Khalid Ibn Al Waleed School Visit - Aqraba, Nablus

Today, March 21st 2010, marks our second visits to Palestinian schools in the Westbank. Last Thursday we visited Abu Falah School in Abu Falah village near Ramallah. Today we've been to two schools, a group went to Bodros school near Ramallah, and another to Khalid Ibn Al Waleed School.

I'll leave it to Bodros group to update you with a summary and Pictures.

We were trying a new approach to get the attention of kids by presenting the Sugar interface using a projector. This wasn't as easy as we thought, kids were really distracted by the laptop once they had it and it was hard to convince them to pay attention to the speaker. That was because that was the first time the kids ever saw the XOs!

13 volunteers left Birzeit around 7:30am to Aqraba directly in two seven-passenger caps. I had to go to Ramallah to hand Candy-bags and PaleXO TShirts to the other group. The guys updated the laptops, talked to the kids, played football with them and they even lined up with them in there morning lines and practiced morning exercises with them!

I've joined a bit late due to the fact that I had to go to Nablus first and from I headed to Aqraba. At the time of arrival, they were just about to start eating some meat-stuffed-bread that the teachers and principal of the school got for us along with the drinks. This was extremely nice from them and they were really nice to hang out with.

That was when we started the presentation. We setup the projector while Samar started showing the kids how to open the laptop and how to turn it on (Which they already figured it out by themselves). Then she moved to showing them the 4 views of Sugar and how to navigate between them, explaining what each one is for. This took some time as we expected, as it was the kids' first time to play with the laptop. All PaleXO members were helping the kids in the class follow up with Samar and apply what she was explaining if they couldn't get it.

One of the teacher suggested that we could go outside of the class in a near place called "Sibaryeh", a nice place with some olive trees and a nice view of mountains and Aqraba. We decided to go on an easier and a more fun experience for the kids by dividing ourselves into smaller groups and getting to know the kids more, what they like, and how fast they learn. That was amazingly fun and easier to manage for us and the kids. I even asked the kids who were accompanying me to shoot some pictures of the nature and for their friends while walking to that place, and soon they really got into it and started asking to take pictures of their teachers.

The kids had the chance to experience and play with multiple activities, including Speak, Write, Tuxmath, Arithmatic, Chat, Maze, Memorize, Record and Paint. Though some laptops were missing Tuxmath for some reason (It must be an error during the update process) but it was okay.

This time we've got candy-bags for the kids, they were holding their XO and candy with the same hand and they ate them while playing around with the XO. After finishing, we took the kids back to the school and gave them the chargers, asked them to fill evaluation forms with the help of the volunteers and gave them another evaluation form for their parents to fill.

This has been an amazing visit! Everything was really nice and I couldn't have imagined it any better, although not losing our TShirts bag at the end of the trip would've been nice! (~20 shirts in that bag). We also didn't have much time to go through Aqraba, but it was amazing visiting it, it's a beautiful place and has amazing views of mountains.

This hasn't ended here, the two groups have gathered and had a 14 people lunch at Angelo's Restaurant. This was full of fun, that some people said that it was "the best day in their life!". And I am sure the kids had the same experience as we watched them playing with their friends with the XO.

We would really like to applaud for all the guys who worked hard in this day. Noura Salhi, Salam Abu Makho, Ala' Allan, Lamees Shalash, Suhail Taha, Fayeq Al Remawi, Ayman Qarrout, Mohammad Khatib, Samer Ayesh, Reham, Ahlam, Anas Abdelrazeq, Anissa Yousef, Hanna Kreitem, Mohammed Nawahda, Abdul - Hafeth Salah, Morad Taleeb, Samah Qiwi, Yasmeen Hashem, Abeer Hammad, Raya. And the Teachers and principle of the school who were extremely nice.

We also would like to recognize some special efforts from: Ayman Qarout and his friend for bringing a projector, Hanna Krietem, with his help in getting the projectors and booking the room for the training session and for taking amazingly inspiring pictures, Tamer Alkhouli and Ala' Abu Nada, who helped with the coordination of the visit, and Noura Salhi for holding the training session for the volunteers.

We would also like to thank Exalt Technologies for buying the candy for the kids, they really loved it, as well as we did. And the ITC at Birzeit University for lending us two projectors.

Stay tuned for the Pictures and videos. 

