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| ==What's new== | | ==What's new== |
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− | 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 and blogged at [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to walter at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. An '''archive''' of this digest is available '''[[Sugar Labs/Current Events/Archive|here]]'''. | + | 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 and blogged at [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to [[User:walter|walter]] at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. An '''archive''' of this digest is available '''[[Sugar Labs/Current Events/Archive|here]]'''. |
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| === Sugar Digest === | | === Sugar Digest === |
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− | 1. Worth a read: Dave Farning sent a pointer to an Open University report on "the effectiveness of a FLOSS-like learning community in formal educational settings" (Please see | + | 1. Elections: The US presidential election is not the only opportunity to organize for change. The polls are open for the Sugar Labs oversight board (The list of candidates can be found at [[Sugar_Labs/Oversight_Board_Candidates_August_2008|cnadidates list]]). Polls close on 31 August 2008. |
− | [http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/FLOSSCOM_Wp4_PHASE2_REPORT_d1.pdf FLOSSCOM Phase 2 Report]). While the focus is on higher education, what I found of particular relevance is the discussion of collaboration and reflection in FOSS projects and its potential transfer to the classroom. | |
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− | === Community jams and meetups ===
| + | 2. 0.82: Simon Schampijer reports that Sucrose 0.82 has been released (Please see [[ReleaseTeam/Releases/Sucrose/0.82|Sucrose 0.82]] for details and documentation). Many thanks to the release team and our community contributors. They've done a great job. |
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| + | 3. 0.84 goals: Marco Pesenti Gritti has begun a discussion thread about our goals for the 0.84 release (Please join the discussion, which is archived at [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-August/007838.html]). The list currently includes: |
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| + | * Next generation journal |
| + | * File sharing |
| + | * Group view/bulletin board |
| + | * Collaboration scalability |
| + | * Responsive UI |
| + | * Stable activities API |
| + | * Official Sugar LiveCD |
| + | * Compatibility with desktop applications |
| + | * Quality and reliability |
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| + | Please also see [[ReleaseTeam/Roadmap/0.84#Goals|0.84 Goals]]. |
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− | 2. Game Jam Peru: Hernán Paches announces an upcoming Game Jam at the Universidad de San Martín de Porres in Lima on 23–25 October.
| + | 4. Constuctionism: The discussion around a succinct definition of Constructionism has heated up again (Please see [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-August/001481.html]). While there is consensus that Sugar Labs should not be advocating just "one right way" to learn, a concise explanation of the learning opportunities exposed and enhanced by the Sugar learning platform would go a long ways towards getting more educators engaged in the discussion. We also would benefit from documenting some tangible results from the field that can serve as exemplars. |
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− | ===Tech Talk===
| + | This second wave of discussion began with Seth Woodworth dredging up the Media Lab's Future of Learning group's definition of Constructionism |
| + | [http://learning.media.mit.edu/projects.html] (this is the group founded by Seymour Papert): |
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− | 3. Sucrose final release: Simon Schampijer reports that the Sugar community is working on the final release (0.82) for the Sucrose (Please see [[ReleaseTeam/Roadmap#Timeline|the Sugar Timeline]]).
| + | :''We are developing "Constructionism" as a theory of learning and education. Constructionism is based on two different senses of "construction." It is grounded in the idea that people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, rather than having information "poured" into their heads. Moreover, constructionism asserts that people learn with particular effectiveness when they are engaged in constructing personally meaningful artifacts (such as computer programs, animations, or robots).'' |
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− | 4. Dr. Geo: Hilaire Fernandes is looking for feedback on some screencasts he has been preparing to explain the DrGeo features (Please see [http://community.ofset.org/index.php/Screencast_DrGeo DrGeo screencast]).
