Difference between revisions of "Sugar Labs/Current Events"

Revision as of 09:24, 23 November 2009

What's new

This page is updated each week (usually on Monday morning) with notes from the Sugar Labs community. (The digest is also sent to the community-news at sugarlabs.org list, blogged at walterbender.org, and archived here.) If you would like to contribute, please send email to walter at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit planet.sugarlabs.org.)

Sugar Digest

1. When Tony Forster modified the Physics activity within 24 hours of its initial posting on activities.sugarlabs.org, it was a sign that educations, not just developers, were beginning to take a lead in determining the shape of Sugar. But even more important than contributing patches is contributing to the growing body of knowledge about how to use Sugar for learning. Rosamel Norma Ramirez Mendez has been an outspoken voice on the Sur list, telling stories from her classroom (Rosamel is a teacher in Uruguay) and challenging the community in regard to using technology for learning to its maximum potential. She has recently blogged about some innovative uses of Turtle Art, which naturally caught my attention, and wrote a remarkable post on the Sur list about guided discovery. It is really gratifying to hear these stories from the field.

2. We held an oversight board meeting on 20 November. We passed a motion to close the slobs@ list to just SLOBs, move current slobs@ traffic to iaep@ with a [SLOBS] subject line tag where at all possible. We also passed a motion to give a two-week deadline to the Sugar-on-a-Stick decision panel. We spend the remainder of the meeting discussing our trademark policy. We are examining the policies of other projects to get ideas about how we might ammend our own policy going forward. We'll continue the discussion on iaep@ and at the next scheduled meeting, Friday, 04 December, 2009 – 15:00 UTC (10:00 EST). Minutes and a log from the 20 November meeting are available in the wiki.

Help Wanted

3. The Sugar-on-a-Stick team is looking from someone to help them with documentation. Please contact the list (soas@) if you are interested.

4. There is interest at the ministry of education in the Republic of Macedonia in learning more about Sugar. If a quick trip to Skopje is wihin the realm of possibilities, please contact me.

Tech Talk

5. Erick Lavoie and the Tutorious team have put together an .iso image that is available for testing. Please download tutorius-20091118.iso from http://bobthebuilder.mine.nu/isos/. The image is based upon the soas04.iso.

To create a tutorial inside the Calculate Activity:

Start the Creator by pressing the "double bubble" icon near the Tutorial list under the Activity tab;
Add actions like BubbleMessage from the toolbox window shown on the right;
Add events like Gtk Event Catcher (choose the "clicked" event type);
Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until satisfied;
Save;
Quit

To execute the tutorial created:

Close and restart the Activity;
Select the tutorial from the list

Sugar Labs

6. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see SOM.

Community News archive

An archive of this digest is available.

Planet

The Sugar Labs Planet is found here.

