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Revision as of 17:38, 27 August 2009

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=== Sugar Digest ===
 
=== Sugar Digest ===
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"He was guided by what he saw rather than what he wanted to believe." – Vernor Vinge
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You are very right that if a person doesn't have firmly in mind just what science is really about, they can confuse a representation of ideas gotten by scientific means with science itself. – Alan Kay
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1. While I am not chasing down Turtle Art bugs, I am catching up with my summer reading. The quote from ''A Fire in the Deep'' seems a nice summary of the discussion about teaching physics on the [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-August/007722.html IAEP list]. It is worthwhile reading the whole thread.
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1. The discussion about the merits and pitfalls of the use of simulation in science education continued this week (See [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-August/007722.html]).
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2. Some other summer reading includes a short article on behavioral economics published by the [http:neweconomics.org New Economics Foundation] that discusses some principles of behavior that we may want to consider as we consider how to maximize the impact of our efforts as a community. (I am unaware of any serious study of Free Software by behavioral economists. This particular summary is more useful in regard to understanding the motivation of teachers whom we'd like to consider adopting Sugar and perhaps become more observant about what they are doing with the platform in their classrooms.
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2. María del Pilar Sáenz led a deployment meeting this week (See http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting.log.20090819_1008.html). We reviewed the status of Sugar deployments, discussed the most pressing needs from deployments, and alternative communication channels that might result in more feedback from the field. [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-August/007842.html Another discussion on the IAEP list] is an indication of just how passionate the community is about being responsive to the needs of deployments.
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I am thinking about each of their principles as a vehicle for asking questions that I am hoping community members may be able to discuss.
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3. Bernie Innocenti and I spent a day in Barre VT with Paul Flint, Kevin Cole, Nicco Eneidi, Colin Applegate, et al. to discuss the role Sugar might play in various education initiatives in the region. Despite too much driving in pouring rain, it was a fun, productive session. (Bernie helped Colin get up to speed on packaging for Ubuntu (Colin has subsequently build Sugar 0.86 for Jaunty) and did some debugging of Turtle Art while engaging in discussion with some teachers. One provocative question that was raised: What is the advantage of a "platform" as opposed to a bunch of cool applications? There are many cool applications out there and commercial (e.g., kidzui, which caters to parents who want someone else to worry about what Internet content is appropriate for their children) and non-commercial (e.g., Curriki, a place where teachers can pick and chose applications and content that meet specific curricula demands) collections. What is the advantage of the Sugar approach? We can sing the praises of many aspects of the Sugar platform—the Journal, the collaboration model, integrated view source, etc.—but I think it ultimately comes down the way in which these features enhance the ability to bring multiple learners together around a collection of activities to engage in authentic investigations. This is a potential that is not yet fully realized, but having spent time this summer watching children move fluidly across multiple activities to, for example, build a memory game, is seeing Sugar at its best.
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* "Other people’s behavior matters."
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4. The recent FSF campaign condemning the use of Windows 7 in education (See http://windows7sins.org/) inputes OLPC in complicity with Microsoft. It is disappointing that the FSF is not making any constructive arguments in favor of free software alternatives to Windows such as Sugar on GNU/Linux, which is currently shipped on every machine distributed by OLPC.  
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:This would suggest that we need to expose teachers to Sugar best practices that they can then emulate. Can we identify the "mavens", "connectors", and "salespeople" in our target communities? What resources can we apply to influence their adoption of Sugar? For example, I am working with a small school district in the Boston metropolitan area that other, larger districts follow closely. If we can have an influence with a "maven" district, we may get broad leverage. It also suggests that we need to be vigilant as a community to make sure that our examples for emulation are pedagogically sound.
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* "Habits are important."
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===Help wanted/help received===
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:This would suggest that we raise awareness about some of the habits that are part and parcel with the status quo. What incentives can we provide that would encourage change? What actions can we take to sustain and reenforce changes in behavior?
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* "People are motivated to ‘do the right thing’."
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5. Google Summer of Code 2009 has official come to a close. We were fortunate to have five intern/mentor pairs, each of whom had a productive two months. Congratulations to Lucian Branescu, Felipe López Toledo, Sacha Silbe, Ben Schwartz, Vamsi Krishna Davuluri, Bryan Berry, Andres Ambrois, and Assim Deodia. Special thanks to Jameson Quinn for organizing the program for Sugar Labs and to Google for their generosity.
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:We need to engage teachers in a discussion about what is "the right thing" and remind them that the right thing is often hard work: "Sire, there is no Royal Road to Geometry" – Euclid.
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* "People’s self-expectations influence how they behave: they want their actions to be in line with their values and their commitments."
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===In the community===
