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Showing posts from June, 2017

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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TeamBILD: FLOSS Desktops *last updated June 6 Areas of focus "obstacles to 'yes'" - how to get schools or similar organizations to participate? preconceptions? funds? Issues during location class sizes ethernet/internet access? supply of computers and parts storage transport? lessons - what needs to be or should be covered during the run of the program? Learn about FLOSS? curriculum troubleshooting repair/refurbishment time HTML coding Take-home issues what to do with left-overs - deliver them? re-use them for the next set? transportation of goods from school to home - maybe packaging options? follow-up questions (see impact) continuing clubs after initial run, can the program be extended to allow "alumni" to go deeper? use prior participants as mentors? Impact use surveys to measure/gather thoughts from kids/teachers as follow-up? what kind of questions would we be asking? Training instruction for t...
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FLOSS Desktops Questions

Could we talk to other schools about recycling their old computers? I might have some connections to schools in the area. (Hillside Elementary, Rosendale Elementary, Iroquois Middle School, Niskayuna High School) Other potential sources of computers or parts? community donations for example? What issues (ethical or legal) would be associated with complete strangers donating computers? Other forms of communication What are some of the important Open Source Software programs and should we familiarize ourselves with them? How familiar do we need to be with HTML? How do we safely transport all of the computers to where they need to go? What is the class size going to look like? What has changed in the program since the first time it was done?
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