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→Sugar Digest
== Sugar Digest ==
== Sugar Digest ==
1. Danishka Navin pointed me to [http://www.ft.lk/2012/05/12/reconstructing-sri-lankas-education-system-with-hanthana an article about Sugar] in Sri Lanka. Even though they don't mention Sugar, in fact, both Sugar and GNOME are being used on [http://www.hanthana.org/ Hanthana Linux], a Fedora-based Linux, using LSTP. The program is modelled on the [http://school.hanthana.org/lab/ Hanthana School Labs]. I wonder where else Sugar is being used that I am unaware?
1. Sugar 0.96 has been officially released. You can read all about it at [[0.96/Notes]].
2. In the spirit of procrastination, I wrote two new Sugar activities this week. The first is a simple activity around the concept of narrative. Claudia Urrea had come across a game in which nine picture are chosen at random (by throwing nine dice). The players then construct a narrative based on the pictures. Easy enough to implement [[Activities/Story]] in Sugar. I took advantage of a nice source for SVG artwork, [http://thenounproject.com/ ''The Noun Project'']. When shared – with up to eight other users – everyone sees the same pictures and hence can tell a story in a round-robin fashion. (One of these days, I will write the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse ''Exquisite Cadavar''] activity, based on the Dadaist storytelling technique that is a natural fit with Sugar collaboration. There is a variant that combines pictures and text: you draw a picture illustrating my text; the next person writes text describing your picture, and so on. Stay tuned.)
2. Guzman Trindad has posted some great videos of various physics investigations on the XO (See [https://sites.google.com/site/solymar1fisica/fisica-con-xo-investigacion-/videos-youtube-fisica-con-xo]).
3. EduJAM! presented awards for [http://edujam2012.blogspot.com/p/nominados.html the best Sugar activities]. Although they were not singled out in any special way, the youth of Uruguay managed to walk away with six of the prizes. Congratulations to Christofer, Agustin, Daniel, et al. for your contributions. A tip of the hat to the adult contributors too: Flavio, Gabriel, Alan, Andres, and Alejandro.
By my rough estimate, approximately 10% of all Sugar activities have been written by kids who grew up on Sugar. It would interesting to understand the phenomenon. But we must be doing something right.
I did learn that Christofer has been in an on-going dialogue with Rosamel Ramirez, a teacher in Duranzo about his activity development. Their latest collaboration is [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4572 JAMuliples]. Good stuff.
4. Next week is [http://squeakland.org/squeakfest Squeakfest], also in Montevideo (May 17-19) and May 21-22 in Buenos Aires.
4. Some of you may be following the discussion about "New Co." on the iaep list [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2012-May/015272.html] and [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2012-May/015288.html]. To summarize, we are exploring alternative structures for Sugar Labs, which may well involve the creation of a new organization -- to augment our FOSS development efforts housed at the SFC -- to support the auxiliary operations involved with supporting the code in the field.
I solicited feedback on the specific goals for a New Co. Aleksey reminded us that [[What_is_Sugar|our stated mission]] as a community is much broader than just software development: we want our software to be used and we want to have a positive influence of other people writing learning software. We came together as a community because we share certain principles about learning and we want to help people to "embody these principals 'in the field'."
In trying to answer my specific question, Aleksey Lim said: the "new organization should provide practices and procedures how to setup local deployment program in most useful way." and the "new organization should provide a way to forward funding... to particular program[s] and provide everything to make this funding open/clear for donators and easy handled by local deployment people." Finally, he posited that perhaps the "new organization will be a guarantee for institutions where local deployment happens (schools, etc.) to make them assured that even after finishing the program, there will be a way to get some help."
Martin Langhoff raised some important points as well: "The _top priority_ should be to get stuff done with your own means...", that "the good name of SL is a precious asset based on work from a global effort", but we should "let each group do their own thing. It's their name, their reputation on the line."
We'll be continuing the discuss at next week's Sugar Labs oversight board (SLOB) meeting. Please join us.
5. On a personal note, my heart goes out to Marco Presenti Gritti, who posted on his [http://theoria.me/#cancer blog] this week that he has cancer. Marco was part of the team that created Sugar and was at my side when we created Sugar Labs. Marco: know that there are many people thinking of you.
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===