Marvell’s SMILE Plug for the “Classroom 3.0” initiative

SMILE = Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment
and this is currently a smartphone based solution aimed at the digital classroom.

In this sense it is a kind of a newer (only 1+ year old) approach than the 6 years old OLPC.  
(Read about Marvell’s OLPC involvement in:
– Marvell® ARMADA® PXA168 based XO laptops and tablets from OLPC with $185 and target $100 list prices respectively [Jan 8-11, 2012]
– Marvell ARMADA with sun readable and unbreakable Pixel Qi screen, and target [mass] manufacturing cost of $75 [Nov 4, 2010 – July 20, 2011])

Remark: Will be interesting to see OLPC related educational initiatives merged in some way with SMILE during 2012 as Marvell’s “Classroom 3.0” initiative is rolled out. An Argentinian report on SMILE success (see well below) notes that: “… pilot projects and programs, driven by governments in most cases by applying the model 1:1, or also known as OLPC (One Laptop per Child), … Unfortunately, no results have been achieved educational and cognitive testing. Moreover, assessments of international experts from various experiences of OLPC in the world are not the most encouraging. Most of these programs have focused primarily on an abundant supply of hardware, often with little support, but above all, without proper teacher training, which keeps pace with the massive deployment of equipment. On the other hand, the vast majority of digital content that are being used by several of these programs are not innovative and do not promote interactive learning and motivating children.”

No wonder Marvell is contributing to SMILE as well:

SMILE Plug at CES 2012 [Jan 25, 2012]

“… partnered with Stanford … actually where SMILE comes from … Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment …”

Marvell Showcases ‘Classroom 3.0’ Education Technology at CES 2012 [Jan 9, 2012]

ARMADA powered SMILE Plug and One Laptop per Child tablet transform traditional classroom activities with interactive, multimedia curricula for more engaging learning experience

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), a worldwide leader in integrated silicon solutions, today announced new education solutions designed to enable “Classroom 3.0,” a connected, secure learning environment that simplifies and speeds the deployment of technology to students around the world. Marvell’s collaboration with Stanford Universityhas resulted in the Marvell® SMILE Plug, the first plug development kit designed to turn a traditional classroom into a highly interactive learning environment. Designed to engage students in critical reasoning and problem solving, the SMILE Plug creates a “micro cloud” within a classroom that is completely controlled by the teacher. Marvell also announced that it has extended its relationship with the One Laptop per Child Association (OPLC) on a number of new products, including the upcoming OLPC X0 3.0, a low cost, low power tablet designed for education.

“Marvell is driving a revolution in the classroom with technology that improves the education experience for students and teachers around the world. We’re deeply committed to improving education worldwide, and through our work with organizations like OPLC and Stanford University, we are helping to transform learning from a static one-way activity to an interactive experience brought to life with compelling content, engaging interactive multimedia and numerous new ways to collaborate,” said Weili Dai, Co-founder of Marvell. “Marvell’s SMILE Plug, the first ultra small server designed specifically for multi-modal curriculum delivery, combined with our affordable, easy-to-use and durable OLPC XO 3.0 tablet, are important additions to the world’s classrooms. It’s a matter of time before we leverage the power of Google TV and other smart screens in our daily lives to bring knowledge experts from around the globe to any local classroom.”

The Marvell SMILE Plug, powered by Marvell’s high-performance, low power ARMADA® 300 series SoC and Marvell Avastar™ 88W8764 Wi-Fi, creates a micro-cloud, eliminating the problem of inconsistent Internet access within a classroom and creating a safe and secure connectivity for up to 60 students. The SMILE plug also securely delivers digital content to a range of devices, including personal computers and handheld devices. Teachers and students can now tap into an unprecedented amount of open or premium digital content. The SMILE plug also allows teaches to control and run interactive classrooms with real-time feedback and analytics, deepening the learning experience.

In tandem with the Stanford Mobile Inquiry Based Learning Environment program, Marvell has developed an easy-to-manage access point for a wide array of SMILE learning applications and has created an administration API and user interface, Plugmin, which provides access to many additional SMILE programs. These tools provide teachers total control of the devices and content used within their classroom for better lesson planning and student evaluation.

Additionally, the SMILE Plug Computer features an open platform based on Arch Linux for ARM, the Plugmin administration app and the Stanford SMILE Junction Server. The SMILE Plug includes a 5V Lithium-Ion polymer battery for back-up power, making it ideal for learning environments where electrical power can be inconsistent.

