[sword-devel] Great interest in doing it the OLPC way. Re: OLPC interest still?

Zachary M. Oglesby zoglesby at gmail.com
Tue Jan 22 06:38:17 MST 2008


Playful learning is great, but when you get down to it the real way to learn
from the bible is to sit down and read it. I don't know how much a person
will get from a little bit here and there. You may learn some but the real
message is not in a line here or there it is spread out threw a book.

On Jan 22, 2008 12:34 AM, avolunteer DrStovallFoundation <
pythondrs at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Developers,
> The OLPC greatest innovation is educational not technical.  I
> previously posted that OLPC had given us several technical
> innovations and imitations.  India heard OLPC and now thinks
> they will build a $10 (that's right ten US dollar) computer in
> India.  But Rapier and the best Sword implementations are a
> looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong llllllllllong
> way from being anything near the educational quality worthy of
> the OLPC designers.  I could and should write another book
> about this.  But there are many other things which I could and
> should do.  I'll just say this.  The OLPC was designed to
> enable "playful learning."  Nearly 30 years ago, I made Paul's
> Gramcord run on the 1 MhZ floppy disk system that was sold to
> Theological schools.  It was a far better Bible study program
> than any of the Sword interfaces and is still being used in
> many of the best theological schools.  But it does not do what
> the Lord has laid on my heart and it is not "playful learning."
> Sword serves a great purpose for mature minds who want to stay
> in touch with the Holy Scriptures.  I am thrilled to have
> Rapier on my N800.  It would serve a very few children better
> than a book would.  But the majority of this world's children
> need "playful learning."  Please see laptop.org for more
> information and also Google for "playful learning."
> A Volunteer
>
> PS  Pierre knows how to get on with people.  You may want to
> reread the following.  Especially the part about getting as
> many people as possible to either do it your way or their way.
>
> --- Pierre Amadio <pierre.amadio at laposte.net> wrote:
>
> > Hi there.
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 11:12:03AM -0500, Zachary M. Oglesby wrote:
> > > I have done a little reading on this and would recommend that people
> read
> > > the following. Also I think a good starting point would be to adapt
> the
> > > Rapier code and see if we can get it to work with Sugar. In the long
> run I
> > > think it would be great if we could get this to work in the ebook mode
> that
> > > the XO has to save battery life, but one step at a time.
> >
> > I have zero experience in project management, but still, i think the
> > first step to take would be to check out what's already existing, just
> > in case there's already something cool, or not, and to get in touch with
> > all project, or at least most of them, in order to try to have as many
> > people as possible in a single project.
> >
> > A quick search show:
> >
> > http://xobible.com/
> > plan to use bibletime as a base and to add some mp3 feature on top of
> > that.
> > Sounds interesting to me, i just don't get why they pick a qt project
> > and not a gtk one (if i recall correctly, the olpc is mainly gtk based).
> >
> > http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1425.msg11011
> > Other people also wanting to make a bible based activity.
> >
> > http://bibledit.sourceforge.net/
> > Changelog states it runs on olpc.
> >
> > I'm sure there are others. Anybody know what is the main olpc community
> > mailing list/web forum ? It would be a good idea to check there.
> >
> > Then, i think we should have a clear idea of what is planned. Is it a
> > nice bible study tool that would run on an olpc, or is it a nice olpc
> > activity that will take advantage of what the olpc offer ?
> >
> > I think if the first goal is targeted, using an already featurfull
> > program is the way to go (and i would think gnome sword is the best
> > candidate here as it's gtk based. I do not know if libgnome is available
> > on olpc though. Not being able to compile it without libgnome was what
> > drove me to start rapier).
> >
> > If the second goal is targeted, then creating something from scratch in
> > python (so the "read the source" feature of the olpc would be possible)
> > seems the way to go. I would advise not to start with rapier itself, as
> the
> > code is really not that good:
> >
> > - It  does not use libglade that should be available in the olpc
> >   (it is sort of available in maemo, but i choosed not to used it anyway
> >   because i intended to make something really simple and wanted to wait
> >   untill gazpacho was ready for hildon stuff before playing with glade
> >   file).
> >
> > - Internationalisation is nearly not existing, and it's more easy to get
> >   that correctly when prepared from the beginning.
> >
> > - The download/manage module is awfull. (Why is there no python wrapper
> >   for the InstallMgr class ? :-) ).
> >
> > If there is a clear description of what is needed, a rewrite of an
> > rapier like olpc activity starting from scratch is just a matter of a
> couple
> > of weeks and would save time later on if started on solid ground.
> >
> > So, is there anybody who feels like gathering the existing, find the
> most
> > appropriate place to get in touch with the olpc community and make a
> > summary of what he found to us and all similar project ?
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
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