Difference between revisions of "Sugar Labs/Current Events"

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=== Sugar Digest ===
 
=== Sugar Digest ===
  
We are on the eve of the release of Sugar (Sucrose 0.84). This is the second major release since Sugar Labs was founded and the community has shown great discipline in keeping to the release schedule while simultaneously making great strides in usability and stability. The complexity of the release process has been compounded by the fact that we are targeting a much broader base than previously. Not only are we working with many more GNU/Linux distributions (easily twice as many as with 0.82), but the LiveCD/LiveUSB distributions are playing a major role in our outreach strategy—supporting this diversity requires much more coordination and more testing cycles. As the new release is pulled into the distributions we'll undoubtedly get feedback about bugs—we are still too thin on the testing (Bug) team, but nonetheless, we are on a trajectory towards a much improved product that will reach many more children in the coming months.
+
1. Now that the Sugar community and the Release Team have wrapped up 0.84, it is time to talk about our “Big Overarching Vision Goals for 2009” I've written some notes in order to kick off the discussion.  
  
While much of work has been targeting low-level improvements, some user-facing Sugar (Glucose) highlights include "resume by default", which makes it much easier to access on-going projects and greatly reduces clutter in the Journal, and universal "view source", activated by "Shift-Alt-V". The community has also been busy enhancing Sugar Activities (Fructose). Old favorites have seen improvements and many new Activities have been added.
+
'''What are our objectives?'''
  
The Localization team has been busy. We have almost complete support for more than 25 languages and almost 70 active language teams.
+
In an era of ''limited resources'' there is still pressure to equate 21st Century skills with learning to use Microsoft Office; it is more important than ever to promote the use of free software that encourages learners to acquire critical-thinking skills, and to further the development of diverse communities of development and support around the needs of teachers and learnings. Children are not office workers and nothing in their future will resemble office work from 30-years ago. Our collective future is dependent on our children's ability to develop creative problem-solving and collaboration skills, which is not the same as “excelling” in the use of one word processor versus another.
  
The biggest changes in terms of infrastructure are the switch over to Gitorious for project hosting and the recent addition of addons.sugarlabs.org. Gitorious makes Sugar truly a distributed project. No one gates adding new projects or forking of existing projects. The intelligence is "in the leaves" and now the control is in the leaves as well. Visit addons.sugarlabs.org if you haven't done so already. It is modeled after the Mozilla addon site and it is much more accessible for the user (and efficient for the developer) than [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities/All the cumbersome wiki interface] we had been using. Further, it is designed for scale.
+
'''What are our strategies for achieving these objectives?'''
  
We are also on the eve of launching a static website as a series of landing pages for sugarlabs.org. Christian Schmidt and the Design Team have worked tireless to built a site that will be much more accessible to teachers and parents, many of whom have found the wiki to be impenetrable. Sean Daley and the Marketing Team have been helping fill in the many holes in the site's content and also turning my academic-speak into something comprehensible. A highlight of the new site is [http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com/projects/sugarlabs/betasite/index.php?template=page&page=learners a beautifully illustrated narrative] by graphic artist, [http://www.dongyunlee.com Dongyun Lee]. During a heated feedback process some great ideas for a children-oriented site that more directly interfaces to Sugar were voiced. Something to aspire to in the coming months.
+
While there are hundreds of instances of powerful learning tools, there are only a handful of efforts to create learning platforms. Sugar is such a platform. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution to learning—the one right way; rather is about a change in culture: computing as a resource employed by the learner as opposed to a service provided to the learner.  
  
Kudos to Simon Schampijer and all the members of the Release Team., Sayamindu Dasgupta and the Localization Team, Bernie Innocenti and Dave Farning and the Infrastructure Team, Christian, Dongyun, Sean, and all the members of the Design and Marketing Teams, and all the Activity authors and the various teams at the upstream distributions who have been helping with packaging, debugging, and feedback.
+
Sugar is new; it is incomplete; it has its rough edges. Over time, it will become more refined. But Sugar will always be demanding: We impose a level of discomfort because we demand a level of engagement missing from most educational software: Sugar is about the “hard fun” of learning as opposed to the facility of empty consumption.
 +
 
 +
It takes time to make a deep, systemic impact that results in a change in culture. Our collective efforts at Sugar Labs have influence, but the many challenges posed by the economic crisis, budget cuts, the energy crisis, global communication, “clash of civilizations”, etc. are mandating real change to the status quo. We have to be cognizant of these external influences.
 +
 
