Changes

=== Sugar Digest ===  

=== Sugar Digest ===  

1. It was busy week: Simon, Aleksey, Sascha, and Tomeu have been working around the clock on putting the finishing touches on the new 0.86 release of Sugar while Gary has been trying to keep pace with testing and documentation. It is looking great. I kept busy too: chacing a few more bugs in Turtle Art; writing a grant proposal with help from David, David, and Caroline to the Wal-Mart foundation (seeking support to run teacher workshops and do outreach); meeting with a team from Babson who will help us develop a plan for how to present Sugar to school districts; a panel at the Harvard Kennedy School to a gathering of entrepreurs in technology and development, ‘Beyond Mobile: The Next Generation of Technology for Empowerment’; an article in [http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090918110925298 Groklaw] (with lots of help from Sean); and a presentation at Software Freedom Day.

1. It was busy week: Simon, Aleksey, Sascha, and Tomeu have been working around the clock on putting the finishing touches on the new 0.86 release of Sugar while Gary has been trying to keep pace with testing and documentation. It is looking great. I kept busy too: chacing a few more bugs in Turtle Art; writing a grant proposal with help from David, David, and Caroline to the Wal-Mart foundation (seeking support to run teacher workshops and do outreach); meeting with a team from Babson who will help us develop a plan for how to present Sugar to school districts; a panel at the Harvard Kennedy School to a gathering of entrepreneurs in technology and development, ‘Beyond Mobile: The Next Generation of Technology for Empowerment’; an article in [http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090918110925298 Groklaw] (with lots of help from Sean); and a presentation at Software Freedom Day.

I did have a chance to do some reading: Bahktiar Mikhak posted a link to an old paper by Seymour Papert, [http://www.papert.org/articles/ComputerCriticismVsTechnocentric.html "Computer Criticism vs. Technocentric Thinking"]. He wrote it almost 30-years ago and I had last read it more than 10-years ago, but it is still relevamt today.

I did have a chance to do some reading: Bahktiar Mikhak posted a link to an old paper by Seymour Papert, [http://www.papert.org/articles/ComputerCriticismVsTechnocentric.html "Computer Criticism vs. Technocentric Thinking"]. He wrote it almost 30-years ago and I had last read it more than 10-years ago, but it is still relevamt today.

Another gem: "If you ask, 'What does a LOGO practitioner need to know?' the answer goes beyond the ability to use and teach LOGO. The practitioner needs to be able to talk about LOGO, to criticize it, and to discuss other people's criticisms." .replace('LOGO','Sugar')

Another gem: "If you ask, 'What does a LOGO practitioner need to know?' the answer goes beyond the ability to use and teach LOGO. The practitioner needs to be able to talk about LOGO, to criticize it, and to discuss other people's criticisms." .replace('LOGO','Sugar')

2. I have a bit more to report regarding last week's meeting at the Interamerican Development Bank. The afternoon discussion ended on an interesting note: what if anything should we be doing regarding curriculum development? Again Papert: "Sscience as inquiry rather than as answers". More concretely, when we first set up the teacher workshops in Peru we challenged the teachers on the first day to come up with a way to enhance something from the national curriuculum by using Sugar to be presented on the final day of the workshop. We didn't give them a curriculum--they already had that from the ministry of education. Rather, we wanted them to engage in a process of inquiry. They rose to the challenge and engaged in a collaborative discussion of discovery throughout the week-long event.

2. I have a bit more to report regarding last week's meeting at the Interamerican Development Bank. The afternoon discussion ended on an interesting note: what if anything should we be doing regarding curriculum development? Again Papert: "Science as inquiry rather than as answers". More concretely, when we first set up the teacher workshops in Peru we challenged the teachers on the first day to come up with a way to enhance something from the national curriculum by using Sugar to be presented on the final day of the workshop. We didn't give them a curriculum—they already had that from the ministry of education. Rather, we wanted them to engage in a process of inquiry. They rose to the challenge and engaged in a collaborative discussion of discovery throughout the week-long event.

Papert's version: "Using the computer not as a 'thing in itself' that may or may not deliver benefits, but as a material that can be appropriated to do better whatever you are doing (and which will not do anything if you are not!)"

Papert's version: "Using the computer not as a 'thing in itself' that may or may not deliver benefits, but as a material that can be appropriated to do better whatever you are doing (and which will not do anything if you are not!)"