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Line 7: − + − The center piece was the announcement of Sugar on a Stick, Strawberry. May thanks due to Sebastian Dziallas and the Fedora packaging team as well as Sean Daly and the Sugar Labs marketing team (we got unprecedented international coverage). Simon Schampijer organized a Sugar Labs booth at LinuxTag (see his write-up below).+ − The bookends were the FOSSed and NECC meetings. Caroline Meeks and I ran a workshop for teachers at [http://www.fossed.com FOSSed] and along with Caryl Bigenho, Stephen Jacobs, and Mike Lee, we presented at [http://www.neccunplugged.com/ NECC unplugged].+ − Caroline and I also made several trips to the Gardner and Lilla G. Frederick schools, where we are conducting Sugar on a Stick pilot programs this summer. We are running planning sessions with the teachers and start working with the students next week. Both schools have structured programs in the morning and open-ended discovery in the afternoon. It is in these afternoon sessions that we'll be using Sugar, as a compliment to the morning activities.+ − 2. Two high-school students from Rwanda are interning with me this summer. Eric and Peter will be adding some debugging features to Turtle Art and following up with some classroom experiments when they return to Rwanda in August. We'll take some inspiration from some observations Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés and I made while debugging Turtle Art project remotely. It was clear that it wasn't clear to the programmer where in the code one was executing at the time of an error. Eric and Peter's goal is to highlight the brick being executed as one steps through the program. Raúl, for his part, has taken on the challenge of adding hover-activated tool tips.+ − 3. Alan Kay, Tony Forster, Ed Cherlin et al. have been in a discussion ([http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-June/006853.html 1], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-June/006831.html 2]) about teaching physics that highlights the difference between diagnostic aids and physical thinking. Worth a read. K. K. Subramaniam (Subbu) pointed to [http://solar.physics.montana.edu/tslater/montillation_of_traxoline.html a parody], "The Montillation of Traxoline" that really spoke to me about the problem of "the 'intermediation' that has crept into the science education in recent decades. It is no longer about direct experience. It is about dealing with text in books, pictures on charts and movies on screen. It is about literacy, not comprehension."+ − 4. Meanwhile, in the spirit of Sugar, we now have [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics a page in the wiki] describing how to modify the Physics Activity. + − − 5. Simon made regular reports from LinuxTag in [http://erikos.sweettimez.de/ his blog]. Kudos to Simon for all his work in organizing the booth and to Tony Anderson, David Van Assche, Sean Daly, Sebastian Dziallas, Bert and Rita Freudenberg and the Squeak Team, Adam Holt, and James Zaki. Also thanks to our booth partners, Skolelinux, X2GO, and Linux4Afrika. − − − 6. Maria del Pilar Saenz has put out a [Http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Convocatoria call for participation] in the various Sugar Labs Colombia programs. "If you are a teacher, engineer, student, free software enthusiast or related, you can collaborate. No matter the experience you have, what's most important is the dedication that can be given to projects." + − ===In the community===+ − 7. I'll be giving a keynote at [http://www.grancanariadesktopsummit.org/ GUADEC]; my plan is to both introduce Sugar to the broader desktop community (with the goal of recruiting more contributors), to sing the praises of the desktop—the cloud is not the solution to all problem—but also articulate the need for more simplicity along the entire spectrum from developers to end users.+ − 8. [http://squeakfest.org Squeakfest] will be held in Los Angeles 10–12 August and in Porto Alegre 23–25 Julho.+ − − 9. There will be a Sugar track at the [http://www.freesoftwareweek.org/ Free Software Week] in Bolzano, Italy, the week of 9 November 2009. We will likely start the Sugar Hackfest the weekend before in order to accommodate the restricted schedules of some of our community members, e.g., students. Free Software Week (and [http://www.sfscon.it/2009/ South Tyrol Free Software Conference 2009]) is sponsored by [http://www.tis.bz.it/ TIS innovation park]. − 10. Fred Grose continues to keep watch over our [http://wiki.suagrlabs.org wiki]. It remains a navigable site despite our growth in content and diversity over the past year.+ − − 11. Thomas C Gilliard has added a [http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/216653 Sugar VM] to the Virtual Appliance Marketplace. − − 12. Aleksey Lim announced V3 of the [http://activities.sugarlabs.org Sugar Activities Library]. Aleksey merged and adapted the AMO upstream code (the Mozilla Addon codebase). − 13. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-June-20-26-som.jpg|SOM]]). +
→What's new
===Sugar Digest===
===Sugar Digest===
1. It has been a busy week for Sugar Labs.
1. It was great to catch up with some old friends at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. John Palemeri (J5) and Chris Blizzard, both of whom were part of the original Sugar team were there, along with major contributors to the GNOME and KDE communities. Collabora was well represented, as were the Cairo and Gstreamer communities.
