Difference between revisions of "Sugar Labs/Current Events"

Revision as of 19:10, 11 August 2008

What's new

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 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 here.

Sugar Digest

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 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.

Community jams and meetups

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.

Tech Talk

3. Sucrose final release: Simon Schampijer reports that the Sugar community is working on the final release (0.82) for the Sucrose (Please see the Sugar Timeline).

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). Swap space

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 COBBLE; Space Tag; and Cell Management).

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 X2o).

7. Sugar-presence-service: Guillaume Desmottes reports that a new release of the Suagr Presence Service is available (Please see sugar-presence-service-0.82.1.tar.bz2). This is the "Woo I'm stable!" release.

8. Activity updates: Read 49; Terminal 15; Log 12; Pippy 24; Calculate 21; Etoys 87; Write 57; Browse 95; and Journal 97.

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 Sugared Wine for more information about Wine, a GNU LGPL licensed implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix and Sugar).

10. Translations: Sayamindu Dasgupta reports "significant support" for 18 languages (not including English) for Sugar 0.82:

Language	% of translated strings
Greek	100
Sinhala	100
Turkish	100
Dutch	99
German	99
Kinyarwanda	98.5
Spanish	97.5
Nepali	97.5
Italian	97
Kreyol	97
Marathi	96.5
Mongolian	95.5
French	95
Telugu	94
Urdu	93.5
Slovenian	82.5
Dari	80
Pashto	80

Thanks to all the translation teams for their hard work.

Sugar Labs

11. Self-organizing map (SOM): Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see SOM). Sugar and Work are surrounded by OLPC, lab, education, development, and community.

Sugar in the news

18 July 2008	Bill Kerr – evaluating Sugar in the developed world
28 June 2008	OLPC News – A Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 June 2008	PC World – OLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 June 2008	Datamation – If Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 June 2008	LinuxInsider – The Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 June 2008	Bill Kerr – untangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 June 2008	Open Education – Walter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 June 2008	BusinessWeek – OLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 June 2008	Code Culture – The Distraction Machine
05 June 2008	BusinessWeek – OLPC: The Open-Source Controversy
27 May 2008	The New York Times – Why Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
26 May 2008	Ars Technica – OLPC software maker splits from X0 hardware, goes solo
22 May 2008	BetaNews – Linux start-up Sugar Labs in informal talks with four laptop makers
16 May 2008	OSTATIC – OLPC's Open Source Sugar Platform Aims for New Hardware
16 May 2008	PCWorld – Bender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI
16 May 2008	MHT – Bender jumps from OLPC, founds Sugar Labs
16 May 2008	News.com – Sugar Labs will make OLPC interface available for Eee PC, others
16 May 2008	Feeding the Peguins – The future of Sugar
16 May 2008	Sugar list – A few thoughts on SugarLabs
16 May 2008	xconomy – Bender Creates Sugar Labs—New Foundation to Adapt OLPC’s Laptop Interface for Other Machines
16 May 2008	BBC – '$100 laptop' platform moves on
15 May 2008	OLPC wiki – Dual-boot XO Claim: OLPC will not work to port Sugar to Windows.
16 May 2008	Softpedia – Bender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