Sugar in the news

16 Nov 2009	zanichelli – software libero a scuola
12 Nov 2009	opensuse.org – openSUSE 11.2 Released
07 Nov 2009	My Broadband News – Mandriva 2010 packs a punch [and Sugar]
06 Nov 2009	GhanaWeb – Open education and an IT-enabled economic growth in Ghana: Musings of a dutiful citizen
09 Oct 2009	interdisciplines – OLPC and Sugar: mobility through the community
08 Oct 2009	IBM developerWorks – 10 important Linux developments everyone should know about
01 Oct 2009	OLPC France – Interview Walter Bender au SugarCamp
25 Sep 2009	The Inquirer – One Laptop per Child marches on
18 Sep 2009	Groklaw – The Role of Free Software in Education
18 Sep 2009	Reuters – Sugar Labs and Free Software Foundation Celebrate Software Freedom Day
17 Sep 2009	ICTDev.org – Dream Again with One Laptop per Child
26 Aug 2009	Latinux – Azúcar en una memoria USB
03 Aug 2009	Wired: Geek Dad – Inventing a New Paradigm: SugarLabs and the Sugar UI
30 Jul 2009	Zanichelli – Sugar on a Stick: imparare insieme
23 Jul 2009	Everything USB – RecycleUSB.com - Donate your Flash Drives for a Good Cause
22 Jul 2009	OLPC France – Sugar : mauvaise presse et mise au point
13 Jul 2009	Spiegel Online – Das zuckersüße Leichtbau-Linux
07 Jul 2009	ComputerWorldUK – Gran Canaria Desktop Summit: a Study in Contrasts
06 Jul 2009	Windows Forest – USBメモリなどから“OLPC”用のOSを利用できる「Sugar on a Stick」が無償公開
02 Jul 2009	Howard County Library – Sugar on a Stick
27 Jun 2009	Deutschlandfunk – Süßes für die Kleinen: Sugar ist Linux speziell für Kinder (in Deutsch)
26 Jun 2009	EduTech – Sugar on a stick, and other delectables (praise for the lowly USB drive)
26 Jun 2009	Ars Technica – Sugar on a Stick brings sweet taste of Linux to classrooms
24 Jun 2009	BBC – OLPC software to power aging PCs
24 Jun 2009	Technology Review – $100 Laptop Becomes a $5 PC
15 Jun 2009	TechSavvyKids – Episode 10 FOSSVT: Sugar on a Stick (audio)
10 Jun 2009	LWN.net – Sugar moves from the shadow of OLPC
27 May 2009	LWN.net – Activities and the move to context-oriented desktops (subscriber link)
27 May 2009	Business Wire – Dailymotion Launches Support for Open Video Formats and Video HTML Tag
01 May 2009	Guysoft – Nokia N810 Running OLPC Sugar
29 Apr 2009	El Mercurio – Así se vivió la fiesta del software libre
27 Apr 2009	ostatic – Sugar on a Stick: Good for Kids' Minds (and School Budgets)
25 Apr 2009	Free Software Magazine – The Bittersweet Facts about OLPC and Sugar
24 Apr 2009	Ars Technica – First taste: Sugar on a Stick learning platform
22 Apr 2009	Betanews – Beta of Live USB Sugar OS opens
27 Mar 2009	Mass High Tech – Google promotes summer open-source internships
18 Mar 2009	Metropolis – A Good Argument
16 Mar 2009	Laptop Magazine – Sugar Labs’ New Version of Sugar Learning Platform Is Netbook and PC Ready
16 Mar 2009	Market Watch – Sugar Labs Nonprofit Announces New Version of Sugar Learning Platform for Children, Runs on Netbooks and PCs
14 Feb 2009	OLPC Learning Club – DC – Learning Learning on a Stick
05 Feb 2009	xconomy – Sugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick”
