Hi, On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 10:07:56AM +0300, Viviane Pons wrote: > Hi, > > To answer Thierry: I do remember your feedbacks from Burkina from a few > years ago. I was actually planning to bring live USB keys, the only reason > I didn't is because I didn't have the time to setup all those keys before > leaving. I'm still curious on how you do this: do you buy a bunch of keys > before and then give them to the students? Do you you require them to bring > their own USB key?
It depends on the available budget. In Senegal, we used the USB drives that were given to the participants for the proceedings (note that the USB drive should be at least 4GB), with the "upgrade" option you can keep the existing content if there is enough free space on the key (the "clone" options formats the key). In Burkina Faso, we got the USB keys from the gdr-im, for the EJICIM, the participants were asked to bring their own, though i brought some with me just in case. I am more and more favorable to that last option since most people have an unused USB drive somewhere, so it helps avoiding waste. In any case, i clone a small amount of them to bootstrap and i let the participants to clone the other keys on their computer, it has the benefit to be much faster (distributed) and also to let them play with the key for when they will be back to their home. > Also, have you ever tried this on Windows 8? Because I know from past > experience that the boot is very different and Windows8 is very reluctant > on booting on anything else than itself. Yes, windows 8 has the bad habit to prevent the user to access the BIOS (in the name of "secure boot"), so you have to boot on windows first, and look for the quite hidden place to disable it (some sequence like : PC settings > Advanced startup > Troobleshoot > Advanced options > UEFI firmware settings > restart). Then you go to the BIOS and reorder the boot sequence to have the USB drive appearing before the hard drive, without the secure boot and UEFI stuff. Ciao, Thierry > As to install Linux on their machine, it would have taken too much of my > time and energy. Our goal was to sort out most technical issues on the > first day (which we did), and then, leave the rest of the week for math and > experimentation. As I said, it wasn't Sage days per say but really a school > with lectures and all. > > To answer Dominique: "when you go teaching in far away places" --> It was > actually my first time doing such a thing. And I have very little > experience on setting up a sage cloud, so I didn't want to use this week to > experiment on this... Also, it was complicated for me to bring any > material, I'm quite on a long trip here involving different conferences, > continents and also holidays: my bags are quite full already. The only > thing I bring with me is my very light (but powerful) laptop. And last but > not least: with this solution, they have a working Sage during the week but > nothing to bring back home (and even nothing for homework in the evening). > The VM, despite its limitation, is still a program that they can keep > using. And I know they will. > > Anyway, I have no doubt that for now Thierry's solutions are probably the > best. Also, the VM were not too bad and, in our case, it mostly did the > work. But still, it would be nice to work toward a better Windows interface > that doesn't require to install Linux at all (on USB key, partition or > whatever). Especially when ones wants to be a teacher for the week and not > a sys adm... > > Best > > Viviane > > 2015-07-18 9:02 GMT+03:00 Dominique Laurain <dominique.laurai...@orange.fr>: > > > Interesting feedbacks for SAGE,maths,teaching,using VM... but I have a > > question : > > > > when you go teaching in far away places, why you don't go with a small > > equipement for a local area network (switch, Ethernet wires) ? > > > > because after installing the network, you can use your computer (for > > example Ubuntu OS) with a sage cloud, and all students only need an > > internet browser > > > > no need Internet, no need VM, ... > > > > If no need for sharing files, you have USB live SAGE too.... > > > > PS: at my job, I was told that VM working better on same native OS, > > > > > > On Friday, 17 July 2015 20:00:49 UTC+2, Viviane Pons wrote: > >> > >> Dear all, > >> > >> this last week, I was giving a class in a summer school in Uganda, along > >> with Jennifer Balakrishnan, on experimental mathematics (mine was > >> combinatorics and Jennifer's was number theory). Both classes were based on > >> Sage. Let me give you a feedback on using Sage here. > >> > >> Conditions; > >> > >> - around 30 students > >> - limited Internet: the university network was much too slow for us to > >> work with, we were given a special network bought for the school but the > >> data was limited (we had to buy extra data a few times during the week) > >> - every student had his / her own laptop. Only PCs, most of them Windows, > >> 2 or 3 linux (Ubuntu) > >> - most students had very limited computer skills > >> > >> Because of the Internet limitation, SMC was no good solution for everyone > >> to use. We still used it to do some demos, share code, and also as a backup > >> options for the students who couldn't get Sage running. > >> > >> Sage installation: > >> > >> Most of the students didn't have Sage installed, so the first afternoon > >> was devoted to install Sage everywhere. It mostly worked but we sometimes > >> had issues: > >> * hard drive limitations: some hard drive were completely full and VM + > >> Sage was too big to get installed (also their HD was often partitioned in > >> weird ways and the program partition was full) > >> * for some reason, the Sage VM takes forever to load on Windows 8 (which > >> makes it seem broken) > >> > >> Using Sage on the VM: > >> > >> Never had so much Sage on Windows experience before, this was a good test > >> and now here's everything that was wrong and annoying: > >> > >> * Once a Sage virtual machine was in "saved" mode, it would usually crash > >> on re-openning and we had to discard the saved mode (I guess because their > >> computers were running out of memory) > >> > >> * Sharing files between the VM and Windows was NOT straightforward at > >> all, the Sage explanation were not working (I think you need to change the > >> usergroup in Ubuntu or something like this), at the end I just dropped the > >> idea as I could not do it on all 30 machines at once > >> > >> * And I didn't manage to make them download any notebooks either, because > >> the notebook wouldn't take https addresses, so actually I had no way to > >> share notebooks with them!! (except on SMC) > >> > >> * pdflatex wasn't installed by default which for me was a real problem as > >> I use it a lot to print combinatorial objects (thank you Jean-Baptiste for > >> the ascii art on binary trees, it saved me a bit!). And because of internet > >> limitations and the lack of Ubuntu knowledge from my students, it was not > >> really possible to install it on all their machines (I mean the VM) > >> > >> * I couldn't get the VM to show multiple windows and not even multiple > >> tabs. This was so annoying... Sometimes a student would click on a link on > >> a notebook and there was no way of going back to where it was before... Or > >> to open Internet on the VM to download the notebooks or something... > >> > >> To finish, one very good thing that we need to keep: the Help link on the > >> notebook was great, the students were navigating on the different tutorials > >> and this worked very well. > >> > >> Anyway, this list is here to remind us what we could do better. I don't > >> mean to push anybody but now that we'll have full time developers, I > >> figured this real life experience was very useful for us non-Windows-users > >> to have (at the end, what's the point of having open source softwares if > >> the people who really need it can't use it properly?) > >> > >> Also I want to say that despite all of this, the school went really well. > >> The students were really happy to learn about Sage, they were the most > >> enthusiastic and motivated students I ever had. Both Jennifer and I were > >> able to do great mathematics and we had a wonderful time! > >> > >> If ever you're interested, my class material on combinatorics is here: > >> > >> https://www.lri.fr/~pons/en/eaump.php > >> > >> and the whole summer school material (including the previous week) is > >> there: > >> > >> http://people.bath.ac.uk/masgks/EAUMP/ > >> > >> Best, > >> > >> Viviane > >> > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "sage-devel" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > > email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > > To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. > > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sage-devel" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. 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