Also at CES, Marvell and OLPC showcased the first prototype of the X0 3.0, a low cost, low power rugged tablet computer designed for education in emerging markets. Built on the Marvell ARMADA 618 processor and its Avastar 88W8686 wireless chip, the XO 3.0 tablet will feature unique capabilities that allow it to be charged by solar panels, hand cranks and other alternative power sources. Marvell and OLPC also announced that the XO 1.75 laptop will begin shipping in February, with initial orders benefiting education programs in Rwanda and Uruguay. For additional information on the XO 3.0 prototype or the XO 1.75 laptop, please see the related release, “Marvell and One Laptop per Child Unveil the Eagerly Anticipated XO 3.0 Tablet at CES.”

Availability

The SMILE Plug will be available in spring 2012; please visit http://www.marvell.com for more information. The One Laptop per Child XO 1.75 will be available in February; please visit http://one.laptop.org/action/donateif you’re interested in donating or for more information.

Marvell will also be demonstrating the its education solutions at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in its booth, No. 30542, located in South Hall 3 on the upper level. CES will be held Tuesday, Jan. 10 – Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at the Las Vegas Convention Center (150 Paradise Road, Las Vegas).

Lesson 2: How Do I Use Inquiry-Based Learning with Youth? [national4H, July 20, 2011]

Creativity in Mathematics: Inquiry-Based Learning and the Moore Method [Aug 8, 2011]

Creativity in Mathematics: Inquiry-Based Learning and the Moore Method explores the world of Inquiry-Based Learning and seeks to identify the reasons behind its celebrated success. More than twenty-five influential teachers, top researchers, inventors, and leaders of industry attest to the life changing rewards that began for them in a classroom taught by IBL and the Moore Method.

Classroom 3.0: Why the promise of the Digital Classroom depends on technology addressing the human issues first. [Announced Departmental Seminar for Feb 3, 2012, UC Berkeley]

Jack Kang
Director, Application Processor Business Unit, Marvell

Classroom 3.0: Why the promise of the Digital Classroom depends on technology addressing the human issues first.

Abstract:
In this talk, Mr. Kang will share his vision for what a digital, next generation “Classroom 3.0” looks like. Before that however, Mr. Kang will focus on the people and process issues that have to be overcome in order to fully realize the value of technology–issues that technologists and engineers often underestimate. Covering use cases both in the United States and in developing 3rd world countries, the session will end with a  practical call to action, with an opportunity for students to immediately contribute to the Marvell SMILE Plug project, a revolutionary new product that will improve student lives today.

Bio:
Mr. Kang joined Marvell in February, 2006 and is currently director of Marvell’s Application Processor Business Unit. He has been in the semiconductor business for more than seven years, holding previous positions in design engineering at several leading technology vendors. At Marvell, Mr. Kang manages multiple product lines from design conception to mass market implementation and adoption. These include the industry-leading ARMADA PXA processors, which are fueling today’s premier consumer devices. Additionally, he oversees various market segments, including education, eReaders, gaming, tablets and other connected consumer and embedded devices. Most recently, Mr. Kang was responsible for the processor design powering Microsoft’s gaming console, Microsoft Kinect. This gaming console shattered sales records and was named the fastest-selling tech gadget of all time by the Guinness Book of World Records – totaling more than 20 million units since its launch in November, 2010.

Mr. Kang is currently driving the development of Marvell’s ‘Classroom 3.0’, a connected, secure learning environment that simplifies and speeds the deployment of technology to students around the world. A new device called the SMILE plug, central to Classroom 3.0, creates a ‘micro cloud’ within a classroom that is completely controlled by the teacher.

SMILE (Stanford Mobile Interactive Learning Environment) [Aug 4, 2011]

SMILE workshop (Stanford Mobile Interactive Learning Environment – open source mobile application and mobile interaction management system) engages participants to experience how the latest open source mobile learning environment helps teachers to engage students in generating mobile media-based inquiries and using the student-generated inquiries as tools to promote self-reflection among students and formative assessment for teachers. An Android-based mobile learning device will be provided for each participant for the hands-on workshop.

Description

It is generally acknowledged that student-created questions play an important role in the learning process (Dale, 1937; Dillon, 1990; Hunkins, 1976) and they have been demonstrated to improve student learning outcomes (Barak & Rafaeli, 2004; Commeyras, 1995; Dori and Herscovitz, 1999; Rothkopf, 1966). In posing questions themselves, students must revisit previous learning materials and reshape their thoughts relating to prior learning, thereby deepening their understanding (Marbach-Ad & Sokolove, 2000). Moreover, if students are made aware that they will be asked to create questions at a later time, they will actively monitor and attend to what they are learning during class in anticipation (Mosteller, 1989; Wilson, 1986). Despite these findings, though, student-created questions have remained consistently absent from the majority of teachers’ repertoires (Gall, 1970). Studies have reliably shown that only a very small portion of questions asked in a classroom are created by the students(Corey, 1940; Dillon, 1988), implying that a powerful pedagogical tool is being underutilized.