| + | The above definition does not sufficiently distinguish Constructionism from "open-ended discovery" for the casual reader. Bill Kerr followed up with a discussion of Cynthia Solomon's book, Computer Environments for Children, in which she discusses four models of learning: |
| + | * Suppes: Drill and Practice and Rote Learning |
| + | * Davis: Socratic Interactions and Discovery Learning |
| + | * Dwyer: Eclecticism and Heuristic Learning |
| + | * Papert: Constructivism and Piagetian Learning |
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− | 5. "Hard fun": Mark Goadrich and his student Nolan Baker are seeking feedback on three educational games (COBBLE, Space Tag and Cell Management) they have been developing for Sugar this summer (Please see [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/COBBLE COBBLE]; [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Space_Tag Space Tag]; and [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cell_Management Cell Management]).
| + | Martin Langhoff hit the nail on the head when he asked, "How do we make this useful for teaching?" |
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− | 6. x2o: Alex Levenson reports the first release of x2o, a physics problem solving game in which you create Rube Goldberg contraptions in order to get the O to land on top of the X (Please see [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/X2o X2o]).
| + | What does Sugar offer in terms of affordances that can make a positive impact in (and out of) the classroom? The key in my mind is that Sugar facilitates collaboration (and critique); reflection (through the Journal); and discovery, through its clarity of design and roots in FOSS. |
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− | 7. Sugar-presence-service: Guillaume Desmottes reports that a new release of the Suagr Presence Service is available (Please see [https://dev.laptop.org/pub/sugar/sources/sugar-presence-service/sugar-presence-service-0.82.1.tar.bz2 sugar-presence-service-0.82.1.tar.bz2]). This is the "Woo I'm stable!" release.
| + | === Community jams and meetups === |
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− | 8. Activity updates: Read 49; Terminal 15; Log 12; Pippy 24; Calculate 21; Etoys 87; Write 57; Browse 95; and Journal 97.
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− | 9. Wine: John Gilmore is seeking feedback as to what class of MS-Windows programs would be of high-priority for Sugar users. (Please see [http://wiki.winehq.org/SugaredWine Sugared Wine] for more information about Wine, a GNU LGPL licensed implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix and Sugar).
| + | 5. Book sprint: The FLOSS Manuals Sugar/XO book sprint begins Sunday in Austin, TX (Details are available at [[DocumentationTeam/BookSprint]]). |
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− | 10. Translations: Sayamindu Dasgupta reports "significant support" for 18 languages (not including English) for Sugar 0.82:
| + | ===Tech Talk=== |
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− | {| border=1
| + | 6. LiveCD: Wolfgang Rohrmoser reports an updated version of the XO LiveCD (Please download it from [ftp://www.rohrmoser-engineering.de/pub/XO-LiveCD/XO-LiveCD_080812.iso]). This release is based on Joyride 2282; it demonstrates many new Sugar features and updated activities. |
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− | !Language !!% of translated strings
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− | |-
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− | |Greek||100
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− | |-
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− | |Sinhala||100
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− | |-
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− | |Turkish||100
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− | |-
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− | |Dutch||99
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− | |-
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− | |German||99
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− | |-
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− | |Kinyarwanda||98.5
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− | |-
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− | |Spanish||97.5
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− | |-
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− | |Nepali||97.5
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− | |-
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− | |Italian||97
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− | |-
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− | |Kreyol||97
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− | |-
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− | |Marathi||96.5
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− | |-
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− | |Mongolian||95.5
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− | |-
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− | |French||95
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− | |-
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− | |Telugu||94
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− | |-
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− | |Urdu||93.5
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− | |-
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− | |Slovenian||82.5
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− | |-
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− | |Dari||80
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− | |-
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− | |Pashto||80
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− | |}
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− | Thanks to all the translation teams for their hard work.
| + | 7. Firefox: C. Scott Ananian has made Firefox 3 available via software-update (Please see [http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/cscott/firefox-activity;a=summary]). |
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| === Sugar Labs === | | === Sugar Labs === |
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− | 11. Self-organizing map (SOM): Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2008-August-02-08-som.jpg|SOM]]). Sugar and Work are surrounded by OLPC, lab, education, development, and community.
| + | 8. Self-organizing map (SOM): Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2008-August-9-15-som.jpg]]). |
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| ==Sugar in the news== | | ==Sugar in the news== |