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Line 7: − + − :The concrete issue they found when developing on their own was that every time that their upstream (OLPC) produced a new image build, in order to benefit from the improvements in that release they had to apply the customizations made locally, solve any conflicts and retest everything. If they had contributed those modifications to Sugar, OLPC images would have come with them and no further work would be needed. Reaching the point in which they can directly use the OLPC images as-is is still a bit far away, but every bit that they integrate upstream is a step in the right direction and reduces their development and support costs. Also, when their employees work within the communities that maintain their software, they work directly with the most qualified engineers in those technologies, increasing local capacity.+ − You can read first-hand reports from Uruguay [http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/ here].+ − 2. John Markoff of the ''New York Times'' wrote about a new book by Jim Gray, [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/science/15books.html ''A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing'']. According to Markoff, Gray, who works for Microsoft, describes an "era in which an “exaflood” of observational data was threatening to overwhelm scientists. The only way to cope with it, he argued, was a new generation of scientific computing tools to manage, visualize and analyze the data flood." He argues for government support for "cheaper clusters of computers to manage and process all this[sic] data." The goal is "to have a world in which all of the science literature is online, all of the science data is online, and they interoperate with each other." Alas, there is no mention of Free Software in the article. It is not clear to me how a proprietary system would solve any of the problems Gray is describing. Sigh.+ − 3. I have been working through a number of logistical and administrative issues with the Software Freedom Conservancy with the goal of streamlining our interactions with them. (Like Sugar Labs, they are a volunteer organization—the extent to which we can smooth out any mismatches in expectation or practice will well serve both organizations. While we benefit from the numerous services provided by the conservancy, we are also under an obligation to abide by its mission--promoting FOSS projects--and work within its administrative structure. With input from Karen and Bradley, I've written up some [[Sugar_Labs/Governance/Transactions|administrative procedures for handling transactions]] regarding requests for payment, project proposal approvals, and license requests in the wiki. Feedback is most welcome.+ − === From the community ===+ − 4. Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés and the Sugar/OLPC team in Paraguay have developed an inventory and tracking system for helping to manage deployment logistics. There tool lets you:+ − * import list of children and their document IDs; and upload information about schools, teachers, geographic coordinates, etc.; − * keep track of laptops given to children; − * report tickets (screen broken, OS reinstall needed); do follow-ups; and close tickets; − * use an embedded Google-maps widget to track access points and servers and their availability; − * generate reports: laptops delivered; open tickets; network status; network availability over time; laptops spread among schools; etc.; − * report stolen laptops (so they won't get more leases); − * automatize generation of leases (based on the status of laptops: activated, stolen, etc.) − + − − To install the package, you'll need to add their repository: − Create the file <code>/etc/yum.repos.d/pyeduca.repo</code> with the following content: − [pyeduca-base] − name=Packages used by Paraguay Educa − baseurl=http://repo.paraguayeduca.org/yum/base − enabled=1 − gpgcheck=0 − − Then: − yum install inventario − − 5. Jim Simmons is writing a FLOSSmanual guide to writing Sugar Activities for beginners (See [http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/ActivitiesGuideSugar/WebHome]). − − === Help Wanted === − − 6. Tomeu has created [[Vacants|a new page in the wiki]] for describing "vacancies" in our community. − − === Tech Talk === − − 7. Chris Ball announce Build OS64 as the "final" release build for new XO-1.5 laptops. This is a Fedora-11-based system with Suagr 0.84 as well as a GNOME desktop. Release notes are available [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/10.1.0 