The affordances of mobile phones present a unique opportunity to reintegrate student-generated questions back into the classroom. More specifically, considering that students are already actively trying to communicate with each other during class on their mobile phones (Educational Digest, 2005; Gilroy, 2004), there is an opportunity to reorient this communication toward class material through student-created questions. Indeed, it is slowly being recognized and demonstrated that mobile phones are highly engaging tools to be taken advantage of, not prohibited (Kolb, 2008). For example, data collected by Swan et al. (2005) from four elementary and two middle-school classes indicated that the use of mobile phones in the classroom increased student motivation, improving their quality of work. With mobile phone ownership among children has increased byin the past five years (MRI report, 2010) and a current trend towards the consolidation of open-source mobile operating system platforms (Shuler, 2009), there could be no better time to take advantage of these affordances in order to increase the incidence of student-generated questions as an effective way to promote student learning and engagement in the classroom.

Therefore, a newly developed SMILE (i.e., Stanford Mobile Interactive Learning Environment – open source mobile application and mobile interaction management system) will be demonstrated in a hands-on workshop format. Each participant will be given an Android mobile device to participate in the workshop and two facilitators will coordinate the setup and lead the workshop. The mobile learning workshop basically engages all participants to quickly generate a variety of inquiries (Shown in Figure 1), reflect on the inquiries, and rate participants’ inquiries through a real-time mobile interaction network while the facilitator demonstrates how teachers might be able to monitor the progress of the inquiry generation process and types of inquiries participants generate.

There are several important features of SMILE that were deliberately designed to maximize its effectiveness. First, allowing students to include digital photos in their questions garners the learning benefits gained from the presentation of materials in multimedia (Mayer, 1997). Second, having students create multiple choice question items help the student thoroughly reflect on the learned principles while thinking critically in synthesizing learning concepts and generating inquiries that are logical and sound. Third, permitting students to rate each other’s questions provides feedback and incorporates an element of peer assessment, which has been demonstrated to be valuable to a majority of students (Williams, 1992). Fourth, allowing students to view who scored the highest may foster a “non-pressured,” yet ultimately competitive game playing-like learning environment, which has been demonstrated to maintain an optimally motivating learning atmosphere (Reeve & Deci, 1999). Finally, supplying the teacher with all of the students’ questions and responsesthrough the graphic user interface provides invaluable formative assessment information, which has been demonstrated to greatly improve student learning (Black & William, 1998; Cross, 1998). For all of these reasons, SMILE provides a particularly effective means of promoting student-generated questions and in the end it can encourage the participants to engage in real-time learning and assessment with a multimedia-rich interactive learning environment.

Contact Information

Paul Kim phkim@stanford.edu
Stanford University

SMILE (Stanford Inquiry-Based Learning Environent) Workshop 

Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE) is basically an assessment/inquiry maker which allows students to quickly create own inquiries or homework items based on their own learning for the day. SMILE workshop is designed to introduce SMILE to people in the world and help them take advantage of SMILE.

AECT 2011 workshop ::

Date: on November 9, 2-11 at 9AM ~ 12PM
Location: Jacksonville, Florida

This workshop engages participants to experience how the latest open source mobile learning environment helps teachers to engage students in generating mobile media-based inquiries and using the student-generated inquiries as tools to promote self-reflection among students and formative assessment for teachers. An Android-based mobile learning device will be provided for each participant for the hands-on workshop.

… [Included: Instruction Manual For learners by Sunmi Seol, Presentation document, Survey (paper / on-line versions)] …

Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE) [first published Feb 23, 2011, excerpted Jan 29, 2012]

“Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE)” is the subproject of POMI in Education.

What is SMILE?

Introducing SMILE: Stanford Mobile Inquiry-Based Learning Environment [Nov 21, 2011]

Using student inquiries as learning objects and meta-evaluation vectors

SMILE turns a traditional classroom into a highly interactive learning environment by engaging students in critical reasoning and problem solving while enabling them to generate, share, and evaluate multimedia-rich inquiries.

Background

Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE) is basically an assessment/inquiry maker which allows students to quickly create own inquiries or homework items based on their own learning for the day.

Overview

Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE) is basically an assessment/inquiry maker which allows students to quickly create own inquiries or homework items based on their own learning for the day. For example, students can freely take a photo (Shown in Figure 1) of a diagram or any other object from their own textbooks or any phenomena discovered in their school garden or lab and create a homework item.

 
Figure 1. Students taking a photo of their textbook

All student-created multimedia inquiry items can be tagged by the generator, but rated by peers to indicate how relevant or useful the item is to their own learning. Obviously, teachers or facilitators could decide to review the student-generated homework items from the homework pool, weed out the ones that may not be relevant and leave only the ones that are highly useful or ones with highest student ratings (i.e., rules could be made at the local level).