First Visit To Schools

Today, Thursday March 18, 2010 PaleXO had its first visit to “Ab-Falah” (مدرسة ذكور أبو فلاح) elementary school for boys. The visits aim to teach little kids how to use the XO laptops and deploy them to ease their education and make it more fun. Our first “PaleXO visiting schools” day was long, busy and exhausting but it was worth every smile we saw on the kids’ faces.

The day did not start very well. We first headed to “Al-Fajr Al-Jadeed” school like we were told to do by the ministry. Apparently, the school had no idea we were coming and only 17 out of 72 kids had their XO laptops with them. We were really disappointed since we were all very prepared and excited to have our first visit. We were also expecting Brazilians to accompany us in our visit and planned to meet them in the school. In a try to save the day, and after several phone calls, we contacted the principle of “Abu-Falah” school who also had no idea we were planning to visit his school. Luckily enough for us, the kids in “Ab-Falah” school were not allowed to take the laptops home with them, so we got going to “Abu-Falah”.

We reached the school around 10:00 am. We had 52 laptops that needed updates and only 12 or 13 flash memories. The update process took very long, by the time we were done updating it was 11 something. As a tip for next visits, try to have the updates done a day before or be in the school very early in the morning so that you will have the rest of the day for the activities. After finishing updating the laptops, it was now time to go to the classrooms. We had 52 students divided into 2 classrooms. The Brazilians were contacted back again to meet us in “Abu-Falah” school and were there through all the updating and part of the classroom activities. They were glad to see the progress we are making and told us about their own successful experience with OLPC in Brazil, they also offered to answer any “football” related questions ;-).

Who said that dealing with third graders was fun and easy? Kids in that age are hyper, love to move, play, and ask A LOT of questions … It is not easy to control them like adults or expect them to be quiet. But the one thing for sure about them is they are fast learners and love to explore what is in the laptop. They were happy to see us, and even more delightful to spend time their XO laptops. We had a schedule to follow, but due to the kids’ nature there was a twist in the schedule for the classrooms. Each classroom tried to do as many activities as possible during the 2 hours but did not make it to the half. In spite of all that, the kids were all involved in the activities. They did not wait for our directions but were eager to explore the activities themselves. Some of them were really very smart and were very fast to catch up with us while some were slower; but bottom line is there was not one child that was left out or was not enjoying the experience.

Finally, it was time for evaluation. We handed out the evaluation sheets to the kids to fill in. After that, the class was dismissed and it was all quiet again.

That was the summary of our day, but there are still few things to point out. First, for next school visits we will need more supply. The supply as in flash memories, cables & some treat for the kids. The PaleXO members had to bring this stuff themselves and still were not enough for all the number we had. Second, before each visit we should contact the class teacher and discuss with him/her what the kids already know on the XO laptops so that we won’t waste the day by going over things they already know. I am sure there are more things to consider but these are the things that were on the top of my head.

One more thing worth mentioning is the fact that this trip reminded us with how beautiful Palestine is. We enjoyed the ride along with the green mountains and the olive trees. We also got to know some villages, a refugee camp and settlements that we did not know before.

In the end, I wanted to thank the principles of the 2 schools we visited for their good reception, and the teachers & kids for cooperating with us today. I would love to thank the Brazilians who made the effort to attend our first visit and showed their support. Most importantly I want to thank (ordered alphabetically) Asma, Aya, Ayman, Hanin, Manar, Maysa, Mohammad Khatib, Noura, Rasha & myself Safaa who participated in the actual visit and of course Alaa and Tamer who were supervising for making this day happen. Not to forget “Abu-Faker” the driver who drove us to and from “Abu-Falah”.

It was one GREAT experience; we had so much fun and cannot wait to have our next visit to schools.

Original post by Safa' Halahla on PaleXO FB Fan Page.

Developer Key

What is a Developer Key?

It's simply a file that allows you to run unsigned operating system images. OLPC produces many unsigned operating system images for development and testing, which will only work in your laptop if you have a developer key.

If you don't have a developer key, and your laptop has firmware security enabled, it will not let you do anything except boot an OLPC-signed operating system, and use the OLPC-provided software. If you insert a USB flash drive or SD card, the boot firmware will only boot from it if the files are tested and cryptographically signed by OLPC.

Also with the developer key the firmware will make XO act as a normal PC, how so?

1. It will allow you to interrupt the boot process to enter commands, by pressing the Esc key (x) located on the upper left corner of the key pad.
   
