Changes

It was great to have the opportunity to spend three uninterrupted hours talking with Pablo and Caroline about ideas for further engaging with teachers in Uruguay on the drive up—the key is capture and share the very local discussions among teachers and to draw them into to the broader discussion. We are considering designating regional amanuenses who'd be responsible for communication between groups with the goal that eventually individual teachers would become confident enough to engage directly.

It was great to have the opportunity to spend three uninterrupted hours talking with Pablo and Caroline about ideas for further engaging with teachers in Uruguay on the drive up—the key is capture and share the very local discussions among teachers and to draw them into to the broader discussion. We are considering designating regional amanuenses who'd be responsible for communication between groups with the goal that eventually individual teachers would become confident enough to engage directly.

At the meeting itself, Sugar on a Stick was the main event. As soon as we walked in the door, we attracted a crowd and soon the entire lobby of the inn was full of smiling teachers running Sugar on their laptops and netbooks. There was even an HP tablet PC running Sugar. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well Sugar ran with the touch screen. After lunch we gathered in a conference room where everyone had a laptop and SoaS USB key. I was up front, giving an overview of Sugar (using Turtle Art for my presentation, of course) while Caroline and Pablo walked the room, helping people get started. By the end of the hour, everyone was up and running—a roomful of happy Sugar users on a wide variety of platforms. There were a few network problems and the version of SoaS we were running didn't have the proper audio patches, but it was unequivocally a very successful debut. Many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make it happen.

At the meeting itself, Sugar on a Stick was the main event. As soon as we walked in the door, we attracted a crowd, and soon the entire lobby of the inn was full of smiling teachers running Sugar on their laptops and netbooks. There was even an HP tablet PC running Sugar. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well Sugar ran with the touch screen. After lunch we gathered in a conference room where everyone had a laptop and SoaS USB key. I was up front, giving an overview of Sugar (using Turtle Art for my presentation, of course) while Caroline and Pablo walked the room, helping people get started. By the end of the hour, everyone was up and running—a roomful of happy Sugar users on a wide variety of platforms. There were a few network problems and the version of SoaS we were running didn't have the proper audio patches, but it was unequivocally a very successful debut. Many thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make it happen.

Pablo slept on the ride home; Caroline and I discussed strategies for getting to the next step: engaging teachers in regard to using Sugar for learning. (We have growing confidence that we can get Sugar into their hands, but we want to help ensure that they get a clear picture of the many ways that they can leverage it in their classrooms.  

Pablo slept on the ride home; Caroline and I discussed strategies for getting to the next step: engaging teachers in regard to using Sugar for learning. We have growing confidence that we can get Sugar into their hands, but we want to help ensure that they get a clear picture of the many ways that they can leverage it in their classrooms.  

2. Caroline's call for short videos of Sugar Activities is one mechanism we should use to spread the word on creative uses of Sugar. Maybe we can set up a Sugar channel on [dailymotion.com Daily Motion] or take advantage of their [http://olpc.dailymotion.com/ OLPC channel]. A less bandwidth-intensive approach would be to revisit the "Sugar Cards" idea. The Squeak project has [http://www.etoysillinois.org/search.php?q=squeakcards "Squeak Cards"], a model we could readily emulate.

2. Caroline's call for short videos of Sugar Activities is one mechanism we should use to spread the word on creative uses of Sugar. Maybe we can set up a Sugar channel on [dailymotion.com Daily Motion] or take advantage of their [http://olpc.dailymotion.com/ OLPC channel]. A less bandwidth-intensive approach would be to revisit the "Sugar Cards" idea. The Squeak project has [http://www.etoysillinois.org/search.php?q=squeakcards "Squeak Cards"], a model we could readily emulate.

3. Another topic we touched on was one I had been discussing with Pascal Chesnais last fall: why do we use IRC for our own work, while building Jabber-based tools for Sugar collaboration. It is great to have IRC on Sugar, but it would be a good exercise to “eat our own dogfood” but using more Jabber in our development process.

3. Another topic we touched on was one I had been discussing with Pascal Chesnais last fall: why do we use IRC for our own work, while building Jabber-based tools for Sugar collaboration. It is great to have IRC on Sugar, but it would be a good exercise to “eat our own dogfood” by using more Jabber in our development process.

4. Saturday, Caroline and I will be at the Waltham YMCA, where we'll be exercising Sugar on a Stick with children and their parents. The computer room full of mismatched castaway PCs, some of which won't even boot into Windows XP. Running Sugar on a Stick really does breath new life into these machines: it boots quickly and seems quite lively in comparison to Windows (I had the painful experience of having to boot each of the machines into Windows in order to note the static IP address assigned to each machine, so I had a great opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison. There was no comparison.)

4. Saturday, Caroline and I will be at the Waltham YMCA, where we'll be exercising Sugar on a Stick with children and their parents. The computer room full of mismatched castaway PCs, some of which won't even boot into Windows XP. Running Sugar on a Stick really does breath new life into these machines: it boots quickly and seems quite lively in comparison to Windows (I had the painful experience of having to boot each of the machines into Windows in order to note the static IP address assigned to each machine, so I had a great opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison. There was no comparison.)