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Line 6: − + − Pia and I did get started on a discussion about how best to move forward with one laptop per child in the region. She is rightly still enamored with the OLPC-XO-1 hardware, as it meets the needs imposed by the harsh environmental conditions faced in many of her potential deployment sites. We discussed strategies for building sustainable local support and the need for global cooperation in order to increase efficiency. We'll keep brainstorming. We've got a Birds of a Feather session at the end of the week that promises to bring more minds to the table as well.+ − + − + − + − − === Community jams, meet-ups, and meetings === − − 4. As mentioned above, on Friday afternoon, 23 January, is an OLPC BOF at linux.conf.au in Hobart. It is an open discussion to explore strategies for community development and paths forward for OLPC and Sugar in the region. We expect attendees from Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. − − 5. David Nalley blogged about Fedora and Sugar at the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts January meeting this past week. He reports lots of enthusiasm now that getting involved with OLPC development is as easy as getting involved with Fedora. − − === Help Wanted === − − 6. Sugar Labs will be participating in Google Summer of Code. We are soliciting projects and mentors. Details soon. − − === Tech Talk === − − 7. As several people have pointed out, Gdium is donating laptops to developers (See [http://www.gdium.com/group/58/home Gdium]) who might be interested in working on Sugar. The machines run Mandriva (which also runs on the Mobilis that is being considered for use in Brazil). Aleksey Lim has Sugar working on Mandriva (See[[Community/Distributions/Mandriva]]) and we hope to have Sugar packaged as part of the next release of Mandriva. − − 8. Tomeu Vizoso reports that he, along with Gary Martin and Ben Schwartz, has been "tricked" into starting a new mind-mapping Activity (See http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/mindmap). Some of the interesting ideas that they are exploring are: − * the view widget can be embedded in a GNOME application − * collaboration using both Telepathy and Groupthink, working both in GNOME and in Sugar − This could be a model for making Sugar Activities run both within and outside of Sugar. − − 9. Recent software updates: − * TAPortfolio-3 − * calculate-28 − * chat-62 − * read-63 − * etoys 4.0.2205 − * Etoys-99 − * sugar-presence-service-0.83.3 − * sugar-datastore-0.83.2 − * telepathy-gabble 0.7.18 − 10. Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2009-January-10-16-som.jpg|SOM]]).+
Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 12:44, 29 January 2009
, 12:44, 29 January 2009→What's new
=== Sugar Digest ===
=== Sugar Digest ===
1. Yesterday was Day One of Linux Conference Australia (LCA), being held in Hobart, Tasmania. I mostly hung out in the sessions on the business side of free and open source. David Rowe did a nice job advocating for open hardware—something we never were quite able to achieve when I was at OLPC. Most of the speakers delivered pragmatic talks: how to engage with government (Pia Waugh), with large companies (Bdale Garbee), marketing (Joe Brokmeier), etc. The last speaker of the day, Lawrence Crumpton, talked about Microsoft's embracing of open source; his talk was titled ''Did Hell Freeze Over?'' Alas, the title was the highlight of the talk. The efforts he described as successes were all shallow and clumsy efforts at engagement with lots of strings attached. I don't think he once mentioned "free as in speech" and he essentially delegated FOSS efforts to the non-commercial sector. I, for one, remain skeptical. Actions will speak louder than words.
1. I have a bad habit of losing myself in programing. Not that I am much of programer these days, but once I start in on a project, I have a hard time attending to things happening around me. I don't regret my decision to use Turtle Art Portfolio for my presentation at LCA (linux.conf.au) in Hobart last week, but I haven't been able to let it go. I spent too much of my time Down Under debugging Python code rather than debating the larger questions facing Sugar Labs. Nonetheless, I did manage to get things working reasonably well for my talk last week. (I cannot seem to find the link to the videos, but they are posted on line somewhere.) The talk itself was not my most inspired. I let myself get bogged down in some some questions at the end regarding human-centric versus learning-centric design. Had I been on top of my game, I would have been a bit more clear with my answers.
Thanks to Mike Usmar, who is the force behind the Computer Clubhouse efforts in New Zealand, I had a second (third and fourth) chance to debug both my code and my talk. From the post talk discussions, I think things went better in Wellington and Auckland. I had a chance to meet the wonderful Wellington Testing Group led by Tabitha Roper at the office of Catalyst, Ltd. There were representatives from the ministry of education there as well. It was a good discussion, about pedagogy and the pragmatics of getting things going in the region. The minsitry doesn't tell schools what do to, but they can play a role in helping to spread the Sugar meme by supporting teacher workshops and offering credits toward continuing education when teachers work with Sugar. In Auckland, I had a chance to meet students and faculty at the university. Tabitha's father, who coincidently is studying portfolio assessment, had some great feedback—collectively we have a ways to go, but we are progressing and the vector is pointed in the right direction. (I also saw some student work that has good potential as an alternative Journal/portfolio view—a potential Summer of Code project?) I also met with the teachers of an Auckland school. An independetn-minded and inspired group, they are going to start a one-to-one program for middle- and high-school students. My one small contribution to their plans was to relay to them a lesson I learned from Carla Monroy Gomez: use the introduction of the computers as a reason to hold a community celebration that draws the parents into the school as stakeholders.
I had dinner last night with Rob Savoye, among others. Rob continues to make progress on Gnash. He has some very nice results on the XO hardware—yes you can play Youtube videos and yes you can run a stand-alone SWF player for which we talked about putting together a simple Sugar wrapper. Rob's other big project right now involves finding workarounds to the plethora of proprietary codecs that encumber FOSS projects.
A highlight of my trip was the day I spent with Bill Kerr and Tony Forster in Melbourne on my way between Hobart and Auckland. Tony lives in the countryside about 45 minutes outside of the city. We sat and talked, coded, debugged, debated, and ate a delicious barbicue. I have a long list of things that need improvement. It is real pleasure to spend time with people who are both grounded in the day-to-day needs of the classroom and are fluent in the works of the likes of Marvin Minsky. I learned a great deal from some gifted teachers. (Had I not been up to my nose in Python code, I probably would have learned even more.)
2. Occasionally my tendency towards addictive behavior emerges. I haven't been able to kick the habit of coding. I started working on the portfolio fork of Turtle Art last week during XO Camp and I wrote Python across the Pacific and I stayed up much to late last night after visiting some pubs coding. In the spirit of "eat your own dogfood", my goal is to get things into sufficient shape so as to be able to give my LCA talk using Turtle Art. I am close, but my Python and GTK skills are still pretty lacking. You can track my progress in gitorious—I am making frequent commits—and feel free to submit patches!! And my apologies to everyone for lack of eye contact.
2. Speaking of Minsky, I posted his latest essay learning this week (See [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Education_and_Psychology]) in which he discusses ways in which we can "provide our children with ideas they could use to invent their own theories about themselves."
3. Gary Martin has being doing some great work in the wiki on our Getting Involved page (See [[Sugar_Labs/GettingInvolved]]). Anyone want to tackle our [[Sugar_Labs:About|About]] page, which is not very helpful.
3. A new a non-profit organization, Squeakland Foundation Inc, will take over from Viewpoints Research as the guardians of Squeak Etoys. The new board includes: Tim Falconer, Kim Rose, Walter Bender, Rita Freudenberg, Kathleen Harness, Marta Voelcker, Scott Wallace, Yoshiki Ohshima, and Milan Zimmerman (See [http://squeakland.org/news/newsletter/web.jsp?id=9])
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===
4. Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2009-January-17-23-som.jpg|SOM]]).
=== Community News archive ===
=== Community News archive ===