involved was my interest in STEM education, and to find ways to increase access and motivation for kids in poorer communities. An issue in modern education is the growing presence of, and need for, technology in the lives of students, and FLOSS Desktops seems to be a promising way to both increase access to needed technology at home (computer with internet is becoming more and more important), and to grow interest in STEM fields by getting kids to take computers that would otherwise go to waste and refurbish them for themselves with new software for the low cost of $0.00. The two of us had no real prior experience in repairing or troubleshooting computers and software, and zero experience with coding, so the first two weeks were mainly for getting our bearings. We familiarized ourselves with the goals of the FLOSS Desktops program according to Pat Masson, ran throu...
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HTML Basics

Basic Tags <html></html> Creates an HTML document <head></head> Sets off the title and other information that isn’t displayed on the web page itself <body></body> Sets off the visible portion of the document Body Attributes <body bgcolor="pink"> Sets the background color, using name or hex value <body text="black"> Sets the text color, using name or hex value <body link="blue"> Sets the color of links, using name or hex value <body vlink="#ff0000"> Sets the color of followed links, using name or hex value <body alink="#00ff00"> Sets the color of links on click <body ondragstart="return false" onselectstart="return false"> Disallows text selection with the mouse and keyboard Formatting <p></p> Creates a new paragraph <p align="left"> Aligns a paragraph to the left (default), right, or center...
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FLOSS Desktops communication

IRC is really a real time format, think of it like a "room" on campus. Sometimes you stop by the room and there are a bunch of people in there, other times you show up there is no one there. The best way to set up IRC is to have it record all the discussions that take place when you are outside the room. Then, when you enter it again, you see all of the discussions from other folks who where there later. However, if you want to send a specific person a note, they may not be on IRC when you are so something like email works best (like this). You can also broadcast to all of the folks involved by emailing to the email list ( flossdesktops@opensource.org ) . Finally you can always post a comment to the discussion forum on the wiki ( https://wiki.opensource.org/ bin/Main/Projects/FLOSS+ Desktop+Refurbishment+and+ Distribution/ )--I left you a message there. This allows anyone involved to respond. So... IRC for realtime group discussions (if there are folks there,...
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Resources: IRC client: FreeNode - use #FLOSSdesktops wiki: https://wiki.opensource.org/bin/Main/Projects/FLOSS+Desktop+Refurbishment+and+Distribution/ FLOSS curriculum/documents: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B2V3n1i8irYqUTJ3LTRlOTRTRXM blog: http://sienaflossdesktops.blogspot.com
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First Day Recap and Goals

Today was our first official meeting in the CURCA program.  Thinking about some goals, we should start off by sorting out the questions or obstacles that are in the way right now.  As for some long term goals, I would like to see this program expand to more schools or public facilities, whether that means more schools donating computers to be recycled or more schools being actively engaged in providing this program for their students.  Technology is very important in today's society and by helping students and teachers in understanding how to implement it into the classroom, we can try to push for using more technology in lessons to improve learning.
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