The SMILE application enables homework generation, completion and competition game during class. It offers opportunity to review what students learned in class and organize them and create their own inquires from them. Moreover, all student-generated questions are instantly collected, passed out to the whole class and all students are supposed to take a quiz created by all students and also give rating to each question based on standard rule made by local level. After students’ answers are submitted, they can review their results immediately. Through creating own question and sharing it with peers, students are able to check their understanding of what they learned for the day and compensate their lack of learning from peers’ questions. The instant activity blocks students’ learning of the day from fading away and after activity a teacher can give more additional information and detailed explanations to the class which helps them improve their understandings a lot. Quiz activity is controlled by teacher’s application so that students can not get distracted and do other actions. The current prototype of this application supports group/classroom level but village/school level, or community/school district level will be supported soon. Also, it enables a facilitator or teacher to map each inquiry or homework item with appropriate learning standard classifications. The former application is inside the classroom activity and the latter one is outside the classroom activity. The latter application enables students or teachers freely have access to SMILE server regardless of time and place if they have mobile devices. Basically, all homework items created by students are saved on SMILE server, and students can create their own homework items and upload them to the server. Also, they are able to solve homework items connected to the server. Teachers can review all homework items and manage all items to be high quality by seeding out ones which are not relevant to subject or have low-rating by peers from the server. In-out school network system offers continuous learning to all students and then they can pay attention to their own learning saving time and effort, and finally, are more likely to get better understandings of what they learned inside and outside the classroom.

 
Figure 2. Student-created inquiries incorporating own mobile photo

The immediate advantages of SMILE are in that it…

1. involves the learners themselves in the reflection and generation of own learning stimuli and inquiries;
2. makes it possible to have anytime/anywhere homework/inquiry generation possibility (where there is an opportunistic learning moment);
3. empowers the learner to generate and incorporate mobile multimedia objects from own environment;
4. allows the learn to rate peer-inquiries based on own assessment of the merit;
5. enables a collective management of homework quality;
6. enables any group or organization to track the academic performance of the learner at a granular (based on learning standards) level;
7. makes it possible to conduct a variety of comparison analyses for benchmarking purposes;
8. creates a competition or collaboration game environment.

Study

SMILE is composed of teacher’s application and student’s application. Teacher’s application was developed using Java language and it works on web-based system which Java is installed in. To support ad-hoc network environment, XMPP server such as openfire and apache were installed at the server and both applications also include Junction library developed by Stanford Engineering School. All users connected to the server have same environment, in short all students are controlled do same action. Only teacher’s application can manage the each step of the activity happening at SMILE. On the contrary, student’s application can do action sent from teacher’s message.

1) Teacher’s Application

• GUI (Graphic User Interface)-based application and it works in any system which Java can be installed in such as desktop, laptop and net book.
• Server IP is fixed but it is changeable and a teacher can change the path of Apache directory if the path is different from the fixed one.
• This application supports two ways for a quiz activity: first one is to let students create their own inquires, share, solve and get the result of the quiz during class and other one is using saved questions. As for the latter one, a teacher can freely select the quiz set from the server and pass it out to the whole class.
• A teacher can use time-limit quiz way inserting time limit at the application (Optional).
• This activity is composed of four states: connection to the server, making question, solving questions and seeing the results. A teacher is able to see the current status from the activity flow and each state button is disabled after the state is over.
• At student status window, a teacher can check each student’s submission of the question and answers of the quiz, and final score. A teacher is also able to see total numbers of students joined the quiz, ones of students submit the question, and ones of students submit answers.
• Score board window shows each student’s final score and right answer, his/her answer and his/her rating about each question.

Figure 3a. Teacher’s application of SMILE in India

Figure 3b. Teacher’s application of SMILE in USA

• Top score window is for noticing top score winners. A teacher can see who get highest score at the quiz and who get highest rating on their own questions.
• Question status window includes the following information: as for each question, who created, how many students get right answers, and what ratings this question get. Moreover, if clicking each question, a teacher can see real question at question window. After getting result, more detailed information is added to original question.
• If clicking save questions, student-created questions are saved and they can be used for future class or other students.

2) Student’s Application

Figure4. Login Window     Figure 5. Main Window    Figure 6. Make your question

• To join this activity, students are supposed to insert their name and server IP which is usually fixed but if server IP is different from fixed one, change it to the right IP address. If clicking login button, this application connect to the junction server and all students’ applications are under same environment according to the teacher’s application.

Figure7a. Main Window in India         Figure7b. Main Window in USA

• At main window, as shown in Figure 5 there are three buttons: Make your question, Solve questions, and See results. Each action button is automatically enabled so that students can not do different actions without a teacher’s direction.
• Each student’s application receives the message from teacher’s application, and action button is enabled and then each student goes to each action status by clicking the button. The first action is making own question.
• At making question state, students can generate their own inquires adding images related to the inquiry. At that time, students can use the pictures saved already or take a picture from their materials or everything around them. Currently, students can create multiple-choice question for supporting instant grading system. Using preview function, students can preview their own questions before submission.

