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Line 7: − + − Mel Chua, Anurag Goel, and Greg Smith ([http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007065.html 1], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007168.html 2], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007038.html 3]) have written extensive notes of their observations of our preliminary interactions with these young learners. In gisting my own observations, I found that the students are engaged, able to work at their own pace, each achieving a sense of accomplishment. They stay on task, help each other, and excitedly discuss their discoveries.+ − There are lots of little details in the interactions that have been revealed even over this short period, things such as the ease with which the children were able to insert their USB keys into a USB extension cable as compared to the difficultly they encountered with even USB slots on the front panel of the desktop; and the in-retrospect obvious need to use integer rather than floating point notation in Turtle Art. (The second-graders thought that 100.0 was one thousand.) At the Fredrick School, we sent sticks and helper CDs home with some of the children over the weekend. Only two out of five were able to launch Sugar at home, but two of those who were unsuccessful had been given no instructions at all, even to know that you need to insert the helper CD in before booting from USB. We will report new numbers next week.+ − 2. Bernie Innocenti and I were invited to Oslo to present Sugar to the Nokia QT software team. After an overnight flight, I went right from the airport into a conference room and began my presentation, running jhbuild from my laptop. About half-way through my presentation, my laptop overheated and died. Not to be deterred, I pulled out a USB key, borrowed a laptop, booted Sugar and kept going. The presentation was not as smooth as I would have liked, but the room full of engineers was pretty forgiving and noted that the only thing that didn't crash was Sugar itself. The QT team expressed interest in a wrapper around existing QT/KDE education projects such that they could be run from Sugar—most of this work has already been done. We'll also start investigating the work involved in adding QT bindings to the Sugar toolkit so that QT activities could more directly leverage the Sugar platform.+ − + + + − + − − ===Tech Talk=== − − 5. Aleksey Lim has been working on an implementation of a redesigned Sugar toolbar. There is a [http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~tomeu/toolbars_aleksey.ogv screencast] showing Write running with a first pass at the toolbars. While more refinement and testing are necessary, the initial look is quite promising—it seems that it should enhance discoverability, especially for early readers. One problem it addresses explicitly is the need to have some tools always available, e.g., Stop. You can follow the progress and the discussion on the Sugar Developer list. − − 6. While we strive to make Sugar discoverable, we don't have complete success. Ed Cherlin has started a page in the wiki titled "[[The_undiscoverable|the undiscoverable]]" to describe Sugar features that you might have difficultly discovering on your own. Feel free to contribute. − − 7. Thanks to the efforts of Thomas Gilliard, Sugar is now listed in [http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090706#waiting Distrowatch]. − − 8. Also, check out Sascha Silbe's work on [http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/versionsupport-project/repos/mainline/blobs/raw/1261a49d3e97c827b86acb48f64ab85c722e8fdf/datastore-redesign.html the datastore]. − 9. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-July-4-10-som.jpg|SOM]]). +
no edit summary
===Sugar Digest===
===Sugar Digest===
1. As is evident from Gary Martin's self-organizing map of this past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list, the pilot programs that Caroline Meeks and I are running at the Gardner Pilot Academy and the Lilla G. Fredrick Pilot Middle School are foremost on my mind. We are working with three grade-level groups: second graders who are studying geography (through the lens of their community), number lines, and clocks; third graders who are also studying geography and the application of their math facts to problem solving; and sixth/seventh graders who are doing a digital storytelling exercise.
1. There were some remarks made about Sugar by Nicholas Negroponte in ZDNET earlier this week that have caused a stir in the community. It is remarkable that their is still such confusion between operating systems (GNU/Linux) and user interfaces (Sugar) even in the minds of industry insiders. Rather than revisiting the SlashDot debate or the discussion on [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2009-July/025121.html dev.laptop.org], I refer you to an article that María del Pilar Sáenz R. has written on [http://www.archive.org/download/SugarUsandoSoftwareLibreParaAprender/sugar.pdf Sugar and the use of Free Software].
I also recall one of my early experiences working with Nicholas in the 1970s. At the time, there was no widespread use of personal computers; at MIT, we mostly worked on the MULTICS (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) time-sharing operating system. Various labs had expensive computers, often leased or purchased as part of a government research grant; they took great care to monitor computer usage--every cycle was accounted for so that the appropriate research account could be billed. There was one lab on campus which did not monitor computer usage, the Archtecture Machine Group. As I understood it, Nicholas did not think that charging for computer time was sympathetic with its creative use. As a consequence, ''anyone'' at MIT who had an idea that they wanted to explore would hang out ArcMac. Access and freedom to explore and express led to a vibrant, inventive learning community.
2. In the wow category, from Alan Kay: "[http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_405695.html Two girls, ages 8 and 4 win programming contest in Singapore]. Using that oddly unused in IAEP resource [Etoys] that just happens to be part of the Sugar distro."
===Help wanted===
3. Wayan Vota talked me into engaging in an "Educational Technology Debate" on [http://edutechdebate.org/archive/individal-and-communal-computer-usage/ Individual and Communal Computer Usage]. I sidestepped the topic and used it as opportunity to talk about software.
3. I put out a call for help with our Election Committee a few weeks ago. We need to hold an election for the Oversight Board in August. So far, I have gotten no volunteers. It is not appropriate that I run the election, as I am a member of the Board. It is not a lot of work, but it should be done a community member.
If you are interested in being a candidate, please add your name to [[Sugar_Labs/Governance/Oversight_Board/2009-2010-candidates|the list in the wiki]].
===In the community===
===In the community===
4. Simon Schampijer has posted a [[Marketing_Team/Events/Sugarcamp_Bolzano_2009|page in the wiki]] with information about the November 2009 Sugar Camp in Bolzano, South Tryol, part of Software Freedom Week.
4. Sebastian Dziallas, who has been active in the [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Education_SIG Fedora education SIG], is looking for testers for the Fedora [http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE_2009 POSSE] [http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/remixes/POSSE/POSSE-Education-1.iso Education remix]. (POSSE is a Red Hat-sponsored summer program to introduce university professors to the FOSS way of software development.) The remix includes a ready-to-go development environment for contributing to educational projects and getting-started resources for contributing to a number of projects including Fedora, Mozilla, Sugar Labs, and KDE Education. It can be used by individuals or by teachers, students, and classrooms that want to contribute to FOSS projects as part of their course efforts.
===Sugar Labs===
===Sugar Labs===
5. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-July-11-17-som.jpg|SOM]]).
=== Community News archive ===
=== Community News archive ===