26 Jan 2009	Linus Magazine – Sugar Defies OLPC Cutbacks
19 Jan 2009	Feeding the Penguins – The status of Sugar, post-OLPC
16 Jan 2009	OLPC News – Sugar on Acer Aspire One & Thin Client via LTSP
12 Jan 2009	Bill Kerr – thoughts about olpc cutbacks
07 Jan 2009	Ars Technica – OLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development
06 Jan 2009	OLPC News – An Inside Look at how Microsoft got XP on the XO
30 Dec 2008	OLPC News – Sugar Labs Status at Six Months
22 Dec 2008	The GNOME Project – Sugar Labs, the nonprofit behind the OLPC software, is joining the GNOME Foundation
16 Dec 2008	Feeding the Penguins – Sugar git repository change
14 Dec 2008	NPR – Laptop Deal Links Rural Peru To Opportunity, Risk (Part 2)
13 Dec 2008	NPR – Laptops May Change The Way Rural Peru Learns (Part 1)
09 Dec 2008	SFC – Sugar Labs joins Conservancy
31 Oct 2008	Linux Devices – An OLPC dilemma: Linux or Windows?
10 Oct 2008	Feeding the Penguin – Sugar on Ubuntu
21 Sep 2008	Groklaw – Interview with Walter Bender of Sugar Labs
17 Sep 2008	Bill Kerr – Sugar Labs
16 Sep 2008	Open Source – Sugar everywhere
28 Aug 2008	OLPC News – An answer to Walter Bender's question 22
20 Aug 2008	OLPC News – Sugarize it: Intel Classmate 2
08 Aug 2008	Investor's Business Daily – 'Learning' Vs. Laptop Was Issue
06 Aug 2008	OLPC News – Twenty-three Questions on Technology and Education
18 Jul 2008	Bill Kerr – evaluating Sugar in the developed world
28 Jun 2008	OLPC News – A Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 Jun 2008	PC World – OLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 Jun 2008	Datamation – If Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 Jun 2008	LinuxInsider – The Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 Jun 2008	Bill Kerr – untangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 Jun 2008	Open Education – Walter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 Jun 2008	BusinessWeek – OLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 Jun 2008	Code Culture – The Distraction Machine
05 Jun 2008	BusinessWeek – OLPC: The Open-Source Controversy
27 May 2008	The New York Times – Why Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
26 May 2008	Ars Technica – OLPC software maker splits from X0 hardware, goes solo
22 May 2008	BetaNews – Linux start-up Sugar Labs in informal talks with four laptop makers
16 May 2008	OSTATIC – OLPC's Open Source Sugar Platform Aims for New Hardware
16 May 2008	PCWorld – Bender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI
16 May 2008	MHT – Bender jumps from OLPC, founds Sugar Labs
16 May 2008	News.com – Sugar Labs will make OLPC interface available for Eee PC, others
16 May 2008	Feeding the Peguins – The future of Sugar
16 May 2008	Sugar list – A few thoughts on SugarLabs
16 May 2008	xconomy – Bender Creates Sugar Labs—New Foundation to Adapt OLPC’s Laptop Interface for Other Machines
16 May 2008	BBC – '$100 laptop' platform moves on
15 May 2008	OLPC wiki – Dual-boot XO Claim: OLPC will not work to port Sugar to Windows.
16 May 2008	Softpedia – Bender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