 +
'''What are our short- and long-term (measurable) goals?'''
 +
 
 +
Growth is an ambitious goal during a global recession; nonetheless, the goals for Sugar Labs in 2009 are to grow its community, broaden its code base, and most important, increase the number of children using Sugar.
 +
 
 +
While the core of the Sugar software development community is tremendously dedicated, tireless and talented, we are always going to be in need of more hands. While we have been growing this community incrementally—your enthusiasm is infectious—step-wise growth will occur when local Sugar Labs start coming on line. The launch of a half-dozen “labs” that engage local high-school and university students in making real contributions to global free software project in not an unreasonable goal for 2009 and it would easily double the size of development community.
 +
 
 +
Coupled with growing the software development community is growing the Sugar education community. We are beginning to cultivate a climate where the teachers who have been using Sugar in their classrooms are comfortable engaging in discussions among themselves and in some cases, with the development community. This trend is especially evident on the Sur list and in the blog sphere. Their feedback has been of tremendous value. But most teachers not actually part of a Sugar deployment are hardly aware of Sugar and until they make the transition from awareness to giving it their attention, they will not be engaged. Building a Sugar presence in the forums that teachers habituate is an important goal for 2009.
 +
 
 +
Sugar is a learning platform, so it is only relevant when it is in the hands of learners. By the end of 2009, we'll have reached over one-million children through Sugar deployments on OLPC-XO-1 computers. It is an ambitious but reasonable goal to reach as many children through other means of distributing Sugar as well: Sugar on netbooks; Sugar on a Stick; Sugar deployed through a terminal server. We have laid the ground-work over the past six months, working with the packaging teams of a number of GNU/Linux distributions; now is the time to leverage those efforts.
 +
 
 +
'''What are the means of getting there?'''
 +
 
 +
Getting our message out—also known as marketing—is a key to our growth. We've been living under the shadow of One Laptop per Child, which has meant that we have been able to focus on creating great tools arguable without (many) distractions. This has changed and in response, our marketing team has stepped up the clarity and quality of its efforts. (I am particular excited about the possibility of the viral marketing of Sugar.) However, we are being diligent about not over promising—we will stand behind our message.
 +
 
 +
On the technical front, we will be spending the next few months setting the goals for Sucrose-0.86. High on my list are better integration of SWF, Javascript, and non-Sugarized applications in general. I think we can do more to bring the gap between Sugar and other approaches, both so that we can invite more people under out tent and also let Sugar be a part of other efforts. Sugar on a Stick v1.0, will be launched in 2009 as well.
 +
 
 +
In terms of teacher outreach, we are exploring more formal and informal means of engagement. The proposal to the US National Science Foundation that we submitted last week focuses on a global assessment of Sugar deployments. The survey we are putting together for the teachers in Uruguay this week will be a vehicle for data gathering, but also a means to bring to the attention of teachers the importance of feedback. I expect that this by-product will result in a more in-depth, on-going channel. Local Sugar Labs will help in this regard as well.
 +
 
 +
'''Let the debate begin'''
 +
 
 +
These are my thoughts about our 2009 goals. I haven't mentioned important topics such as support and documentation. And I am sure that we'll find lots disagreement on the technical front. And as we are always going to be shorthanded, we'll always have to make trade-offs regarding competing goals and means. But by adhering to the principles of free and open debate, we'll continue to be able to leverage the benefits of our differences and our diversity. We will accomplish great things this year.
 +
 
 +
2. The new "static" website is live. Please visit and enjoy http:www.sugarlabs.org. Many thanks to Christian Schmidt for his great efforts. This new landing site promises to be much more accessible to parents and teachers than the wiki.
 +
 
 +
3. Dave Farning was the Sugar Labs representative at the Winter Camp meeting of FLOSS Manuals in Amsterdam last week. The FLOSS Manual effort continues to build momentum around community publishing. Anne Gentle just sent out a call for volunteers to help refresh the Sugar Manual in light of 0.84.
 +
 
 +
“Ideally we can complete revisions and screenshot updates by March 16th to coordinate with the software release itself.”
 +
 
 +
You can register for a login with FLOSS Manuals at http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Main/UserRegistration?origurl=/bin/view/Main/WebHome.
 +
 
 +
Once these updates are completed, FLOSS Manuals will offer a printed book for sale on Amazon (once we get the process ironed out) and Lulu. PDF and HTML versions are always available for free.
 +
 
 +
4. Recommended reading. Bernie Innocenti circulated a link to some interesting reading about software projects. Don't be put off by the title—there are some good ideas here ([http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/03/07/how-to-successfully-compete-with-open-source-software/ How to successfully compete with open-source software]).
  