here]. − − 8. Bryan Berry announced the release of Karma Version 0.2 (See http://karma.sugarlabs.org). "The Karma Project aims to create high-quality open-source educational software using openweb technologies for the Sugar desktop educational environment. karma.js is a Javascript library for manipulating HTML 5 and SVG in any context." Please note that you will need Firefox 3.5 or Google Chrome/Chromium to run the demos. The Karma-2.xo bundle is available at [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/downloads/file/26522/karma-2.xo karma-2.xo]. There is a Karma tutorial series as well (See [http://karmaeducation.org/2009/12/14/an-introduction-to-karma-js/],[http://karmaeducation.org/2009/12/17/karma-tutorial-part-ii-comparing-html-5-canvas-and-svg/],[http://karmaeducation.org/2009/12/17/tutorial-iii-building-a-geography-lesson/],[http://karmaeducation.org/2009/12/17/tutorial-iii-the-adventure-continues-javascript-and-svg/]). − − 9. Sayamindu Dasgupta has built [http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/turtleart/repos/arduino-support a fork of Turtle Art] that support the [http://www.arduino.cc/ Arduino]. The Arduino is "an open-source electronics prototyping platform... intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments." Instructions can be found [http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/turtleart/repos/arduino-support/blobs/master/README.arduino here]. Note that there is also support for the Arduino for Etoys (See http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira/). − − 10. Michael Stone announced the release of rainbow-0.8.6. (Rainbow implements portions of the isolation shell described in the [wiki.laptop.org/go/Bitfrost Bitfrost] threat model and security architecture.) There are a number of new features in this release, including "support for garbage collection of uids, ui sugar for resuming uids, bug fixes to the resume logic, and a simplified singly-linked list library." Please help with testing: − − :tar: http://dev.laptop.org/~mstone/releases/SOURCES/rainbow-0.8.6.tar.bz2 − :browse: http://dev.laptop.org/git/users/mstone/security/tree/?id=rainbow-0.8.6 − :setup: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow/Installation_Instructions − :tests: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow/Testing − − − 12. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-Dec-12-18-som.jpg|SOM]]).+
Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 13:26, 31 December 2009
, 13:26, 31 December 2009→What's new
=== Sugar Digest ===
=== Sugar Digest ===
1. Tomeu Vizoso [http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/ blogged] about his trip to Uruguay. He attended the [http://www.ceibal09.com.uy/ First International Event on Experiences about the Ceibal Plan]. As well he spent time at [http://www.latu.org.uy/ LATU] (Laboratorio Tecnológico del Uruguay), the organization managing the technical aspects of the Sugar/OLPC deployment in Uruguay. While it was a great opportunity for Tomeu to see Sugar in action and meet local teachers and technologists, perhaps the most important aspect of the trip was that he had the opportunity to lead the .uy community closer to the mainline Sugar community.
1. The coming of a new year is a good time for reflection and setting of goals. At Sugar Labs, we have a lot to reflect upon in 2009 and a lot to look forward to in 2010.
We began 2009 in engaged in a healthy debate about how best to put powerful tools for learning into the hands of children. I consider it a healthy sign that as we are reaching the end of 2009, we are still engaged in that debate. As a community, we remain passionate and outspoken about things that matter and we continue to ask how our work impacts learning.
In January we felt the shock-wave of the "reorganization" of One Laptop per Child. As a result OLPC has more directly leveraged the efforts of the Sugar community and we have a more productive cooperation between our organizations; perhaps more important, we are beginning to see more cooperation between Sugar Labs and one-laptop-per-child deployments around the world. In March we released Sucrose 0.84 and got news of our acceptance into the Google Summer of Code program. We were establishing a reputation for being responsible and reliable members of the FOSS community. In September we learned that ''every'' child in Uruguay is now a Sugar user. In October, we exceeded 1-million downloads on activities.sugarlabs.org (At the year's end, we are over the 1,750,000-download mark).