This was the first time that GUADEC and Akademy were combined their summits into one congress. It was clear there is much more in common between the two major GNU/Linux desktop communities than there are differences. While I largely talked about Sugar and the interdependency between FLOSS and learning, I also used my keynote as an opprotunity to draw attention to the need for: better SVG support; a unified approach to collaboration on the desktop; a better and unified datastore architecture; and an amplification of our collective efforts in internationalization. I tried to make the distinction between simplifying complex things and using simple tools to reach to complexity and suggested that the current trends of the desktop accomplish neither goal. The latter, "learning-centric" approach should be our goal, since we take pleasure in complex things. I didn't have time to dwell on "the cloud", but Richard Stallman (rms) touch on the topic of Internet services in his talk. He saw them as a threat to freedom since the end user essentially cedes total control to the service provider. My issue is more narrow: we tend to be users, not creators of services. Yet there are many services that can amplify our ability to be expressive and engage in a critical dialog about that expression, so they have a role.
As usual, I used Sugar (and Turtle Art) to give my presentation. While most people had heard of Sugar, it seemed that few had actually seen it in action. The overall reaction was positive and we will undoubted get some new contributors as a result of this renewed exposure to the desktop community. (We already have a volunteeer to work on the touch-screen interface.)
My keynote was sandwiched between Robert Lefkowitz (r0ml) and rms, who have markedly different positions re Free Software. I was sitting between the two of them at a post-talk press conference, which was—for me—entertaining. In regard to Sugar, rms acknowledged the point that learning can play an important role in appreciating, hence sustaining freedom—it was nice to make that connection. One concern r0ml raised was that there are powerful intermediaries between the developer and the user that are the real power brokers. I argued that Sugar on a Stick was an example of disintermediation in the context of schools—the IT department need not be involved at all.
A related point that r0ml made is that most people cannot program, so Free Software is a limited use to them. In response, rms said that they are still free to use it an redistribute it and even hire someone to make modifications. I went further, saying that they are free to learn to program and that the next generation ''will'' learn to program, since computation is our most powerful tool of expression. We owe it to them to help them achieve literacy.
It was a pleasure feeling the heat as I walked the kilomieter along the promenade between the hotel and the auditorium after all the rain and cold we have had this spring and summer in Boston. Thanks are due to my host David Neary, who introduced me to a great tapas resturaunt—the sardines were really tasty.
===In the community===
===Help Wanted===
2. Representatives from Sugar Labs Colombia will be at the [http://www.campus-party.com.co/index.php/software-libre.html Free Software area in Campus Party Colombia] this week. (Campus Party is the largest technology event in Colombia.) On Wednesday night, they will introduce Sugar Labs and the Sugar Labs Colombia Foundation at an one-hour conference, "OLPC y Sugar en Colombia Construyendo software para aprender a aprender." They'll be demonstrating Sugar on a Stick, Sugar LiveCDs, Sugar on a variety of hardware platfroms, including the OLPC XO, the Intel Classmate, etc.
3. [http://squeakfest.org Squeakfest] will be held in Los Angeles 10–12 August and in Porto Alegre 23–25 Julho.
4. There will be a Sugar track at the [http://www.freesoftwareweek.org/ Free Software Week] in Bolzano, Italy, the week of 9 November 2009. We will likely start the Sugar Hackfest the weekend before in order to accommodate the restricted schedules of some of our community members, e.g., students. Free Software Week (and [http://www.sfscon.it/2009/ South Tyrol Free Software Conference 2009]) is sponsored by [http://www.tis.bz.it/ TIS innovation park].
5. Bastien Guerry reports that James Clayson is organizing [http://www.aup.fr/news/special_events/constructionism2010.htm a conference about Constructionism] at the American University of Paris in 16–20 August 2010. Sugar Labs should consider how it could participate.
===Tech Talk===
===Tech Talk===
6. Roadmaps: There a two roadmap discussions underway: Sucrose 0.86 and Sugar on a Stick V2. Both are detailed in the wiki. Your timely input would be appreciated.
===Sugar Labs===
===Sugar Labs===
7. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-Jun-27-Jul-3-som.jpg|SOM]]).
=== Community News archive ===
=== Community News archive ===