I spent a good amount of time in front of a keyboard today. The educational builds needed some attention. The Chromebook client build is finished and imaged. It contained the latest RACHEL, and all the latest GCFLearnFree.org content on 32gb SD card with only 11mb to spare! We lock the SD, put it in a stock Chromebook, and it makes an ultra-low-cost ($220) educational platform that’s super-resilient. The Chromebook’s “Browse as Guest” login resets itself after every session and a power-wash or dev mode flip resets the entire unit to factory defaults in moments. Kids won’t easily “mess it up”. All content is delivered through the browser and the card is set up so that only a “www” directory and the main “index.html” file show up in the root of the drive making it easy for kids to get up and running. You could run a bunch of clients and have access to great content without an Internet connection, but the server build adds another distinct element.
When you add the “Pelican” wifi server, the clients get access to Ka-Lite, which adds exercises, student tracking, coach reports and more to the Khan Academy offering making is much more like the “online” version of Khan academy. We also put a copy of RACHEL and GCFLearnFree.org on the server as well so that any wireless client can get access to this content.
I’m nearly finished the server build and Sam is rocking even more with the Pelican, adding waterproof Ethernet and Power connections, so the box can be powered, charged and get ethernet while closed and locked.
We’re making real progress now.