Figure 8. Students are making questions

• If clicking post button, newly-created question is given to the server and the application comes back to the main window.

Figure 9. Main Window         Figure 10. Solve Questions

• After getting message “Solve Questions” from the teacher’s application, the next button is enabled. All students are under solving questions state.
• Students can freely go to next or previous question and also check answer and rating. Before submitting answer sheet, students can not escape from this activity.

11a. The picture of solving questions in india

11b. The picture of solving questions in USA

Figure 11. Students answering to questions made by their peers

• Accidental logoff may happen anytime but student’s application can join the activity is going on because the server is broadcasting the current state to all students’ application at regular interval.

Figure 12. Result Window  Figure 13. Detailed Result  Figure 14. Who’s the winner

• After all students submit their answer sheets, see result button is enabled and students can see their own result of quiz. As figure 9 shows, main result window includes total score and correct or wrong information for each question.
• If clicking detail button, students can check each question’s detailed information: correct answer, number correct people, average rating and my answer.
• Winner page has information about the winner with highest score at the quiz and the owner with highest average rating for their own-created question.
• If seeing the results is over, all activities of SMILE end.

Future Studies

Current SMILE will be expanded to an application which enables accessibility to quizzes outside the classroom. Anytime Homework application enables students and teachers have access to SMILE server regardless of the time and place. This application offers different access permission to both students and teachers. Students enjoy individual quiz activity by solving question items saved on the server and also they generate their own questions and upload them to the server anytime. A teacher is also able to have access to SMILE server and manage the quality of homework items saved on the server by removing the questions items with low rating or are less relevant to class-curriculum. Figure 15 represents next version of SMILE including Anytime homework and Junction quiz applications.

Figure 15. Next version of SMILE application

Publications and Reports

• Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment(SMILE): using mobile phones to promote student inquires in the elementary classroom
  Sunmi Seol, Aaron Sharp, Paul Kim
  Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Frontiers in Education: Computer Science & Computer Engineering, FECS 2011
• Proceedings of WORLDCOMP’11: The 2011 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing – Download Paper

People

Faculty       Research Assistant  Research Assistant  Research Assistant    Student

    

Dr. Paul, Kim          Sunmi Seol        Arafeh Karimi   Rashid Ahwazian  Aaron A. Sharp

Interview – Mr Paul Kim [Nov 18, 2009]

Chief Technology Officer, Stanford University School of Education

Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE) [Google translation from Spanish, Sept 7, 2011]
Speaker: Claudia Muñoz-Reyes

(Stanford Inquiry-based Mobile Learning Environment – SMILE)

In this digital age, characterized by the rapid development of technologies, people who have less access and education opportunities will be reduced to be at greater risk of leaving the cycle of poverty. They will be increasingly difficult to be able to participate in the growing economies of information and knowledge societies, thereby increasing not only the digital divide-but also what is most important, the knowledge gap. The preferential commodities and value-added of the Century 21, are information and knowledge. Without an innovative intervention that addresses these effects of globalization and rapid technological advancement, the gap will grow more and more, excluding the communities of extreme poverty can not ensure their own survival.

It’s nothing new in Latin America and other developing countries have been taking several initiatives and attempts to introduce technology in public schools in the last 2 decades. In many of these countries, where in recent years have provided rural and suburban schools, old computers, today these “iron dinosaurs” were not only obsolete, but not used and only pollute our environment. Even in the last 6 years, have been giving greater emphasis to pilot projects and programs, driven by governments in most cases by applying the model 1:1, or also known as OLPC (One Laptop per Child), where Unfortunately, no results have been achieved educational and cognitive testing. Moreover, assessments of international experts from various experiences of OLPC in the world are not the most encouraging. Most of these programs have focused primarily on an abundant supply of hardware, often with little support, but above all, without proper teacher training, which keeps pace with the massive deployment of equipment. On the other hand, the vast majority of digital content that are being used by several of these programs are not innovative and do not promote interactive learning and motivating children.

The purpose of SMILE is to provide a pedagogical change in classrooms, through mobile technology. The pedagogical model used is the “Inquiry-based Learning Model” (Model-based Learning Questioning) and models of learning based on problem solving, which encourage creativity, critical thinking and scientific attitude collaborative work, the 21 st Century skills in our children today. Consequently, our dynamic innovative teaching to implement, through mobile devices, focus on the student as the star of the learning process and the teacher becomes more of a facilitator of this process. This tool and formats developed Android platform and IOS (iPhone, iPad) also provides a great opportunity for teachers to quickly assess learning and performance of children individually and in groups.

The first pilot of this innovative program were in India, Malaysia and the United States between January and March 2011 and last experience in August of this year has taken place in rural and suburban schools of Misiones, Argentina, with surprising results .

