Archive/Current Events/2014-04-22

Sugar Digest
1. Daniel Narvaez just released Sugar 0.101.6 (unstable). See 0.102/Notes for detailed notes on changes since Sugar 0.100. The tarfiles are available at, , and new test builds are being prepared (keep an eye on 0.102/Testing). We've entered Feature Freeze (which had been extended by three weeks to enable us to land a few more features). Time to chase down bugs. Tip-of-the-hat to Gonzalo Odiard, Martin Abente, and Manuel Quiñones, who put so much effort into getting the last few features over the hump. Also, an extraordinary number of new features were contributed by our Google Code-in students: special kudos to Emil Dudev, Ignacio Rodriguez, and Sam Parkinson. Finally, it was really nice to see so many first-time contributors.

2. Gonzalo has made some videos demonstrating the new features in both Sugar 100 and Sugar 102.

3. We are reviewing Google Summer of Code applications. We had 35 applicants this year. We'll know in a few weeks how many slots we get from Google.

4. I traveled to Colombia a few weeks ago with Claudia Urrea to visit a wonderful ANSPE project in Chia being run by Aura Mora. Saw some old friends (Sebastian Silva, Laura Vargas, and Sandra Barragán) and made many new friends. The highlights for me were the two Turtle Art workshops: one at the National University in Bogota and the other with the children in Chia.

5. Claudia and Erik Blankinship joined me on a panel discussion at LibrePlanet 2014. The panel, which will be available online, was "No more mouse: saving elementary education".


 * The lack of a mouse and the presence of "the mouse" are having a detrimental impact on global elementary education. The rush to adopt tablets is putting passive tools of consumption into the hands of young learners at a time in their development when "making" is paramount. The "Disneyification" of media further erodes the opportunity for personal expression by young learners. In this panel we will characterize these threats and discuss strategies for combating them.

In the community
6. Sugar Camp #3 - Paris, hosted by Bastien Guerry, will be held from 12-13 April in Carrefour Numérique - Cité des Sciences.

7. Claudia will be hosting a Learning Chat on Wednesday, 2 April, at 10AM EST, 15 GMT. The guest speaker will be Gonzalo. Please join us at irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting. (These meetings will be held regularly on the first Wednesday of each month.)

8. The Sugar Background Image Contest has begun.

Tech Talk
9. I wrote a new activity while I was in Colombia: Word Cloud is a simple activity for generating word clouds from text.

10. Another new activity worth mentioning is Flappy by Alan Aguiar. Enjoy. (I cannot get past the first gate.)

Sugar Labs
11. Please visit our planet.