Honest answer is I don’t know!
Kolibri works best with a school that has some technical background while RPi works anywhere.
I do like Kolibri but it is harder to use.
I hope that helps
I have come across a Pi shop that says they supply to Zambia. I haven’t tried them yet but it might be worth checking then out
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@SachaChillier RACHEL provides some content not available in Kolibri as far as I know. The Wikipedia modules for instance.
@giakonda Thanks for your answer!
I was wondering if it worth the effort to install only Kolibri and then let the teachers create classrooms and manage them all year long in term of access to specific content or if Rachel, which is indeed easier to use, is enough.
And thanks for the link to pishop. I just checked and they indeed offer delivery, for 590 Rands. Could be worth it when ordering multiple units…
@jamesk Thanks. That’s true !
I was wondering if there was any other reason to choose Rachel over Kolibri. For me, the Kolibri interface is nicer, more “polished” than Rachel.
And Happy New Year to everyone!
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You’re welcome @SachaChillier. I agree that the Kolibri interface is more polished. RACHEL’s interface has stayed mostly the same and I think this is to maintain support for older deployments where the devices accessing it may be much older. Kolibri is also included by default with RACHEL-Pi so you don’t really have to choose between the two if you do use RACHEL.
Happy new year to you too!
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Hi @SachaChillier – RACHEL is kind of like walking into a library, a student has a very broad range of books, types of books, methods of learning, click-in flip some pages and click out. The RACHEL platform also allows for uploads of local content there on site, a heavily used feature in many deployments. A student is likely to have more room to explore their curiosity and self direct some learning.
Kolibri is a wonderful resource that I tend to most often recommend when you have a particular skill to teach and a teacher on site to help administer a course. It is by far the most used resource on RACHEL.
The two work great together and the polish of Kolibri is wonderful.
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Thanks for all your replies.
I am soon starting a pilot project in a community school in Lusaka and they will have a raspberry pi 4 for one month with the Raspberry Pi OS and then another month with RACHEL installed.
I was wondering is there are any tools that I can install and that could register the activity of the RPi during the time it is on location to see how often they used it and how?
This could really help me push to obtain more funds and install more RPi in more schools.
Hi @SachaChillier,
RACHEL-Pi uses apache2 which stores access logs in the /var/log/apache2/ folder. If the device is rebooted or if the log gets too big it will be “rotated” and the old logs will be stored in different archive files in /var/log/apache2/ as access.log.1.gz, access.log.2.gz, etc. So by the time you get the device back there will likely be many different log archives in that folder. The RACHEL-Pi admin interface does have a stats page with a basic overview of the access to the modules, but it won’t cover all of those various access logs, just the most recent one.
This is what I suggest you do as a test before deployment.
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Connect to the RACHEL-Pi with different devices and browsers, browse modules, reboot it, shut it down for a while, etc, and then transfer all the access.log and access.log.gz files from /var/log/apache2 on the RACHEL-Pi to your PC.
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Extract the logs out of the .gz files using 7-Zip
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Open the logs in a log utility like https://www.apacheviewer.com/ . There are a lots of tools like these and most have a 30 day free trial. This will give you a nice visualization of your logs.
I say try this beforehand because I am unsure how many log archives will be kept and I can help you with any of this if you’re not familiar with Linux. I can help you look at turning off log rotating and increase the number of logs being stored on the system before they get deleted as well.
Hope that helps
Hello @jamesk,
Thank you very much for your answer.
I am sorry to answer that late, but I never receive the notifications from the forum…
The RPi I use will be dropped at a school for a month this week, but I will try that as soon as I get it back.
And yes, I am not familiar with Linux (mac user since childhood…) so thanks for your support, I will contact you in case I need help!
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Hi @SachaChillier
VOTS school has been using RPi for some time now you may like to visit them.
Also Im a member of NAQEZ Arron Chanza Ed. visited a couple of our partner schools in Southern Province an was very impressed with RPi. He may be very interested in what you are doing. NAQEZ.org
Hello @giakonda,
Yes I visited VOTS end of last year with Joel after you gave me his contact. It was very interesting and it looks like they are doing a great job with the equipment you provided!
