As a kid, I loved James Bond movies (I still like the old ones), especially the gadgetry. A shoe compartment, a multi-purpose watch, a micro camera. Needless to say, a lot of money has gone into ThinkGeek purchases Imagine my pleasure when I recently had to introduce the OLPC project to someone (potential funding source for a deployment). I pulled out a 8GB microSD card from a secret zipper in my shirt, placed it squarely on the table, and said "We won't be needing the Internet for now. This little piece of technology holds well over 100 albums and hundreds of books that are freely distributable. It also has a web server, a database server, a collaboration server, backup software, and a bunch more. We won't be needing the Internet to get this deployment off the ground".

Recently, I presented at a workshop on telecommunications, open source and mobility at the First Caribbean Regional International Telecommunications Society Conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Key points in this workshop were:

• The network's value proposition can be fully realized only if it remains open and unencumbered. 
• Setting up independent, yet interconnected PBXs using Asterisk: small ones with AstLinux, large ones with Trixbox.
• Asterisk and the OLPC project. Setting up local phone networks in villages, schools, communities.

Slides are up at  http://www.slideshare.net/sverma/open-connect-network

What: OLPC-SF May 2009 meeting

OLPC-SF will meet on May 16, 2009. Items on the agenda:

• Meet and greet - 10:00 am to 10:30 am

• OLPC, Fedora and Communities (Larry Cafiero) - 10:30am

• Updates - 11:00am:

• Newbies: How to get involved (Carol Ruth Silver)

• Repair Center updates (Joachim Pedersen)

• Lending Libraries (Sameer Verma)

  ---

  [ login to post comments | read more | send this story | 21429 reads ]

November's meeting pulled in a dozen people or so. We discussed OLPC India (slides are up at http://www.slideshare.net/sverma/olpc-and-india-my-observations-presentation).

After the longest beta-testing period in moodle's history and nearly a year after Moodle 1.8, Moodle 1.9 is now ready for use. Major new features include:

• An all-new Gradebook.
• Integrated support for Outcomes, so that learning goals can be tied to individual courses and activities.
• A huge increase in performance.
• Tagging is now a core function. Easily link things like users, blogs, courses etc as well as external sites like Flickr and Youtube through the use of simple tags.

Read more at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=91667

SFSU is now hosting the only North American CVS repository for Moodle. Developers from all over North and South America are now accessing moodlecvs.sfsu.edu to get the latest Moodle build. The CVS repository follows moodle.org standards:

• Connections through CVS (Concurrent Versions System) software
• Set up for anonymous access, no password
• Updated every 15 minutes from the main Moodle trunk. 

This is a sign of SFSU's leadership in the moodle community and SFSU's active involvement in the open source community.