 
=== Community jams, meet-ups, and meetings ===
 
=== Community jams, meet-ups, and meetings ===
  
* Walter be hosting a meeting of the Oversight Board this coming Friday (2009-03-07) at 14 UTC, 9 EST on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting
+
5. Fernando da Rosa is hosting a workshop for teachers ([http://www.fedaro.info/ Jornadas de Educación y TIC]) this week in Montevideo. We hope to [[Education_Team/Survey_questions|survey]] the attendees about their Sugar experience.
 +
 
 +
=== Help Wanted / Help Received ===
 +
 
 +
6. We need to clean up the [[DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas|Project Ideas]] page for our Google Summer of Code application. Please add any pet idea that they would like an intern to tackle.
 +
 
 +
7. Bastien Guerry has set up a [[Translation|translation wish-list page]] in the wiki.
 +
 
 +
8. We would very much like to include some photographs of children using Sugar (as opposed to generic child with computer) for the website. If you have any such pictures (or can take some this week), please contact the Marketing Team.
 +
 
 +
=== Tech Talk ===
  
* Walter be hosting a meeting of the Education Team this coming Friday (2009-03-07) at 15 UTC, 10 EST on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting
+
9. In addition to the update to the FLOSS Manual, the Release Team is pulling together notes for Sucrose 0.84.  They are requesting help from Activity maintainers. Please use the [[DevelopmentTeam/Release/Releases/Sucrose/0.84/ActivityTeamplate|Template]] to create a page and link it appropriately
 +
on the [[DevelopmentTeam/Release/Releases/Sucrose/0.84#Fructose_2|0.84 relese notes page]]. As an example, see the [[DevelopmentTeam/Release/Releases/Sucrose/0.84/Browse|Browse release notes]].
  
* Homunq will be hosting a Google Summer of Code meeting on Wednesday (2009-03-05) at 17 UTC, 12 EST on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting
+
10. Daniel Drake has been doing some great testing of the School Server in Paraguay.  
  
 +
11. Michael Stone is working on a new version of Rainbow that will work whereever Sugar works. He is looking for feedback and testing (See  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow).
 +
 
=== Sugar Labs ===
 
=== Sugar Labs ===
  
Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2009-February-21-27-som.jpg|SOM]]).
+
12. Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see <a href="http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:2009-Feb-28-Mar-6-som.jpg">SOM</a>).  
  
 
=== Community News archive ===
 
=== Community News archive ===

Revision as of 12:13, 10 March 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 and blogged at walterbender.org.) 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. Now that the Sugar community and the Release Team have wrapped up 0.84, it is time to talk about our “Big Overarching Vision Goals for 2009” I've written some notes in order to kick off the discussion.

What are our objectives?

In an era of limited resources there is still pressure to equate 21st Century skills with learning to use Microsoft Office; it is more important than ever to promote the use of free software that encourages learners to acquire critical-thinking skills, and to further the development of diverse communities of development and support around the needs of teachers and learnings. Children are not office workers and nothing in their future will resemble office work from 30-years ago. Our collective future is dependent on our children's ability to develop creative problem-solving and collaboration skills, which is not the same as “excelling” in the use of one word processor versus another.

What are our strategies for achieving these objectives?

While there are hundreds of instances of powerful learning tools, there are only a handful of efforts to create learning platforms. Sugar is such a platform. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution to learning—the one right way; rather is about a change in culture: computing as a resource employed by the learner as opposed to a service provided to the learner.

Sugar is new; it is incomplete; it has its rough edges. Over time, it will become more refined. But Sugar will always be demanding: We impose a level of discomfort because we demand a level of engagement missing from most educational software: Sugar is about the “hard fun” of learning as opposed to the facility of empty consumption.

It takes time to make a deep, systemic impact that results in a change in culture. Our collective efforts at Sugar Labs have influence, but the many challenges posed by the economic crisis, budget cuts, the energy crisis, global communication, “clash of civilizations”, etc. are mandating real change to the status quo. We have to be cognizant of these external influences.

