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Line 7: − + − One of the nice things as you walk through the museum is that on almost every wall is a quote about play. They have a nice [http://www.museumofplay.org/about_play/quotes.html collection of quotes] on line as well. I read them a favorite quote from Marvin Minsky, which seemed to resonate with them:+ − :"The playfulness of childhood is the most demanding teacher we have."+ − We talked about how we might engage them in some informal learning activities using Sugar.+ − I had written an NSF grant a while back: "Adding depth to and building community within informal education", which was rejected, but is worth pursing nonetheless.+ − I'd proposed to explore how children's activities at informal learning venues can be extended by providing learners with inexpensive, ubiquitous access to learning software (Sugar on a Stick). By designing, developing, and testing a proof of concept that combines informal learning activities with in-depth follow up at home or in the classroom, we still hope to demonstrate a learning ecology that "increases public interest in, understanding of, and engagement with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics."+ + − Specifically, I proposed to leverage Sugar on a Stick to promote the use of Sugar in informal learning settings: prototyping Sugar-based exhibit kiosks in museums and libraries that will facilitate visitor interactions. Visitors will be given a Sugar-on-a-Stick USB storage device with which they can make bookmarks of exhibits that they visited, found interesting, or saved data from. Exhibit designers can use kiosks to collect visitor information and offer additional activities and data that visitors can work with when back at school or home. Activities can be downloaded to the Sugar-on-a-Stick device from the kiosk. The work done by visitors can be incorporated into the exhibit itself and featured on line, with the potential to reach a broader audience.+ + − I still hope to learn how the data- and instrumentation-rich facilities found in informal learning settings and Sugar might be combined to further engage the interest of learners in scientific and technological literacy. I hypothesized that by giving visitors the ability to take programs and data home with them, we will be able to challenge them with more in-depth and engaging problem solving. Giving them activities to take home, connecting these activities to other learning experiences and interests, and connecting these activities to a community of learners are significant enhancements to the status quo of informal learning.+ − − We need to evaluate the technical, logistical, and pedagogical impacts on the museum exhibit experience, library digital and human resources, and education programs s that we can develop an implementation guide for informal-learning professionals. − − − 2. We have a number of vacancies (See [[Vacancies]]). Many of these positions require organization as opposed to technical skills and only a commitment of a few hours per week.+ + − ===In the community===+ − − 3. The dates for Squeakfest USA in Wilmington, NC are July 26, 27, 28. See http://squeakfest.org for more details. − 4. Many thanks to Josh Williams, who led a team effort to update the wiki to a new, cleaner style. Also, thanks to Bernie Innocenti for moving the wiki to a new server.+ − − 5. We are very close to having the final production builds of Fedora 11/Sugar 0.84 available for both the OLPC XO-1 and OLPC XO-1.5 machines. Many 0.88 patches have been backported, making this version of Sugar quite robust. − − 6. With help from Reuben Caron, Paul Fox, Bernie Innocenti, and Chris Ball, I managed to add [[Features/Touchpad_control_panel_section|a new control panel section]] for switching between the capacitive and resistive touchpads on the OLPC XO-1 CL1 hardware. The motivation for this work is to give access to the stylus to the children who have been struggling with the jumpy capacitive touchpad on the first-generation XO-1 hardware. We'll be testing the patch in Peru, Paraguay, and Nigeria. Line 46:
Line 39: − + − File:2010-May-1-7-som.jpg|'''2010 May 8-14''' (23 emails)
→Sugar Digest
==Sugar Digest==
==Sugar Digest==
1. A few weeks ago, when I was being hosted by Stephen Jacobs at RIT, we had an opportunity to visit the [http://www.museumofplay.org Museum of Play] in Rochester. I got a behind-the-scenes look at their collection, which includes a vast collection of computer games and learning materials. I offered to send them the original OLPC XO laptop—I have one of the two engineering prototypes—for their collection.
1. I heard a Sugar story today from a school in Oxaca Mexico. At a ceremony for the governor to celebrate the laptop program a young girl gave a speech in Spanish. AT the end of her speech, she launched the Speak activity and proceeded to have Sugar give the same speech in her native language, one of the indiginous languages of the region.
2. Futbol: I probably shouldn't say this on a public list, but I am not a fan of Italian Football. I prefer the "beautiful game" played in the South.
Even in the United States we know that the FIFA World Cup is coming soon – June 11–July 11. Gonzalo Odiard from Sugar Labs Argentina has suggested we use it as an excuse to organize a Sugar World Cup. Beginning with the observation that many of the open bugs on the Sugar [bugs.sugarlabs.org] and OLPC [dev.laptop.org] Trac systems are relatively simple (most could be resolved in just a couple of hours effort), Gonzalo is proposing we establish country-based teams that compete to close as many tickets as we can during the same time frame as the football tournament. For each bug fixed, a "goal" is scored. (A bug is considered fixed when a patch is approved on the Sugar-devel list.) Note that, like Maradona, you are allowed to use your hands. At the end of the tournament, after Ghana wins the FIFA cup, the Sugar Bowl will be awarded to the team that fixed the most bugs. Not only will we fix a lot of bugs, but we will be strengthening local development/deployment teams.
3. Congratulations to ceibalJAM for winning honorable mention in the internatonal Cyberart competition (Prix Ars) at Ars Electronica.
4. Congratulations of Gerald A., who defended his thesis last week. Gerald studied the impact of Sugar on the culture of five fifth-grade classrooms in a NY public school.
5. John Maloney has led an effort to "Sugarize" Scratch v13 (See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Scratch#Download). Noteably, thanks to Bert Freudenberg, there is now support for the Journal. (I'll have to update my review on ASLO.) In addition, Scratch read data from the camera and resistive sensors
plugged into the microphone jack on OLPC XO computers. A tip of the hat to Claudia Urea whose persistence kept the effort moving forward.
6. Last summer at the Desktop Summit I was asked by Linix Magazine Espaniol to write an article about Sugar. It appeared in their print edition in October and is finally available on line at
http://www.linux-magazine.es/issue/54/078-083_SugarLM54.pdf (in Spanish).
===In the community===
=== Help wanted ===
7. Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés reports that there will be a Sugar Workshop at the National
University of Asunción. See http://wiki.paraguayeduca.org/index.php/Curso_Sugar_FPUNA for details.
8. Claudia has been orgainzing IRC discussion on learning (in Spanish) on Wednesdays at 10:00 EST (14:00 UTC) at forum.laptop.org. The English-language learning chats organized by Joy Riach are on Thursdays at 10:00 EST.
=== Tech talk ===
=== Tech talk ===
9. Mirabelle has landed. The Fedora Sugar-on-a-Stick (SoaS) team, which includes Sebastian Dzsiallas, Peter Robinson, and Mel Chua, has released a new version based on Fedora 13 and Sugar 0.88. The goal of this release was to integrate SoaS more completely into the Fedora "Spin" process, provide a structure for longer-term maintenance and stability. While there are only ten Sugar activities bundled with Mirabelle, Tom Gilliard has put together a collection of activities that can be loaded onto a separate USB key from which they can be installed locally. For information about further customizations, please contact the SoaS team at soas AT sugarlabs.org.
===Sugar Labs===
===Sugar Labs===
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