Press releases

See our Press Page

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 === Sugar Digest ===
-. I am writing this update today while waiting to see if I will called to jury duty. I was originally supposed to report last week, but a deferment was granted since I was in Bolzano. I am not sure why I had never been called before—both my wife and children have served several times. But unlike the airport in Rome, there is at least a place to sit and plug in my laptop and get on-line while I wait, so here it goes.
+. When Tony Forster [[Activity_Team/Modifing_an_Activity#Modifying_Physics|modified the Physics activity]] within 24 hours of its initial posting on activities.sugarlabs.org, it was a sign that educations, not just developers, were beginning to take a lead in determining the shape of Sugar. But even more important than contributing patches is contributing to the growing body of knowledge about how to use Sugar for learning. Rosamel Norma Ramirez Mendez has been an outspoken voice on the [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/ Sur list], telling stories from her classroom (Rosamel is a teacher in Uruguay) and challenging the community in regard to using technology for learning to its maximum potential. She has recently [http://blogedu-rosamel.blogspot.com/2009/11/tortugarte.html blogged about some innovative uses of Turtle Art], which naturally caught my attention, and wrote a [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/2009-November/004984.html remarkable post on the Sur list about guided discovery]. It is really gratifying to hear these stories from the field.
-I was in Rome overnight in transit from Bolzano, where we held a week-long [[Marketing_Team/Events/Sugarcamp_Bolzano_2009|Sugar Camp]]. Bolzano is in South Tyrol, in the Italian Alps. The autonomous regional government is a user of free software and is exploring ways in which they can engage the FOSS community more deeply. They have a regional development organization, [http://www.tis.bz.it/ TIS], that fosters FOSS projects in the region, provides infrastructure and support, and an annual Free Software Week. It was in the context of [http://www.freesoftwareweek.org/ Free Software Week] that we came to Bolzano.
+. We held an oversight board meeting on 20 November. We passed a motion to close the slobs@ list to just SLOBs, move current slobs@ traffic to iaep@ with a [SLOBS] subject line tag where at all possible. We also passed a motion to give a two-week deadline to the Sugar-on-a-Stick decision panel. We spend the remainder of the meeting discussing our trademark policy. We are examining the policies of other projects to get ideas about how we might ammend our own policy going forward. We'll continue the discussion on iaep@ and at the next scheduled meeting, Friday, 04 December, 2009 – 15:00 UTC (10:00 EST). [[Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2009-11-20|Minutes]] and a [[Oversight_Board/Meeting_Log-2009-11-20|log]] from the 20 November meeting are available in the wiki.
-Rather than meet at TIS, we (Simon Schampijer, Tomeu Vizoso, Dave Farning, Sean Daly, Stefan Unterhauser (Dogi), Carlo Falciola, Adam Holt, Christian Vanizette, and I) spent the week at [http://www.cts-einaudi.it/ CTS Luigi Einaudi], a technical school a short walk from the city center. We were given a comfortable room with Internet access, just upstairs from the school's coffee bar and next door to where the [http://live.gnome.org/ZeitgeistHackFest2009 Gnome Zeitgeist team] was meeting. Over the course of the week, we interacted with teachers, students, developers, and a variety of people in the region who have an interest in Sugar.
+=== Help Wanted ===
-We had a busy week. My typical day was to get up at 6:00, go down stairs for an early breakfast with David, who would have already been up for at least an hour, take a 20-minute walk to the school, arriving at 8:00, in time for the first espresso of the day. We'd write code, discuss ideas, brainstorm, and write more code until 20:00, at which point we'd make a plan for dinner—usually a pizza or some knudel and the local weizenbier or a glass of Lagrein. Somehow or other, we would never manage to get back to the hostel until after midnight. Pizza, Python, and friends, surrounded by the Dolomites—not a bad way to spend the week.
+. The Sugar-on-a-Stick team is looking from someone to help them with documentation. Please contact the list (soas@) if you are interested.
-We made progress on the roadmap for 0.88, having [[File:Ideas_0.88_0.90.pdf|brainstormed on a number of topics]]. The themes that rose to the top were: a simplified collaboration model; resolution of some outstanding issues regarding the Home View, e.g., how to best launch new versus resume activities; and some changes to the Journal—possibly the incorporation of versions and a better integration of the Journal into the activity workflow, e.g., making it possible to modify the description field while the activity is open. Other themes include accessibility and testing.
+. There is interest at the ministry of education in the Republic of Macedonia in learning more about Sugar. If a quick trip to Skopje is wihin the realm of possibilities, please contact me.
-Simon organized the discussions through the week. He kept us focused and productive. He also got some hacking in, spending time working through many of the issues associated with providing global support for spell-check. In doing this, he'll have laid out the framework for providing other global services.