What are our short- and long-term (measurable) goals?

Growth is an ambitious goal during a global recession; nonetheless, the goals for Sugar Labs in 2009 are to grow its community, broaden its code base, and most important, increase the number of children using Sugar.

While the core of the Sugar software development community is tremendously dedicated, tireless and talented, we are always going to be in need of more hands. While we have been growing this community incrementally—your enthusiasm is infectious—step-wise growth will occur when local Sugar Labs start coming on line. The launch of a half-dozen “labs” that engage local high-school and university students in making real contributions to global free software project in not an unreasonable goal for 2009 and it would easily double the size of development community.

Coupled with growing the software development community is growing the Sugar education community. We are beginning to cultivate a climate where the teachers who have been using Sugar in their classrooms are comfortable engaging in discussions among themselves and in some cases, with the development community. This trend is especially evident on the Sur list and in the blog sphere. Their feedback has been of tremendous value. But most teachers not actually part of a Sugar deployment are hardly aware of Sugar and until they make the transition from awareness to giving it their attention, they will not be engaged. Building a Sugar presence in the forums that teachers habituate is an important goal for 2009.

Sugar is a learning platform, so it is only relevant when it is in the hands of learners. By the end of 2009, we'll have reached over one-million children through Sugar deployments on OLPC-XO-1 computers. It is an ambitious but reasonable goal to reach as many children through other means of distributing Sugar as well: Sugar on netbooks; Sugar on a Stick; Sugar deployed through a terminal server. We have laid the ground-work over the past six months, working with the packaging teams of a number of GNU/Linux distributions; now is the time to leverage those efforts.

What are the means of getting there?

Getting our message out—also known as marketing—is a key to our growth. We've been living under the shadow of One Laptop per Child, which has meant that we have been able to focus on creating great tools arguable without (many) distractions. This has changed and in response, our marketing team has stepped up the clarity and quality of its efforts. (I am particular excited about the possibility of the viral marketing of Sugar.) However, we are being diligent about not over promising—we will stand behind our message.

On the technical front, we will be spending the next few months setting the goals for Sucrose-0.86. High on my list are better integration of SWF, Javascript, and non-Sugarized applications in general. I think we can do more to bring the gap between Sugar and other approaches, both so that we can invite more people under out tent and also let Sugar be a part of other efforts. Sugar on a Stick v1.0, will be launched in 2009 as well.

In terms of teacher outreach, we are exploring more formal and informal means of engagement. The proposal to the US National Science Foundation that we submitted last week focuses on a global assessment of Sugar deployments. The survey we are putting together for the teachers in Uruguay this week will be a vehicle for data gathering, but also a means to bring to the attention of teachers the importance of feedback. I expect that this by-product will result in a more in-depth, on-going channel. Local Sugar Labs will help in this regard as well.

Let the debate begin

These are my thoughts about our 2009 goals. I haven't mentioned important topics such as support and documentation. And I am sure that we'll find lots disagreement on the technical front. And as we are always going to be shorthanded, we'll always have to make trade-offs regarding competing goals and means. But by adhering to the principles of free and open debate, we'll continue to be able to leverage the benefits of our differences and our diversity. We will accomplish great things this year.

2. The new "static" website is live. Please visit and enjoy http:www.sugarlabs.org. Many thanks to Christian Schmidt for his great efforts. This new landing site promises to be much more accessible to parents and teachers than the wiki.

3. Dave Farning was the Sugar Labs representative at the Winter Camp meeting of FLOSS Manuals in Amsterdam last week. The FLOSS Manual effort continues to build momentum around community publishing. Anne Gentle just sent out a call for volunteers to help refresh the Sugar Manual in light of 0.84.

“Ideally we can complete revisions and screenshot updates by March 16th to coordinate with the software release itself.”

You can register for a login with FLOSS Manuals at http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Main/UserRegistration?origurl=/bin/view/Main/WebHome.

Once these updates are completed, FLOSS Manuals will offer a printed book for sale on Amazon (once we get the process ironed out) and Lulu. PDF and HTML versions are always available for free.

4. Recommended reading. Bernie Innocenti circulated a link to some interesting reading about software projects. Don't be put off by the title—there are some good ideas here (How to successfully compete with open-source software).

Community jams, meet-ups, and meetings

5. Fernando da Rosa is hosting a workshop for teachers (Jornadas de Educación y TIC) this week in Montevideo. We hope to survey the attendees about their Sugar experience.