2. It will let you run any program or boot into any OS such as Sugar on a Stick, no matter whether the OLPC organization has tested, approved, or signed it.

Once you have your developer key you should make a back up copy of it, save it on your PC for example, just in case you accidentally delete it. But I don't think you need to worry about this much because you can always re-download it with out having to go through the registration process again. Another option is to disable firmware security permanently, this way you will no longer need your developer key, but I read that sometimes you can run into problems while trying to disable security so the sound choice might be to have an extra copy or just re-download .

I did read that instead of getting a developer key you can press on the 4 game keys when booting into your XO.


Getting your Developer Key

First you will need to be connected to the internet via wireless. To learn how to connect to a wireless network see the post Connecting to a Wireless Network.

1. Open the browse activity and type in file:///home/.devkey.html, or on the home page click get a developer key.



2. You will be redirected to the Developer Key Request page. There click the button Submit Query. Then you'll be redirected to a page informing you when your key will be ready.



3. When you return to the page in step 1 after the specified time you should get a window like the one below informing you that your developer key is ready. Follow the instructions to download your developer key.




4. Once your key is downloaded copy it to your USB. Open the terminal activity, then type su --> press Enter --> cp /security/develop.sig /media/USBName. This will copy the develop.sig file to your USB. Now create a new folder, name it security, then cut paste develop.sig into this folder.


That's it!!

For more information on this topic visit this webpage.

Creating a Back up for your XO

Why create a backup for your XO?

For the same reason you would backup your PC to be safe, it's a good idea to take precautions and create a backup when your making major changes to your laptop that might cause it to malfunction, such as, major updates (like updating to a newer version/release of Sugar); these operations are supposed to run smoothly but there is a chance they might fail. Having a backup allows you to restore your XO to a previous in which it was functioning properly.


What you need to get started

1. A USB with at least 1GB free space.
2. A developer key. Actually I read that you don't need the developer key, instead you can hold the four game keys when booting into your XO.
   

Check your USB

1. Make sure you have at least 1GB free space.
2. Make sure its a FAT, FAT32, or VFAT format.
3. Make sure you don't have a bootable OS on it, such as Sugar on a Stick. If you do it will boot into that OS instead of the Open Firmware (OFW).
4. Make sure you have copied your developer key (develop.sig) into a folder named security.
   

Steps 1 & 2 can be checked from your USB's properties. Right click on USB --> Properties.


Time to Back Up!

1. Plug your USB into one of the XO ports.


2. Start or Restart your XO while holding down the Esc key (x), or just wait until the white screen appears with the XO logo then press the Esc key. This will get you into the Open Firmware ok prompt.


3. Type in the command probe-usb, your USB should show as USB2. USB1 is too slow.


4. If by some chance you forgot to free up enough space for back up not to worry. First type scan-nand if it's completely green (full) you will need 1GB free space, if it's half green half blue (half full) you will only need 500MB free space. Now type disk-free u: to see if you have enough space, if you don't delete some files using the command rm u:\fileName.extension, for speed you can use wild cards to delete all files with a certain extension as in rm u:\*.png.


5. Type the command save-nand u:\backup.img. The name backup isn't obligatory, you can name it whatever you please, but it's always a good idea to have a meaningful name. Just make sure you don't forget the .img extension.


6. Now all you have to do is wait while the back up is being created. You can see a little box moving from one green box to the next, also below you will see a counter that counts from 0 - 1FFF.



7. When the counter reaches 1FFF the OFW will report Done, and give you the name of the CRC file, which in this case would be backup.crc. I'm guessing it will name it according to the name you provided in step 5. You can verify that both the backup.img & backup.crc are now on your USB by typing in the command dir u:.


8. Now you can remove your USB. Copy the 2 backup files to your PC if you like.


9. To exit the OFW you can type either boot to start the OS (boot into the Sugar OS) or bye to restart the machine.


Restoring your XO

1. Plug your USB into one of the XO ports

2. Start or Restart your XO while pressing the Esc key.

3. When your in the OFW ok prompt, type in the command probe-usb to make sure it's displayed as USB2.

4. Next type in the command dir u: to make sure you have both the .img & .crc backup files.

5. Type in copy-nand u:\backup.img. Of course backup is the name you used for your backup files.

6. Wait till its done. Then restart your XO.

Connecting to a Wireless Network

These are a few simple steps you can follow to connect to a wireless internet.