Short Video of the last experience with rural and suburban schools in Misiones and Buenos Aires, Argentina:

SeedsofEmpowerment [Aug 17, 2011]

Multiple photos and other videos from our pilot projects in Argentina, Malaysia and India using mobile devices (smartphones) and tablets:

http://www.facebook.com/Seeds.of.Empowerment

SMILE (Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment) – Medical education [on slideshare, Nov 23, 2011]

SMILE-MedRIC Interview with Professors [Nov 21, 2011]

SMILE MedRIC-Part1: As part of SMILE project, Medical students in Chungbuk University used SMILE in their Medical Informatics class and created questions on HIV AIDS.

SMILE (Stanford Mobile Interactive Learning Environment)-MedRIC-Korea-Part1 [arafehkarimi, Nov 16, 2011]

Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5 – Part 6 – Part 7 – Part 8
Note: MedRIC (Medical Research Information Center), a Ministry of Science and Technology funded organization in S. Korea, focusing on research and development in medical informatics, medical data visualization, telematics, Virtual Reality-based medical training, and health communication and promotion policies and programs.

Background

Plug Computers [Marvell site, Jan 9, 2012]

Whether the need is remote access to data on a home network or to turn an entire classroom into a highly interactive learning environment, the solution is simple, convenient, and inexpensive. With a small form factor server called a plug computer, network connectivity is right at a wall socket.

Simply insert the plug computer into an electrical outlet and add an external hard drive or a USB flash drive through a USB port (depending on the deployment, a router may also need to be connected into the plug) — just like that, you have a network attached storage device.

Powered by Marvell embedded processors, a plug computer is packed with enough processing power and network connectivity for managing and serving up digital media files. It also draws less than one tenth of the power consumed by its PC counterparts enabling always-on, always-connected, and environmentally friendly computing. With a gigahertz-class processor, memory and storage the plug computer has ample processing power and resources to run any embedded computing application.

Applications for a plug computer include:

• Media Server
• Home Automation
• Remote Access
• A micro cloud for the classroom

Smile Plug for Education

Powered by Marvell’s high-performance, low power ARMADA® 300 series SoC and Avastar™ 88W8764 Wi-Fi, the SMILE Plug creates a micro-cloud, eliminating the problem of inconsistent Internet access within a classroom and creating a safe and secure connectivity for up to 60 students. The SMILE plug also securely delivers digital content to a range of devices, including personal computers and handheld devices. Teachers and students can now tap into an unprecedented amount of open or premium digital content. The SMILE plug also allows teaches to control and run interactive classrooms with real-time feedback and analytics, deepening the learning experience.

Plug Computer Developer Community

Pioneered by Marvell, the plug computer is originally based on the ARM ultra-low power architecture and built on an Open Development Platform. To encourage manufacturers to create applications on the platform, Marvell founded PlugComputer.org, an online community where developers can discuss ideas and share code solutions.

Enabling Classroom 3.0: Marvell SMILE Plug [Marvell platform brief, Jan 5, 2012]
Enabling Classroom 3.0: Secure Content, Teacher Control

Product Overview

Marvell® is excited and proud to create Classroom 3.0 with SMILE Plug. The SMILE Plug is a revolutionary way to change how technology is used in the classroom, offering unprecedented access to secure digital content, a seamless delivery mechanism, and a simple teacher interface to fully control the classroom.

Marvell’s SMILE Plug enables education institutions to create a micro-cloud within a classroom, facilitating a simple, low-cost way to network classrooms. The SMILE Plug eliminates the problems of inconsistent Internet access within a classroom environment, safely and securely providing connectivity in the classroom. The SMILE Plug also securely delivers digital content to a range of devices, including personal computers and handheld devices. Teachers and students can now tap into an unprecedented amount of open or premium digital content. The SMILE Plug also allows teaches to control and run interactive classrooms with real-time feedback and analytics, deepening the learning experience.

The Marvell SMILE Plug is being developed in partnership between the Stanford® University School of Education and Marvell—both of whom share the vision of using technology to revolutionize and improve the way students learn and educators teach. The SMILE Plug, which is named and built with Stanford’s Mobile Inquiry Based Learning Environment (SMILE), will provide the ability to establish a local Wi-Fi network for up to 60 students. SMILE turns a traditional classroom into a highly interactive learning environment by engaging students in critical reasoning and problem solving while enabling them to generate, share, and evaluate multimedia-rich inquiries. In addition, this creates access to many more SMILE learning applications. To simplify deployment and management of the SMILE Plug, Marvell has developed a plug administration API and user interface called Plugmin.

