ICT for the Developing World

1
ICT for the Developing World
CSE477 07-08
Classroom Presenter on the XO
Will Burnside, Mathias Klous, Brian Mayton,
Kristofer Plunkett
Problem
Solution Idea

• Classrooms around the world are beginning to
  receive XO laptops
• Teachers need ways to integrate the XOs into
  their existing classroom and curriculum

• Develop an application similar to UW Classroom
  Presenter that runs on the XO laptops
• Allow teacher to distribute materials in the form
  of slides

• Students add own work to slides and can share
  with teachers and the rest of the class

Related Work
Benefits

• Allow teachers to easily distribute lesson
  materials, especially where technologies like
  photocopiers are not readily available
• Students are actively involved in lessons and
  discussions
• Allow teachers to easily use existing paper
  materials by digitizing them with the camera

UW Classroom Presenter
http//classroompresenter.cs.washington.edu/

• Tablet PC-based interaction system
• Supports sharing of slides and ink between
  teachers and students

Image Quiz Activity for the XO
http//classroompresenter.cs.washington.edu/

• Teacher prepares and distributes sets of quiz
  questions
• Goal of multiplayer interaction between students

Multiple Mice

• Pawar, Pal Toyama
• tier.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/ict4d06/multiple_mice-jp
  .pdf

• Allow students to share computers by connecting
  multiple mice to control multiple cursors in
  multi-user activities

Classroom Presenter on Other Hardware
Craig Prince - UW CSE

• Version of Classroom Presenter for the Nintendo DS

http//www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse
477/08sp/projectwebs/x/
2
ICT for the Developing World
CSE477 07-08
Classroom Presenter on the XO
Will Burnside, Mathias Klous, Brian Mayton,
Kristofer Plunkett
Evaluation
Architecture

• Prepare lesson plan using XO Classroom Presenter
  and test it in a third-grade classroom in West
  Seattle
• Get feedback from teacher and students
• Is the application easy to use?
• Does it improve teaching?
• Do students think its more fun and engaging?

XO Activity written in Python with a PyGTK
graphical interface
Display slides as SVG or JPEG images
Add ink annotations to slides as separate
layers that can be retransmitted to teacher and
other students
Use Telepathy service in the XO Sugar OS to
provide a consistent interface for starting and
joining shared activities
Timeline
Future
April
May
June

• Contact teacher
• Learn Python
• OLPC Wiki
• Explore the XO
• Initial design
• Source code organization

• Begin development
• Get simple parts working
• Develop lesson plan for first demo

• Integrate small working parts into first version
• First Classroom demonstration
• Begin receiving feedback

• Aggregate feedback
• Debug and add new features
• Continue testing, performing demos, getting more
  feedback

http//www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse
477/08sp/projectwebs/x/