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:This is a tough one for us, because much of what we are doing is not in line with expectations. However, as long as we are on a sound footing in terms of values, we are in a position of influence.
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* "People are loss-averse and hang on to what they consider ‘theirs’."
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6. One result of Pilar's revitalization of the Deployment Team is that we are being more explicit in our targeting of feedback from deployments.  
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:Sugar need not be an either-or proposition. (Sugar on a Stick means there is nothing to give up in taking up Sugar.) And as Minsky has pointed out, until you understand something from more than one way, you don't understand it. Sugar can offer another perspective on their status quo.
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* "People are bad at computation when making decisions."
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Joshua Pritikin reports:
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:Further, they are often intimidated by the prospects of learning new things (until they are actually doing it). "Immediate losses are stronger incentives than long-term rewards." This would imply that we really need to keep the "pain" associated with getting started to an absolute minimum.
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:[http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India/Nashik Our school] has some 200 students. Counter to OLPC best practices, we have 33 XO laptops using the "computer lab" model. We would like to move to child ownership, but we haven't found enough funding to do that.
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* "People need to feel involved and effective to make a change."
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:This year we issued USB keys to the students. USB keys are not as easy to use as the integrated journal, but at least some kids are successful saving their work.
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:We have a community with a potential for great discourse that welcomes contributions. This is one of our real strengths."
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===Help wanted===
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:The teachers are mainly impressed by Moodle. To teachers who had never used a computer, being able to create an online quiz is something of a revelation. I would like to place more emphasis on Turtle Art and Etoys, but teachers don't see the point yet. Children are mostly left to explore the laptops on their own when they have free time.
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3. Last week's discussion about feedback led to the suggestion that I highlight feedback from the field in the ''Sugar Digest''. Please send me reports that I can include each week.
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:I have no idea how much the students are learning with the laptops. At this point, everything is about appearances. For example, we convinced parents to pay double what they paid last year by withholding access to the laptops until they paid up. In many cases, the kids begged the parents to use the laptops. We managed to raise our fee to $100 per year.
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===In the community===
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:Indian electrical wiring is notorious. I am particularly proud of our power distribution solution (see attached photos). Early on, there was talk of an [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/XOctoPlug XOctoplug]. We made something similar.
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4. There has been a lot of activity on our [http://getsatisfaction.com/sugarlabs "community-powered" support portal]. The interface is a bit clumsy, but much more friendly to non-developers than the [dev.sugarlabs.org trac] system. Check it out. (Dennis Daniels has been including links to screen casts with most of his posts.)
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:The lack of child ownership has an upside. It is fairly easy to test new SoaS builds without worrying about backups or deleting a child's work. We are working closely with Martin Dengler to test the latest builds. NANDblaster is a dream come true.
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===tech talk===
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Christoph Derndorfer has been further organizing a framework in the wiki [[Deployment_Team/Places]] for maintaining an overview of where and how Sugar is used. Please help us maintain it.
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5. In the run up to string freeze for Release 0.86, Simon Schampijer led a triage session (See [http://dev.sugarlabs.org/milestone/0.86 Milestone 0.86]).
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===Tech Talk===
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6. Tom Gilliard (satellit) continues to experiment with alternative formats for Sugar LiveUSB images (See [http://people.sugarlabs.org/Tgillard/]).
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7. Sebastian Dziallas and the Sugar on a Stick team are making progress towards a new release that incorporates Fedora 12 and a number of features that are the result of feedback from "Strawberry". They are producing new builds for testing (not ready for deployment). Please test [http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/3/SoaS3-200908182110.iso beta.iso].
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===Sugar Labs===
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8. Bert Freudenberg and the Etoys team released [http://etoys.laptop.org/rpms/Etoys-103.xo Etoys-103.xo] this week. Try it, you'll like it.
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7. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-August-8-14-som.jpg|SOM]]).  
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9. Simon Schampijer and the Release Team have been busy preparing for 0.86. We had feature freeze last week; the next step is to chase down outstanding bugs. You can help by testing the new Glucose bits that have been released by Simon and Tomeu Vizoso.
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===Just for fun===
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===Sugar Labs===
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Another quote from ''A Fire Upon the Deep'': "Finally they pulled the big, floppy ears simultaneously: the dataset popped open." Sounds like he was describing an OLPC XO-1.
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10. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-August-15-21-som.jpg|SOM]]).  
    
=== Community News archive ===
 
=== Community News archive ===
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