1. Go to your Neighborhood view. It's the icon on the far left. You should get a view similar to the one below. Hover over the Network you wish to connect to and click in the middle of the icon, or wait for the menu to appear and click Connect.



2. If you are trying to connect to a secured wireless connection you will be prompted for a password. Enter the password and press OK.



3. Next it should say it's Connecting.




4. Once your connected you will see an icon like the enlarged icon in the image below.



Here's a list of icons you might see and what each means:

Get your Sugar on a Stick!!

Getting started

We need a few things:

1. A USB with a minimum capacity of 1GB.
2. Strawberry iso image, this is actually optional the program we will be using can download it for you in the installation process but it's 379MB, so for a slow connection I suggest you download it as a torrent from here.
3. The LiveUSB-Creator. Note that this software works both on Windows and Linux.

Let the installation Begin!

The first thing you need to do is extract the contents of the LiveUSB-Creator. Once that's done plug in the USB device you plan to install the image on. Now double click on liveusb-creator.exe, this window should pop up.



Now make sure the Target Device is set to the USB your aiming to install Sugar on.



Next move the slider to set how much space you would like to grant for the storage of Sugar, remember the minimum space required is 1GB. As you can see from the picture below I used the minimum space required.



If you already have the strawberry image, all you need to do is click browse and select the iso image.



If you don't have the iso image, simply select Sugar from the drop down list on the upper right corner.



We're almost there!! Now click the Create Live USB button. If you already have the strawberry image this should only take a few minutes, if you don't it will take quite a while due to the fact it needs to download the image before it can begin the installation.



After the installation is complete you can close the program and try out your Sugar on a Stick. Safely remove your USB but leave it in the port. If your using a desktop it might be better to plug the USB into one of the rear ports for easy detection.

Now you can restart and it should automatically boot in from your USB. If it doesn't then you should check your BIOS settings to make sure that the option for booting from a USB is enabled.

The nice thing about Sugar on a Stick is that the mouse isn't so crazy, it doesn't jump around all the place as in the Live-CD. Also with Sugar on a Stick your work is saved to your USB. But there is a problem with the Arabic language setting, I tried it and some of the words were still in English and some were in Arabic, aslo they used the writing technique where the letters are disconnected, for example ن ظ ا م ا ل ت ش غ ي ل which I find annoying, I only tried the Suadi Arabia choice maybe the others are different I don't know.

Creating a Bootable XO-Live CD

Getting Started

Before we get started you will need to have the following:

1. The XO-Live CD iso image, this can be found here or here. Make sure what you download has the name "XO-Live" and the .iso extension. Or you can download as a torrent from here.
   
2. A program to burn the iso image like Nero. You can also find free software that will do this task like IsoRecorder, you will notice there are different versions you can download depending on what version of windows you have, make sure you download the right one, on the website they show you how you can make sure in case your having trouble figuring it out.
3. An empty CD of course.

Burning the iso image with Nero

The following procedure is done with Nero 6, other versions will be similar, the main commands is what you will need to pay attention to.

1. First place an empty CD in your disc tray. Then open Nero Start Smart, choose Copy and Backup --> Burn Image to Disc.



2. Then a browse window will pop up automatically, go to the location you have the iso
image in, choose it, then click Open.



3. Then you'll get the window below, simply press Next.



4. Now the burning process should begin.



5. After a few minutes you'll get a message notifying you that the process is done. Press Ok -> Next -> Exit.

That's all! Now you have a bootable XO-Live CD ready to be used :D. Just restart your computer with the CD in the tray & it will automatically boot you into the Sugar OS. The CD comes with plenty activities for you do dive into, so Have fun!!


Burning the iso image with IsoRecorder

If you have IsoRecorder installed you will notice that it has no start up item in the programs list, no icon on your desktop, nothing. Well the reason is you don't have to start up the program to use it, you use it through the right click mouse button. I'll show you what I mean.

1. Navigate to the location of the iso image you have stored on your computer. Right click on the file, choose Copy Image to CD.



2. A window will pop up - of course you have to have an empty CD in your tray at this point, if your CD is not empty & it's erasable the program can erase it for you then you can continue - Simply click Next.


3. The burning process will take place, it only needs a few minutes & then your done :D.

Now your ready to have fun with all the activities on the XO-Live CD!! Just restart & it will automatically boot into the Sugar environment :D. I might just go play with mine now ;).