I still have to convince the NGO I work for that using RPi in community schools make sense, and I have to test this solution before we take any decision. There is not a lot of funding for the project I am working on so we need to find a solution that is then implementable in multiple schools without breaking the bank (inverter and solar panels are way too expensive for example).
And good think to know that NAQEZ could be interested. I just had a look at their website and it looks interesting. It is good to see that such organisation exists and work with the MOGE to improve education in Zambia.
If you want to speak to him about me, feel free. It is always a good thing to partner up and get to know the people working towards the same goal!
Hi @SachaChillier - You’re welcome and that’s no problem at all. Feel free to message me if you have any questions when it’s back. I hope it goes well!
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This morning I was with one colleague and we tried to connect some computers through a switch to the RPi running Rachel.
It was not possible to connect… We tried with two different switches (HP J9776A and a big Cisco one) and the HP laptop running windows 10 “refused to connect”.
When connecting directly the RPi to the computer, it’s working.
We also tried with an old 24’ iMac, and no way to connect, with the switch or the direct connection.
In each case, I was wirelessly connected to the RPi with another computer and my phone to check the LAN address to access Rachel, which was always 127.0.0.1 when connecting through the switches.
Can you help me with this trouble?
I know that the installation done in some schools by Giakonda uses switches to connect all the computers, so I was very surprised that it did not work. I went through the documentation that I know about, but could not find any explanation…
I am hoping to be able to solve that problem soon so I can install the RPi with Rachel in one school until the end of this term for them to try it out, and their computers do not have wifi connectivity.
Thanks in advance for your suggestions or help.
You need a DHCP server. I use old router to do that job.You could install DHCP on the pi ethernet port but I was afraid messing uptthe ppi configuration. Old routers are easily found here in the UK. You could use a proper broadband mobile router this would have the advantage of giving some accessto the Internet if there was a mast nearby
You could always give the devices static ip addresses but that is a bit of a pain for more than a few devices.
I should have also said you need to connect the router to the switch with an ethernet cable. This will allow the DHCP service on the router to provide ip addresses to all devices connected via the switch.
The wireless connection works because there is a DHCP service on the wireless port
Hi @SachaChillier - Currently the dnsmasq service which provides DHCP on the Pi is only configured for the Wifi interface. This is because there is only one ethernet port and the concern is that if it provides DHCP over ethernet it may interfere with the main use of that port as WAN to download content.
I highly suggest going with @giakonda’s suggestions and use a router, but if you have a switch available I can help you configure DHCP over ethernet to work with it. The main file we would edit is /etc/dnsmasq/dnsmasq.conf and we’d add similar settings to what is already there but for eth0.
James
Thanks a lot @giakonda and @jamesk,
I will definitely try the router option as I know for sure that there are some available at the office. I hope to find one that is working and can perform this task.
So, if I try to summarise:
- I connect the RPi to the router with an ethernet cable
- then the router to the switch with an ethernet cable
- then the switch to all the computers that will access Rachel
Do I need a specific type of router and configure it?
That is the part I am not confortable with…
Yeah the router option is the best. We generally suggest using one for the WiFi connection as well as they’re generally better than the Raspberry Pi’s. The general procedure with routers is
- Connect the RACHEL-Pi to the router with an ethernet cable
- Assign the RACHEL-Pi a static ip address and if you’d like, a domain as well
- Connect any other devices to the router with ethernet cables and they can access RACHEL on that static IP or domain
With a switch you should just be able to add these steps
- Connect the switch to the router using an ethernet cable
- Connect the devices to the switch with ethernet cables
- All of those devices should be able to access the static IP.
I don’t think there will be much more configuration than that, but If you already have a router/switch you can post the device models and Howard and I can take a look over it for you.
James
The router should work out of the box. You may have to push the reset button to return to factory defaults, the ssid admin password etc are usually written on a label on the router.
in my experience the WiFi signal from the Pi is much better than the router. It is a good idea to make sure the router is as far from the router as possible. The limit for cat v, ie network cable is 90m.
Let me know how it goes 