Difference between revisions of "Sugar Labs/Current Events"

Revision as of 08:59, 24 July 2013

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, blogged at walterbender.org, and archived here.) If you would like to contribute, please send email to walter at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit planet.sugarlabs.org.)

Sugar Digest

"Dr. Ambedkar believed that ... to escape from oppression, they had to ... ‘educ ate, agitate and organize’ their way to emancipation." --Ramachandra Guha

1. Just for fun, taking inspiration from a conversation with Manuel Quiñones, I added a new sample program to Turtle Art. The sensor-record.tb project lets the user draw a picture with the mouse (or touch) and generates on the fly a Turtle Art project that will reproduce the drawing. Silly, but fun nonetheless. It comes bundled with the Version 185 of Turtle Blocks. (I still have the goal to recreate all of Sugar in Turtle Art.)

2. I also finally got around to writing a variant of Turtle Confusion based on flags. Turtle Flags uses a database of national flags from the Wikipedia to present programming challenges. The first flag is Peru, which is red and white stripes. But things get more challenging from there.

3. Spirituality for Kids is a website that attempts to help children "understand the benefits of human dignity, tolerance, connecting to self, community, and the world, they are better equipped to become conscious leaders in their homes, schools and communities." I've worked with them to convert some of their material into a series of Sugar activities (See [1]). Two caveats: (1) the activities contain some rather large OGV videos, so be prepared for long download times and make sure you have plenty of available disk space. (I had broken the original activity up into 6 parts to address this, but may have to break it up even further.); and (2) the content is English only at the moment. I am working with them on packaging their Spanish-language videos.

In the community

4. It is official: International Turtle Art Day will be on October 12. Pacita Peña and Cecilia Alcala will be hosting an event in Caacupé and there will be other events around the world sharing ideas and resources. More details soon.

Tech Talk

5. I've been working in enhancing the intra-Sugar statistics gathering mechanism in order to "make learning visible" to the child and classroom teacher. We landed a patch to Sugar a while ago to record activity launch times (previously, just the most recent launch time was recorded). With these new data, it is possible to not just make visible which activities have been used, but also, how often each instance of an activity has been used. I've modified the Analyze Journal activity to reflect these changes and Gonzalo Odiard and I are working on a classroom management system to facilitate sharing of these data between the learner and the classroom teacher. This is very early in the effort: comments and feedback most welcome.

6. Daniel Drake got married this week in Nicaragua! Congratulations and best wishes for a joyful union. The festivities did not deter Daniel from announcing the release of OLPC OS 13.2.0 for XO-1, XO-1.5, XO-1.75 and XO-4. Details of new features, known issues, and how to download/install/upgrade can all be found in the release notes. Many thanks Daniel, who lead the release process and to all contributors, testers, up-streams, and those who have provided feedback of any kind. This is by far the best OLPC/Sugar release yet! (Also, there is a really nice article about what else Daniel has been doing in Nicaragua here.)

Sugar Labs

7. Please visit (and contribute to) our planet.

Community News archive

An archive of this digest is available.

Planet

The Sugar Labs Planet is found here.

