Fwd: [kde-edu]: plasma edu

[Aaron J. Seigo]

FYI ...

but please take any discussion over to kde-edu :)

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: [kde-edu]: plasma edu
Date: July 14, 2010
From: "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo at kde.org>
To: kde-edu at kde.org

hi everyone :)

at Akademy we had a very good meeting of people involved with various school 
deployments of the KDE Desktop v3 and/or KDE Plasma Desktop. we decided to try 
and do two things:

a) bring some of the unique efforts that are currently going on downstream in 
these projects upstream, allowing them to use the KDE community's resources as 
a point of collaboration for them. this will hopefully allow our large (and 
small!) edu deployments to share their efforts as well as get their work into 
more downstream-agnostic forms (allowing them to more easily shift OS if 
needed)

b) provide a unique Plasma Workspace offering that educational deployments may 
choose to take advantage of. this means upstream work on the Plasma Desktop 
that has a specific aim for the educational desktop needs, bringing us closer 
to our downstreams and giving our downstreams new tools they can't get 
elsewhere.

at the meeting we decided on a few things:

* the best place to run this project is from the KDE Edu community. 

this is why i am sending this email to kde-edu@ and not plasma-devel at . it's 
more relevant for educational deployments (plasma-devel is fairly high 
traffic, techical and not overly useful for edu focused work :), and hopefully 
will bring all of our edu resources closer together. we hope that by providing 
a good edu experience on top of Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook, we can also 
find new opportunities for KDE Edu software (and vice versa)


* we need to write documentation of what we want to achieve and where we are 
right now, this will go here for now:

	 http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Classroom

we did this with netbook (http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Plasma-
Netbook) and it was a very successful approach, even as our initial design 
evolved over time.


* we want to keep our sources together, but not bound to the KDE SC release 
cycle for now. therefore, we are proposing to put our code into 
trunk/extragear/edu/. no such directory currently exists. we will make it.


* in addition to gather work down for existing edu deployments, we intend to 
deliver a set of components (plasmoids, containments, javascript layout 
templates) that will run inside a standard Plasma Desktop shell. we want to 
have a first release around the same time as SC 4.6. the central idea is to 
have a set of simplified, lockable panel layouts paired with a desktop widget 
layout that can be customized by the teacher that leverages the Activities as 
debuting in Plasma Desktop 4.5. each class session will get an Actvity, which 
the classroom lead (e.g. teacher) can populate with applications, files, etc. 
when a student logs in, it will fetch the Activities for the class sessions 
they are in.


* we require input from teachers using KDE software to provide feedback and 
consultation on the above idea and as it progresses as a software product


current action items:

* get the Plasmoid from the Portugal deployment in svn

* get the javascript layout that mimics the java bar used in Brazil in svn

* flesh out the design document so we can begin getting teacher feedback and 
start working on it


ok, that's probably enough for one email. :)

i hope that the KDE Edu team is ok with us joining/invading your space to run 
this project. your input is not only welcome, it is desired. i'd say it's even 
critical to this becoming a success. open the floodgates! :)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks

-------------------------------------------------------
-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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