Changes

==Sugar Digest==

==Sugar Digest==

1. I wrote about [[Archive/Current_Events/2010-04-01|a discussion with John Gilmore]] in April. When John asked how many patches have been contributed by Sugar end-users, I responded that community members have contributed patches but that I was unaware of any patches contributed by children. I went on to argue that it is not relevant whether or not patches are submitted or accepted. The learning happens in creating the patch and in submitting it or sharing it with a friend. Hopefully, Sugar has instilled in children and their teachers the sense that they can be expressive with computing.

1. One of the pleasures of working with Sugar is the interaction with educators. Over the past few weeks, I have been in a closed loop with Tony Forster, who has been developing some lesson plans and tutorial around the use of the Slide Rule activity that I had written. Not only has Tony given me feedback about bugs, he has also given me ideas about how to make the activity more useful and compelling to students. At Tony's urging, I have recently added new slides for Sin, Tangent, Log Log, and Natural Log. In the process, I did a major refactoring of the code – I am almost not embarressed by it – and a retooling of the UI. But also, in the spirit of Sugar, I added the ability to generate custom slides and stators on the fly. (I've a bit more fine-tuning to do before I release the code, but http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/attachment/ticket/2310/Sliderule-15.xo is at least somewhat usable.)

That said, the children are being creative with Sugar in ways that I had not anticipated. For example, Bernie shared [http://codewiz.org/wiki/pictures/sugar/deployment/paraguay/caacupe/scratcheros/00003.jpg this image] from Caacupé of a surprising and wonderful use of the nickname field in Sugar. It may not be a patch to the Python code, but it certainly is a user contribution that extends and enhances Sugar, a great first step for a sixth grader.

Not to be outdone, Gary generated a slide rule in Gamemaker. A glutton for punishment, he then made a slide rule in TurtleArt (http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2010/09/turtle-sliderule.html).

2. In the US, there is a mid-term election in November. At Sugar Labs, we will be holding our mid-term election in October in order to fill three oversight board positions. (You may recall that we agreed to stagger the two-year terms of the board so that 3 or 4 positions are up for reelection every year.)

The only thing better than Sugar is the Sugar community.

We have several tasks associated with election:

2. Reminder: we will be holding our mid-term election in October in order to fill three oversight board positions. If you are not an "official" member of Sugar Labs and would like to be, please contact members AT sugarlabs DOT org. Being a member of the oversight board is a great way to be involved with the project. It is not to late to add your name to the ballot.

(1) Updating our [[Sugar_Labs/Members/List|member list]], which is used to generate ballots. If you are already a member of Sugar Labs, your name will appear on the list and you will receive a ballot by email in October. If you are not a member and would like to be, please contact Luke Faraone, our membership administrator, who will add you to the list. Recall that the requirement to be a member of Sugar Labs is to engage with the project and the community. This can be as simple as asking a question.

===In the community===

(2) Gathering together a list of nominees. If you are interested in joining the Sugar oversight board, please contact me and I will add your name to the ballot. Also, please prepare a position statement about your candidacy on your "User" page in the wiki. There are no restrictions in regard to whom can run, e.g., whether you were born in Kenya or the United States, you are eligible.

3. Jim Simmon's ''Make Your Own Sugar Activities!'' manual is now available en español [http://translate.flossmanuals.net/ActivitiesGuideSugar_es/Introduction].

 

3. There will be an OLPC/Sugar/Realness summit October 21 – 24 in San Francisco. The summit is being hosted by the San Francisco Bay Area OLPC community. More details are available at [http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/].

4. There will be an OLPC/Sugar/Realness summit October 21 – 24 in San Francisco. The summit is being hosted by the San Francisco Bay Area OLPC community. More details are available at [http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/].

===Tech Talk ===

===Tech Talk ===

4. Last week, we entered Feature Freeze for Sugar Release 0.90. This week we entered UI Freeze. Next week is String Freeze. Hard code freeze starts on September 13. Simon Schampijer is once again pulling together contributions from the community; the new release is looking great.

5. Aleksey Lim has set up an IRC channel for "newbie" developers: #sugar-newbies on freenode. The channel is logged so that we can archive "newbie" questions and answers ([http://jita.sugarlabs.org/freenode/%23sugar-newbies/index.html]).

===Sugar Labs===

===Sugar Labs===

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File:2010-Aug-14-20-som.jpg|2010 August 14th-20th (18 emails)

File:2010-Aug-14-20-som.jpg|2010 Aug 14th-20th (18 emails)

File:2010-Sept-4-10-som.jpg|2010 Sept 4th-10th (21 emails)  

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