On the technical front, we reached some major milestones and saw many smaller achievements in 2009: Simon Schampijer oversaw the 0.84 and 0.86 releases and is leading the 0.88 effort; Tomeu Vizoso, who does all things Sugar, found the time to make "view source" universal across all activities and integrate Gnash more fully into Sugar; Sebastian Dziallas released two versions of Sugar on a Stick, leading the way for other GNU/Linux distributions to release LiveUSB images of Sugar, including Thomas C Gilliard, David Van Assche, and the openSUSE community efforts as well as Rubén Rodríguez Pérez's Triquel-based Sugar on Toast; Jonas Smedegaard continues his work on maintaining Sugar on Debian; the Fedora community's dedication to Sugar remains unparalleled(special kudos to Steven Parrish, Chris Ball, Daniel Drake, Paul Fox, Peter Robinson, Mel Chua, et al.); Bryan Berry and the team in Nepal launched the Karma project; Michael Stone made signifigant progress in making Rainbow run outside of the constrains of the OLPC deployments of Sugar; we saw patches being submitted by educators; contributions of accessibility code from Esteban Arias and the LATU team; the launch of our activity portal (thanks to Josh Williams, Aleksey Lim, and David Farning); Benjamin Schwartz made progress on GroupThink; the Activity Team made ebooks a central focus; Bernie Innocenti, David Farning, and the Infrastructure Team have given us a solid base for growth; Wade Brainerd (had a baby) and kept the Activity Team vibrant; James Simmons has been both writing some of our more popular activities and documenting how to write a Sugar activity; Sayamindu Dasgupta has done great work leading the i18n team and he made a fork of Turtle Art to support the Arduino; Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés, Martin Abente, and the team in Paraguay have made numerous contributions, including an inventory tool and 3G support (with cross-border cooperation from Daniel Castelo); and Aleksey Lim made contributions to virtually every corner of Sugar and Sugar Labs.
My personal highlights for 2009 were a chance to meet so many community members face to face for the first time: Tony Forster and Bill Kerr in Melbourne; Sebastian Dziallas in Berlin; Gary Martin, Sascha Silbe, Bruno Coudoin, David Van Assche, Marten Vijn, Christian Vanizette, and Sean Daly in Paris; Pia Waugh and Donna Benjamin in Hobart; Mike Usmar in Auckland and Tabitha Roper in Wellington; Diego Uribe in Cambridge; Gerald Ardito in New York; Paul Flint, Kevin Cole, Nicco Eneidi, and Colin Applegate in Barre; Luke Farone and Jeff Elkner in Washington; Kiko Mayorga in Lima; etc.
I would also be remiss in not pointing out the pleasure I got in reading Sdenka Salas's Sugar manual, Rosamel Norma Ramirez Mendez's reports from her classroom in Uruguay, Tony Foster's blog posts on Turtle Art, the posts by Bill Kerr's students on Sugar, and being greeted by a room full of children running the Sugar Speak program in a simultaneous chorus of "Welcome Mr. Bender."
We had set some short-term goals for ourselves in 2009: to grow our community, broaden its code base, and most important, increase the number of children using Sugar. While we may have fallen short in our goals of "building a Sugar presence in the forums that teachers habituate", the vector is pointing in the right direction--teacher engagement on the Sur list being a bellweather. We did not reach as many children through Sugar on netbooks; Sugar on a Stick; and Sugar deployed through a terminal server as we are currently reaching through our OLPC collaboration--something to aim for in 2010. Our "Big Overarching Goals for 2010" will be the subject of a Sugar Digest post in January.
The manual (in Spanish) is available [http://wiki.paraguayeduca.org/index.php/Inventario_manual here]. An English-langauge manual is in the works.
2. The Babson College project report on Strategies for Sugar deployments in US schools is now in the wiki (See [[File:Sugar_Deployment_in_US_Schools_Report.pdf|Sugar Deployment in US Schools Report]] and [[File:MCFE_Final_Presentation_SugarLabs_12-11.pdf|Final Presentation]]).
:git: git://dev.laptop.org/users/mstone/security
11. Simon Schampijer announced the first tarballs for Sugar 0.88. Some of the new [[Features|features]] are ready for testing. (Simon will be working with Sebastian Sdziallas to make a Sugar-on-a-Stick spin for facilitating testing.)
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===
3. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-Dec-19-25-som.jpg|SOM]]).
=== Community News archive ===
=== Community News archive ===