-Tomeu spend most of his week being interrupted by people asking him questions. (Five minutes of Tomeu time usually was enough to keep me busy for a few hours.) But he did manage to make progress on his work on Python introspection. This work will lead to a much more efficient use of Python modules in Sugar.
-David and Dogi (working with Bernie and Aleksey from afar) did an overhaul of some of our back-end systems, which had been becoming stressed as more and more people are using Sugar. (For example, we've already surpassed 1.5-million downloads from activities.sugarlabs.org. It was just a few weeks ago that we reached the 1-million milestone.) They have also stream-lined the process for setting up local mirrors. We encourage you to set up a mirror in your region. (Argentina and Paraguay have recently set up mirrors.)
-Carlo helped us in drafting [[a set of guidelines]] by which third parties might work with Sugar Labs in establishing various value-added services to the Sugar user community. We will be discussing these guidelines over the next few weeks. We also spent time with Patrick Ohnewein from TIS to discuss opportunities specific to South Tyrol.
-Sean and Christian discussed a number of different opportunities regarding marketing. One idea that emerged is ''The Sugar Journal'', along the lines of ''The Perl Journal'', which would include articles written by teachers, developers, and other community members.
-For my part, I spent most of the week sketching out some ideas. I coded up a [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xb44q3_color-selector-2_tech color selector] for both the control panel (it has changed a bit since I made the screencast) and the initial start screen and started coding up an activity toolbar widget for accessing the journal detail view from within an activity (as opposed to as you exit an activity), and I learned a bit more about Cairo (it uses a display list) from Tomeu in my efforts to refactor the turtle graphics within Turtle Art.
-We had a series of really good discussions with the [http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist Zeitgeist] team. Their work definitely has long-term implications for the Journal and they expressed interest in making their work relevant to our needs.
-We also got some help on the Record activity from Daniel Siegel, the author of [http://projects.gnome.org/cheese/tour Cheese] diagnosed the problems we are having with Blueberry (apparently there is a Cairo bug in Fedora 12) and on the OLPC XO 1.5 hardware (there is a missing driver).
-. Before heading to Bolzano, I made a quick trip to the West Coast to give a keynote that the QT Developers Day conference. Lots of enthusiasm for Sugar and lots of work being put into Qt on small-footprint devices.
-. Eric Bachard has announced [http://eric.bachard.free.fr/news/2009/11/ooo4kidsactivityxo-is-available.html the availability of the Sugar port of OOo4Kids] (Open Office for Kids). A .xo bundle should be available for download from [http://activities.sugarlabs.org activities.sugarlabs.org] soon.
-. We had a Sugar Labs oversight board meeting last Friday in which we discussed mailing list policies. The meeting [[Oversight_Board/Meeting_Log-2009-11-13|log]] is available in the wiki. The next meeting is scheduled for Friday, 20 November 2009 at 15:00 UTC (10:00 EST).
-. The Spanish-language version of Sdenka Z. Salas Pilco's guide to using Sugar in the classroom is available on the wiki (Please see [[File:La_Laptop_XO_en_el_Aula.pdf]]).
-=== In the community ===
-. OLPC Germany will meet in Hamburg on November 22. Please see [http://wiki.olpc-deutschland.de/wiki/Mitgliederversammlung/2009 Mitgliederversammlung 2009]. Everyone interested in OLPC and Sugar is invited!
-. OLPC-San Francisco and OLPC NYC are planning community summits on November 21. Please see [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea/OLPCSF_Community_Summit_2009 OLPC SF Community Summit 2009].
 === Tech Talk ===
-. Sebastian Dziallas announced that after considering input from the various teams involved in Sugar Labs and the Sugar on a Stick creation, we're shifting the release schedule as follows:
+. Erick Lavoie and the Tutorious team have put together an .iso image that is available for testing. Please download tutorius-20091118.iso from http://bobthebuilder.mine.nu/isos/. The image is based upon the soas04.iso.
-:2009-11-17  Fedora 12 Final Release
+To create a tutorial inside the Calculate Activity:
-:2009-11-29  Image Gold Master Creation & Upload
+# Start the Creator by pressing the "double bubble" icon near the Tutorial list under the Activity tab;
-:2009-12-08  Sugar on a Stick (Blueberry) Public Release
+# Add actions like BubbleMessage from the toolbox window shown on the right;
+# Add events like Gtk Event Catcher (choose the "clicked" event type);
+# Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until satisfied;
+# Save;
+# Quit
-Please consider Sugar on a Stick V2 to be in freeze.
+To execute the tutorial created:
+# Close and restart the Activity;
+# Select the tutorial from the list
 === Sugar Labs ===
-. Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past two weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-Oct-31-Nov-6-som.jpg|SOM]] and [[:File:2009-November-7-13-som.jpg|SOM]]).
+. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-November-14-20-som.jpg|SOM]].
 === Community News archive ===