Help Wanted / Help Received

6. We need to clean up the Project Ideas page for our Google Summer of Code application. Please add any pet idea that they would like an intern to tackle.

7. Bastien Guerry has set up a translation wish-list page in the wiki.

8. We would very much like to include some photographs of children using Sugar (as opposed to generic child with computer) for the website. If you have any such pictures (or can take some this week), please contact the Marketing Team.

Tech Talk

9. In addition to the update to the FLOSS Manual, the Release Team is pulling together notes for Sucrose 0.84. They are requesting help from Activity maintainers. Please use the Template to create a page and link it appropriately on the 0.84 relese notes page. As an example, see the Browse release notes.

10. Daniel Drake has been doing some great testing of the School Server in Paraguay.

11. Michael Stone is working on a new version of Rainbow that will work whereever Sugar works. He is looking for feedback and testing (See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow).

Sugar Labs

12. Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see <a href="http://sugarlabs.org/go/Image:2009-Feb-28-Mar-6-som.jpg">SOM</a>).

Community News archive

An archive of this digest is available.

Planet

The Sugar Labs Planet is found here.

Sugar in the news

14 Feb 2009 OLPC Learning Club – DCLearning Learning on a Stick
05 Feb 2009 xcoonomySugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick”
26 Jan 2009 Linus MagazineSugar Defies OLPC Cutbacks
19 Jan 2009 Feeding the PenguinsThe status of Sugar, post-OLPC
16 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsSugar on Acer Aspire One & Thin Client via LTSP
12 Jan 2009 Bill Kerrthoughts about olpc cutbacks
07 Jan 2009 Ars TechnicaOLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development
06 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsAn Inside Look at how Microsoft got XP on the XO
30 Dec 2008 OLPC NewsSugar Labs Status at Six Months
22 Dec 2008 The GNOME ProjectSugar Labs, the nonprofit behind the OLPC software, is joining the GNOME Foundation
16 Dec 2008 Feeding the PenguinsSugar git repository change
14 Dec 2008 NPRLaptop Deal Links Rural Peru To Opportunity, Risk (Part 2)
13 Dec 2008 NPRLaptops May Change The Way Rural Peru Learns (Part 1)
09 Dec 2008 SFCSugar Labs joins Conservancy
31 Oct 2008 Linux DevicesAn OLPC dilemma: Linux or Windows?
10 Oct 2008 Feeding the PenguinSugar on Ubuntu
21 Sep 2008 GroklawInterview with Walter Bender of Sugar Labs
17 Sep 2008 Bill KerrSugar Labs
16 Sep 2008 Open SourceSugar everywhere
28 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsAn answer to Walter Bender's question 22
20 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsSugarize it: Intel Classmate 2
08 Aug 2008 Investor's Business Daily'Learning' Vs. Laptop Was Issue
06 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsTwenty-three Questions on Technology and Education
18 Jul 2008 Bill Kerrevaluating Sugar in the developed world
28 Jun 2008 OLPC NewsA Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 Jun 2008 PC WorldOLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 Jun 2008 DatamationIf Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 Jun 2008 LinuxInsiderThe Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 Jun 2008 Bill Kerruntangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 Jun 2008 Open EducationWalter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 Jun 2008 Code CultureThe Distraction Machine
05 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Open-Source Controversy
27 May 2008 The New York TimesWhy Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
26 May 2008 Ars TechnicaOLPC software maker splits from X0 hardware, goes solo
22 May 2008 BetaNewsLinux start-up Sugar Labs in informal talks with four laptop makers
16 May 2008 OSTATICOLPC's Open Source Sugar Platform Aims for New Hardware
16 May 2008 PCWorldBender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI
16 May 2008 MHTBender jumps from OLPC, founds Sugar Labs
16 May 2008 News.comSugar Labs will make OLPC interface available for Eee PC, others
16 May 2008 Feeding the PeguinsThe future of Sugar
16 May 2008 Sugar listA few thoughts on SugarLabs
16 May 2008 xconomyBender 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 wikiDual-boot XO Claim: OLPC will not work to port Sugar to Windows.
16 May 2008 SoftpediaBender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

Press releases

 9 Dec 2008 Sugar Labs/Sugar Labs joins the SFC
 15 May 2008 Sugar Labs/Announcing Sugar Labs