Smile Plug Components

The SMILE Plug contains the Marvell Plug Computer, as well as all of the software tools needed to develop applications for the platform. I/0 interfaces include 2x Gigabit Ethernet, 2x USB, Wi-Fi, and SD card slot up to 32GB. The Plug Computer is an embedded computer that plugs into the wall socket and can run network-based services that normally require a dedicated personal computer. Featuring a Marvell ARM-based CPU running up to 2GHz CPU with 512MB of Flash memory and 512MB of DDR3 memory, the Plug Computer provides ample processing power and resources to run any embedded computing application. Network connectivity is via Gigabit Ethernet; peripheral devices can be connected using USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi.

• Software Tools
The SMILE Plug will be based on Arch LinuxTM for ARM and NODE.js, as well as a plug administration API and Stanford’s SMILE environment and software development kit (SDK). All components adhere to the open-source model, making the SMILE Plug an ideal platform on which to develop or port any additional learning applications.  The Plugmin administration client runs on Android-based devices and enables easy administration of the SMILE Plug. Used in conjunction with the SMILE Junction Server Administration Client, the teacher can easily control or run interactive classroom learning experiences.

System-on-Chip (SoC) Solutions

The SMILE Plug Computer incorporates two of Marvell’s industry-leading system-on-chip (SOC) solutions to drive unparalleled application performance and connectivity in online classroom environment:

• Marvell ARMADA 300 CPU SoC
This is a high-performance integrated controller. It integrates the Marvell developed CPU core that is fully ARMv5TE compliant with a 256KB L2 Cache. The Marvell ARMADATM 300 (88F6282) builds upon Marvell’s innovative family of processors, improves performance, and adds new features to reduce bill of materials (BOM) costs. The 88F6282 is suitable for a wide range of applications such as routers, gateway, media server, storage, thin clients, set-top box, networking, point of service and printer products. For product information, visit http://www.marvell.com/embeddedprocessors/armada-300/assets/armada_310.pdf

• Marvell Avastar 88W8764 Wi-Fi SoC
This is a highly integrated 4×4 wireless local area network (WLAN) system-on-chip (SoC), specifically designed to support high throughput data rates for next generation WLAN products. The device is designed to support IEEE 802.11n/a/g/b payload data rates. The Marvell Avastar® 88W8764 provides the combined functions of DSSS, OFDM, and MIMO baseband modulation, MAC, on-chip CPU, memory, host interfaces, and direct-conversion WLAN RF radio on a single integrated chip. The device supports 802.11n beamformer and beamformee functionality, enabling a simplified, integrated solution. For product information, visit http://www.marvell.com/wireless/assets/Marvell-Avastar-88W8764-SoC.pdf

Key Features and Benefits

…

http://www.archlinux.org/

Arch Linux, a lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple.

Currently we have official packages optimized for the i686 and x86-64 architectures. We complement our official package sets with a community-operated package repositorythat grows in size and quality each and every day.

Our strong community is diverse and helpful, and we pride ourselves on the range of skillsets and uses for Arch that stem from it. Please check out our forums and mailing lists to get your feet wet. Also glance through our wiki if you want to learn more about Arch.

About Arch Linux [Dec 5, 2008]

Arch Linux is an independently developed, i686/x86-64 general purpose GNU/Linux distribution versatile enough to suit any role. Development focuses on simplicity, minimalism, and code elegance. Arch is installed as a minimal base system, configured by the user upon which their own ideal environment is assembled by installing only what is required or desired for their unique purposes. GUI configuration utilities are not officially provided, and most system configuration is performed from the shell by editing simple text files. Arch strives to stay bleeding edge, and typically offers the latest stable versions of most software.

Arch Linux uses its own Pacman package manager, which couples simple binary packages with an easy-to-use package build system. This allows users to easily manage and customize packages ranging from official Arch software to the user’s own personal packages to packages from 3rd party sources. The repository system also allows users to easily build and maintain their own custom build scripts, packages, and repositories, encouraging community growth and contribution.

The minimal Arch base package set resides in the streamlined [core] repository. In addition, the official [extra], [community], and [testing] repositories provide several thousand high-quality, packages to meet your software demands. Arch also offers an [unsupported] section in the Arch Linux User Repository (AUR), which contains over 9,000 build scripts, for compiling installable packages from source using the Arch Linux makepkg application.

Arch Linux uses a “rolling release” system which allows one-time installation and perpetual software upgrades. It is not generally necessary to reinstall or upgrade your Arch Linux system from one “version” to the next. By issuing one command, an Arch system is kept up-to-date and on the bleeding edge.

Arch strives to keep its packages as close to the original upstream software as possible. Patches are applied only when necessary to ensure an application compiles and runs correctly with the other packages installed on an up-to-date Arch system.

