Changes

Mel Chua, Anurag Goel, and Greg Smith ([http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007065.html 1], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007168.html 2], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007038.html 3]) have written extensive notes of their observations of our prelimary interactions with these young learners. In gisting my own observations, I found that the students are engaged, able to work at their own pace, each achieving a sense of accomplishment. They stay on task, help each other, and excitedy discuss their discoveries.

Mel Chua, Anurag Goel, and Greg Smith ([http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007065.html 1], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007168.html 2], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-July/007038.html 3]) have written extensive notes of their observations of our prelimary interactions with these young learners. In gisting my own observations, I found that the students are engaged, able to work at their own pace, each achieving a sense of accomplishment. They stay on task, help each other, and excitedy discuss their discoveries.

There are lots of little details in the interactions that have been revealed even over this short period, things such as the ease with which the children were able to insert their USB keys into a USB extention cable as compared to the difficultly they encountered with even USB slots on the front panel of the desktop; and the in-retrospect obvious need to use integer rather than floating point notation in Turtle Art. (The second-graders thought that 100.0 was one thousand.) At the Fredrick School, we sent sticks and helper CDs home with some of the children over the weekend. Only two out of five were able to launch Sugar at home, but two of those who were unsuccessful had been given no instructions at all, even to know that you need to insert the helper CD in before booting from USB. We will report new numbers next week.

There are lots of little details in the interactions that have been revealed even over this short period, things such as the ease with which the children were able to insert their USB keys into a USB extension cable as compared to the difficultly they encountered with even USB slots on the front panel of the desktop; and the in-retrospect obvious need to use integer rather than floating point notation in Turtle Art. (The second-graders thought that 100.0 was one thousand.) At the Fredrick School, we sent sticks and helper CDs home with some of the children over the weekend. Only two out of five were able to launch Sugar at home, but two of those who were unsuccessful had been given no instructions at all, even to know that you need to insert the helper CD in before booting from USB. We will report new numbers next week.

2. Bernie Innocenti and I were invited to OSLO to present Sugar to the Nokia QT software team. After an overnight flight, I went right from the airport into a conference room and began my presentation, running jhbuild from my laptop. About half-way through my presentation, my laptop overheated and died. Not to be detered, I pulled out a USB key, borrowed a laptop, booted Sugar and kept going. The presentation was not as smooth as I would have liked, but the room full of engineers was pretty forgiving and noted that the only thing that didn't crash was Sugar itself. The QT team expressed interest in a wrapper around existing QT/KDE education projects such that they could be run from Sugar—most of this work has already been done. They'll also start investigating the work involved in adding QT bindings to the Sugar toolkit so that QT activities could more directly leverage the Sugar platform.

2. Bernie Innocenti and I were invited to OSLO to present Sugar to the Nokia QT software team. After an overnight flight, I went right from the airport into a conference room and began my presentation, running jhbuild from my laptop. About half-way through my presentation, my laptop overheated and died. Not to be deterred, I pulled out a USB key, borrowed a laptop, booted Sugar and kept going. The presentation was not as smooth as I would have liked, but the room full of engineers was pretty forgiving and noted that the only thing that didn't crash was Sugar itself. The QT team expressed interest in a wrapper around existing QT/KDE education projects such that they could be run from Sugar—most of this work has already been done. we'll also start investigating the work involved in adding QT bindings to the Sugar toolkit so that QT activities could more directly leverage the Sugar platform.

3. Wayan Vota talked me into engaging in an "Educational Technology Debate" on [http://edutechdebate.org/archive/individal-and-communal-computer-usage/ Individual and Communal Computer Usage]. I sidestepped the topic and used it as opportunity to talk about software.

3. Wayan Vota talked me into engaging in an "Educational Technology Debate" on [http://edutechdebate.org/archive/individal-and-communal-computer-usage/ Individual and Communal Computer Usage]. I sidestepped the topic and used it as opportunity to talk about software.