Press releases

15 May 2008

Sugar Labs/Announcing Sugar Labs

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 === Sugar Digest ===
-. "The vision thing": There has been some discussion about the Sugar vision in regard to both its clarity and the degree to which it is being promoted (Please see [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2008-August/001425.html the email thread]). While there is some divergence of opinion about the breadth of the Sugar Labs mission—ranging from a strict focus on collaboration tools to a broad focus on everything necessary for successful one-laptop-per-child deployments—there was consensus that we are getting the message out that Sugar is alive and kicking; there is still a wide-spread impression that the FOSS community has abandoned Sugar because OLPC is working with Microsoft on Windows XP. We need to let the world know that: (a) there is a vibrant Sugar community; (b) that OLPC is still behind Sugar; (c) other hardware vendors are beginning to adopt Sugar; and (d) the FOSS Sugar learning platform offers encourages the direct appropriation of ideas in whatever realm the learner is exploring: music, browsing, reading, writing, programming, graphics, etc.—they are able to engage in debugging both their personal expression and the very tools that they use for that expression.
+. 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
+[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.
-. Try Sugar: An important aspect of Sugar outreach is easy access to Sugar itself. We are targeting grassroots adoption (in addition to top-down "sales" coupled to programs like One Laptop per Child or Intel regional or national initialives), so we need to make it easier for small groups to try Sugar. This includes community support of the existing LiveUSB, LiveCD, and Appliance efforts, but also further consideration (and documentation) of the various hardware one might find in the field and more detailed instructions on setting up classrooms (groups) of machines working together. Towards that end, we are beginning work on a "Try Sugar" section in the wiki (Please help us flesh out [[Documentation/Try_Sugar]]), which includes a matrix of "tried and ready" solutions from the field. To be able to say to a teacher, here is a step-by-step guide to how you can repurpose (or overlay) the computers you have access to in the classroom to run Sugar will go a long way towards fostering growth of Sugar.
-. "Unexpected" suggestions: Michael Stone wrote up some suggestions regarding "the Work of Sugar", his reactions to sugar's architecture, design, and implementation. It was the basis of an in-depth discussion the Sugar mailing list (Please see [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007304.html]).
-. Proposal: There has been a back-and-forth discussion about establishing an Activity developers mailing list separate from the Sugar developers mailing list (Please see [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007503.html]). It has been suggested that Activity developers need a more focused list to alert them to needs specific to activity developers, such as changes to APIs, a forum for soliciting help, etc. The downside of course is the fragmentation and distraction of yet another mailing list.
-. Outreach: Stormy Peters, executive director, GNOME Foundation, has blogged about Sugar Labs (Please see [http://www.stormyscorner.com/2008/07/sugar-the-softw.html Stormy's Corner]) and has pledged to step up the level of awareness of Sugar within the GNOME community. (Sugar has its foundation in the GNOME toolkit.) Morgan Collett has been actively promoting Sugar within the Ubuntu community and Greg DeKoeningsberg has been very helpful in promoting Sugar within the Fedora community.
-. Minutes: We had a meeting of the acting Sugar oversight board on Friday, 8 August 2008. Minutes and a log of the conversation are in the wiki (Please see [[Sugar_Labs/OversightBoard/Minutes#Friday_1_August_2008_-_14.00_.28UTC.29|1 August 2008 minutes]]). One important decision reached at the meeting was to open up nominations for postions on the to-be-elected seven-member board over the first two weeks of August (until the 16th) and to hold an election over the final two weeks of August (from the 17th to the 30th). Please send nominations to "walter AT sugarlabs.org"; feel free to nominate yourself.
 === Community jams and meetups ===
-. Openminds: Is anyone planning to attend the K–12 Openminds meeting in Indianapolis (Please see http://www.k12openminds.org/)? It'd be a great forum to promote Sugar.
+. Game Jam Peru: Hernán Paches announces an upcoming Game Jam at the Universidad de San Martín de Porres in Lima on 23–25 October.
-. Physics jam: Brian Jordan is organizing a physics game competition 29–31 August in Cambridge, MA. There will be categories for remote entries, youth, professional, and independent game developers. Brian reports that will be XOs and other sweet prizes for the best entries. Please help to spread the word (Please see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Physics_Jam).
+===Tech Talk===
-. Organización del 2do Ceibal Jam: Pablo Flores reports that there will be a jam at the Catholic University (UCU) in Uruguay over two weekends (Saturday 30 August and 6 September). Please contact Pablo ("pflores2 AT gmail.com") for more details.
+. 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]]).
-. Book sprint: There will be a book sprint in Austin, TX from 24–29 August. Please contact Adam Hyde ("adam AT flossmanuals.net") for more details.
+. 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).
+Swap space
-===Tech Talk===
+. "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]).
-. Buildbot: Marco Pesenti Gritti reports that we are running periodic builds of Sugar using the buildbot automation system. Full builds, which starts every time from a clean source and installation tree, are run every 12 hours. Quick builds, which are built incrementally from the last build source and installation tree, are run every two hours. The status of the builds is available through a web interface and failures are notified to the development mailing list (Please see [[DevelopmentTeam/Buildbot]]). Thanks to http://www.prgmr.com/ for hosting the buildbot for us.
+. 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]).
-Next steps:
+. 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.
+. Activity updates: Read 49; Terminal 15; Log 12; Pippy 24; Calculate 21; Etoys 87; Write 57; Browse 95; and Journal 97.
-* Setup other Linux distributions (does anyone want to work on an Ubuntu "slave"?);
+. 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://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).
-* Make the check step succeed (several pylint warnings to address);
-* Automated testing (maybe we can start integrating bits of Zach work?);
-* Enable mail notification on failures.
-. Activity updates: A number of activity developers reported new versions available this week for testing: Please try the new versions of:
+. Translations: Sayamindu Dasgupta reports "significant support" for 18 languages (not including English) for Sugar 0.82:
-Chat 44
+{| border=1
-Journal 96
+|-
-Terminal 14
+!Language !!% of translated strings
-Pippy 23
+|-
-Read 48
+|Greek||100
-Calculate 20
+|-
-Write 56
+|Sinhala||100
-Develop 34
+|-
-Etoys 80
+|Turkish||100
-Conozco Uruguay ("I know Uruguay")
+|-
+|Dutch||99
+|-
+|German||99
+|-
+|Kinyarwanda||98.5
+|-
+|Spanish||97.5
+|-
+|Nepali||97.5
+|-
+|Italian||97
+|-
+|Kreyol||97
+|-
+|Marathi||96.5
+|-
+|Mongolian||95.5
+|-
+|French||95
+|-
+|Telugu||94
+|-
+|Urdu||93.5
+|-
+|Slovenian||82.5
+|-
+|Dari||80
+|-
+|Pashto||80
+|}
-. Sucrose 0.81.6: Simon Schampijer reports that the new Sucrose 0.81.6 Development Release (Release Candidate 2) is out. This release cycle was focused on stabilization. Thanks to all of you for your efforts and special thanks to the translation teams, whom have been very busy of late: all the Fructose modules have been released containing new strings. Release notes are available at [[ReleaseTeam/Releases/Sucrose/0.81.6]] and the Sucrose Roadmap is available at [[ReleaseTeam/Roadmap]].
+Thanks to all the translation teams for their hard work.
 === Sugar Labs ===
-. 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-July-26-August-1-som.jpg]]). While it has been a fairly quiet traffic week, there has been an educational focus (how to best use/apply/approach technology tools to education). Gary also posted a map of the Sugar mailing list from the month of July (Please see [[Community/SOM#Sugar_Mailing_List]]).
+. 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.
 ==Sugar in the news==