Changes

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, blogged at [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org], and archived [[Sugar Labs/Current Events/Archive|here]].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to [[User:walter|walter]] at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit <span class="plainlinks">[http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet.sugarlabs.org].</span>)

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, blogged at [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org], and archived [[Sugar Labs/Current Events/Archive|here]].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to [[User:walter|walter]] at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit <span class="plainlinks">[http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet.sugarlabs.org].</span>)

=== Sugar Digest ===

=== Sugar Digest ===

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.

1. Aleksey Lim has started a [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2010-January/009726.html discussion] about how to better cocordinate—in a more welcoming and friendly manner—our various development activities with the needs of deployments. This complements the Luke Faraone's [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-December/009668.html thread] from a few weeks ago about a redesign of the website, based in part from feedback from the Babson team's [[:File:Sugar_Deployment_in_US_Schools_Report.pdf|study of Sugar Labs]]. The gist of the various conversations is that we need to tackle a typical Free-Software project issue: how can we make the project more friendly and accessible to non-technical people; and, related, manage the explosion of pages, sites, points of view on the project without limiting expression on the part of individual contributors. Part of the answer certainly lies in providing a bit more structure to our website. Part of the answer likely lies in more outreach to where the non-techies hang out. (I had put together a survey last year for the teachers in Uruguay to solicit feedback on this topic, but alas, it was never conducted.) I am not sure we know what are the best channels for reaching teachers, parents, etc. In any case, it is an important issue for us. Please contribute to the discussion.

 

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.  

2. Bruno Coudoin announced the release of GCompris Version 9.0. Aleksey is already working on making sure that it is properly packaged for Sugar and available on our [http://activities.sugarlabs.org Sugar Activity download site].

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).

3. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Jim Simmons has been working on a beginner's guide to creating Sugar Activities. He has made great progress and is at the point where some constructive criticize would be helpful (Please see [http://en.flossmanuals.net/ActivitiesGuideSugar/Introduction Sugar Activities Guide).

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 Faraone and Jeff Elkner in Washington; Kiko Mayorga in Lima; etc.

4. David Farning has been working on an Ubuntu-Sugar remix. He is looking for help with testing. The release can be downloaded from [http://people.sugarlabs.org/dfarning/ http://people.sugarlabs.org/dfarning/].

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&mdash;teacher engagement on the Sur list being a bellwether. 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&mdash;something to aim for in 2010. Our "Big Overarching Goals for 2010" will be the subject of a Sugar Digest post in January.

5. Aleksey has been busy working on [[Activity_Team/Services|Sugar Services]]—a decentralized means of supporting Sugar Activity dependencies. He announced that the first version is ready to test or use in simple cases. Please refer to the wiki for more details about Sugar Services ([[Documentation_Team/Services/Activity_Developers_Guide#Known_issue|known issues]], [[Activity_Team/Services#Workflows|what Sugar Services is]], [[Activity_Team/Services#What_is_Sugar_Services_not.3F|what Sugar Services is not]]).

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]]).

6. Simon Schampijer has resurfaced the [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2010-January/021771.html discussion] about Resume vs Start new activity instance from the Home View. Please contribute your thoughts and observations from the field.

=== 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]]).

12. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-Dec-26-Jan-1-som.jpg

|SOM]]).

 

 

=== Community News archive ===

=== Community News archive ===