To summarize: Arch Linux is a versatile, and simple distribution designed to fit the needs of the competent Linux® user. It is both powerful and easy to manage, making it an ideal distro for servers and workstations. Take it in any direction you like. If you share this vision of what a GNU/Linux distribution should be, then you are welcomed and encouraged to use it freely, get involved, and contribute to the community. Welcome to Arch!

New Arch Linux ARM website! [June 22, 2011]

Welcome to the new Arch Linux ARM site! We hope you like the new layout, organization, and the brand new, unified effort from the PlugApps and ArchMobile teams.

For our existing PlugApps/Plugbox users, you have probably already got the new “rebranding” packages that renames much of PlugApps to Arch Linux ARM (ALARM for short), but beyond that, we’re still the same team members with the same goal in mind – to create an advanced but simple Linux distribution for ARM devices such as plug computers and newer ARM devices.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the change – post in the forums or get in touch with us in the Support menu.

Thanks for using Arch Linux ARM and you’ll be hearing a lot more from us as we go!

Welcome ArchMobile.org Visitors! [July 23, 2011]

You may not have noticed unless you came here looking for ArchMobile.org, but the domain now redirects to Arch Linux ARM.

ArchMobile was the first effort aimed at making Arch Linux run on ARM, with an emphasis on mobile phones such as the OpenMoko. PlugApps was the other effort, aimed at making Arch Linux for plug computers. They decided to join forces and create a new, unified effort, Arch Linux ARM, for all ARM devices. This redirect completes the move to Arch Linux ARM as the base for everyone’s work.

So, welcome! Post in the forums and join us on IRC!

Arch Linux ARM [June 26, 2011]

Arch Linux ARM is a distribution of Linux for ARM computers. We are aimed at ARMv5 platforms like plug computers, OXNAS-based ARMv6 PogoPlugs, Cortex-A8 platforms such as the BeagleBoard, and Cortex-A9 and Tegra platforms like the PandaBoard and TrimSlice. However, it can run on any device that supports ARMv5te or Cortex-A instruction sets. Our collaboration with Arch Linuxbrings users the best platform, newest packages, and installation support.

Arch Linux ARM is a full Linux distribution with all of the console, server, and desktop applications you’d find anywhere else. You can run many popular services, such as CUPS to print from networked computers; Apache, Lighttpd, Cherokee, and Nginx for web servers with full PHP and CGI support; FTP, NFS, AFP, Rendezvous, Windows and Time Machine-compatible Samba servers; or install a desktop environment (with a web browser, text editors, and more) accessible through VNC, DisplayLink, or HDMI displays.

The entire distribution is on a rolling-release cycle that can be updated daily through small packages instead of huge updates every few months. Most packages are unmodified from what the upstream developer originally released.

Platforms (exerpted as of Feb 1, 2012):

PlugApps maintains two software repositories specifically designed for the features available in each platform. The devices listed for each platform are those we officially support with precompiled kernels and root file systems tailored to their unique configurations.

However, just because a device isn’t listed doesn’t mean the software won’t run on it. Any ARM system with any of the architectures we compile for will be able to run the software, and any newer systems that are backwards compatible will be able to use the software as well.

Choose a platform from the menu above or in the list below to get started.

ARMv5

	Processor	RAM	NAND	Ethernet	USB	SATA
Pogoplug Series 4	Marvell Kirkwood 800MHz	128MB	128MB	Gigabit	3	1
Pogoplug v2 (Pink/Gray)	Marvell Kirkwood 1.2GHz	256MB	128MB	Gigabit	4
Seagate DockStar	Marvell Kirkwood 1.2GHz	128MB	256MB	Gigabit	4
Seagate GoFlex Home	Marvell Kirkwood 1.2GHz	128MB	256MB	Gigabit	1	1
Seagate GoFlex Net	Marvell Kirkwood 1.2GHz	128MB	256MB	Gigabit	1	2
SheevaPlug	Marvell Kirkwood 1.2GHz	512MB	512MB	Gigabit	1
TonidoPlug	Marvell Kirkwood 1.2GHz	512MB	512MB	Gigabit	1

ARMv6

	Processor	RAM	NAND	Ethernet	USB	SATA
Pogoplug Pro/Video/v3	PLX 7820 700MHz Dual-core	128MB	128MB	Gigabit	4	1

ARMv7

	Processor	RAM	Ethernet	SD	USB	Wireless
BeagleBoard	TI OMAP 3530 720MHz	256MB	10/100	Full SD	1
BeagleBoard-xM	TI DM3730 1GHz	512MB	10/100	Micro SD	4
Gumstix Overo	TI OMAP 35xx 600/720MHz	512MB	10/100	Micro SD	Exp	B/G, Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR
PandaBoard	TI OMAP 4430 1GHz Dual-core	1024MB	10/100	Full SD	2	B/G/N, Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR
TrimSlice	NVIDIA Tegra 2, 1GHz Dual-core	1024MB	Gigabit	Full and Micro SD	4