Sugar in the news

12 Jul 2013	RIT – ‘Sky Time’ video game selected for White House Champions of Change event July 23
28 Apr 2013	BBC Mundo – Los programadores adolescentes premiados por Google
07 Feb 2013	el Neuvo Herald – Joven uruguayo brilla como programador y es distinguido por Google
06 Feb 2013	el Observador – Joven uruguayo gana la competencia Google Code (Also see GCI press interviews)
07 Sep 2012	NDTV – One Laptop Per Child initiative a hit in rural India
08 Jul 2012	Estado de S. Paulo – Para educar
24 Apr 2012	Pacific Standard – OLPC Redux
12 Apr 2012	Huffington Post – Hult Global Case Challenge: One Laptop Per Child
30 Mar 2012	newswise – “Sugar on a Stick” Helps Kids Learn How to Learn
11 Jan 2012	Boston Herald – One Laptop Per Child screening $100 tablet
10 Jan 2012	ars technica – Crank, bicycle, and waterwheel: hands-on with the OLPC XO 3.0 tablet
08 Jan 2012	The Verge – OLPC XO 3.0 tablet preview: impressions, video, and pictures
07 Jan 2012	The Verge – OLPC XO 3.0 tablet: an 8-inch tablet for $100, with Android and Sugar options for the children
23 Dec 2011	Miller-McCune – One Laptop Per Child Redux
18 Oct 2011	BDU – Robotics in Uruguay (video)
11 Aug 2011	Berlin.de – Gewinner des Berliner Landeswettbewerbs zu Open Source stehen fest
25 Jul 2011	CCC Classic – Garmin-sugarlabs development cycling team at Crit starting line
25 Jul 2011	CCC Classic – Garmin-sugarlabs development cycling team after Crit
13 Apr 2011	framablog – L'expérience Sugar Labs préfigure-t-elle une révolution éducative du XXIe siècle?
05 Apr 2011	Businesswire – The Government of Peru Expands the One Laptop Per Child Program with Local Manufacturing
31 Jan 2011	Sundance – A Day in the Life – Peru
01 Dec 2010	velonation – Sugar Labs to back Garmin-Cervelo’s development team in unique arrangement
28 Oct 2010	UCR – Nuevas tecnologías deben estar al alcance de todos los niños y niñas
05 Oct 2010	xconomy – One Ecosystem per Child
08 Sep 2010	FLOSS Weekly – Sugar Labs
09 Aug 2010	ABC digital – Indicadores constatan el impacto positivo en el aprendizaje de niños
23 Jun 2010	ABC digital – Xo para todas las escuelas de Caacupé
21 Jun 2010	La Nacion – “Buscamos que los niños no solo usen softwares, sino que puedan crear uno”
20 Jun 2010	UltimaHora.com – La laptop une a padres, alumnos y docentes
15 Jun 2010	The H – OLPC XO-1.5 software updated
10 Jun 2010	engadget – Sugar on a Stick hits 3.0, teaches us about a new kind of fruit
27 May 2010	Pro Linux DE – Sugar on a Stick v3 freigegeben (German)
27 May 2010	NY Times – One Laptop Per Child Project Works With Marvell to Produce a $100 Tablet
27 May 2010	PC World – OLPC Rules out Windows for XO-3
03 May 2010	WXXI: Mixed Media – Interview with Walter Bender (audio)
03 May 2010	Linux Magazine – OLPC Computers for Palestinian Refugee Children
14 Apr 2010	National Science Foundation – XO Laptops Inspire Learning In Birmingham, Alabama (video)
02 Apr 2010	Dailymotion – Un jour... à Paris... ensembles pour OLPC et Sugar... (video)
15 Mar 2010	nbc13.com – Birmingham City students opt to spend spring break in class, XO computer camps (video)
18 Feb 2010	LWN – Karma targets easier creation of educational software
05 Feb 2010	iprofesional – La PC barata de Negroponte desembarca en la Argentina para pelear contra Intel
14 Jan 2010	AALF – Open Systems for Broader Change
03 Jan 2010	Educacion 2.0 – PLAN CEIBAL, El Libro
14 Dec 2009	xconomy – Sugar gets sweeter
10 Dec 2009	ars technica – Sugar software environment gets sweeter with version 2
09 Dec 2009	Wired – New Sugar on a Stick Brings Much Needed Improvements
08 Dec 2009	engadget – Sugar on a Stick OS goes to 2.0, gets Blueberry coating and creamy Fedora 12 center (video)
07 Dec 2009	Teleread.org – Sugar on a Stick: What it means for e-books and education
27 Nov 2009	CNET Japan – 「コードを見せて、もっと良くなるよ」と言える子どもが生まれる--Sugar Labsが描く未来
16 Nov 2009	zanichelli – software libero a scuola
12 Nov 2009	opensuse.org – openSUSE 11.2 Released
07 Nov 2009	My Broadband News – Mandriva 2010 packs a punch [and Sugar]
06 Nov 2009	GhanaWeb – Open education and an IT-enabled economic growth in Ghana: Musings of a dutiful citizen
26 Oct 2009	Linux Magazine ES – Software Libre como apoyo al aprendizaje
09 Oct 2009	interdisciplines – OLPC and Sugar: mobility through the community
08 Oct 2009	IBM developerWorks – 10 important Linux developments everyone should know about
01 Oct 2009	OLPC France – Interview Walter Bender au SugarCamp
25 Sep 2009	The Inquirer – One Laptop per Child marches on
18 Sep 2009	Groklaw – The Role of Free Software in Education
18 Sep 2009	Reuters – Sugar Labs and Free Software Foundation Celebrate Software Freedom Day
17 Sep 2009	ICTDev.org – Dream Again with One Laptop per Child
26 Aug 2009	Latinux – Azúcar en una memoria USB
03 Aug 2009	Wired: Geek Dad – Inventing a New Paradigm: SugarLabs and the Sugar UI
30 Jul 2009	Zanichelli – Sugar on a Stick: imparare insieme
23 Jul 2009	Everything USB – RecycleUSB.com - Donate your Flash Drives for a Good Cause
22 Jul 2009	OLPC France – Sugar : mauvaise presse et mise au point
13 Jul 2009	Spiegel Online – Das zuckersüße Leichtbau-Linux
07 Jul 2009	ComputerWorldUK – Gran Canaria Desktop Summit: a Study in Contrasts
06 Jul 2009	Windows Forest – USBメモリなどから“OLPC”用のOSを利用できる「Sugar on a Stick」が無償公開
02 Jul 2009	Howard County Library – Sugar on a Stick
27 Jun 2009	Deutschlandfunk – Süßes für die Kleinen: Sugar ist Linux speziell für Kinder (in Deutsch)
26 Jun 2009	EduTech – Sugar on a stick, and other delectables (praise for the lowly USB drive)
26 Jun 2009	ars technica – Sugar on a Stick brings sweet taste of Linux to classrooms
24 Jun 2009	BBC – OLPC software to power aging PCs
24 Jun 2009	Technology Review – $100 Laptop Becomes a $5 PC
15 Jun 2009	TechSavvyKids – Episode 10 FOSSVT: Sugar on a Stick (audio)
10 Jun 2009	LWN.net – Sugar moves from the shadow of OLPC
27 May 2009	LWN.net – Activities and the move to context-oriented desktops (subscriber link)
27 May 2009	Business Wire – Dailymotion Launches Support for Open Video Formats and Video HTML Tag
01 May 2009	Guysoft – Nokia N810 Running OLPC Sugar
29 Apr 2009	El Mercurio – Así se vivió la fiesta del software libre
27 Apr 2009	ostatic – Sugar on a Stick: Good for Kids' Minds (and School Budgets)
25 Apr 2009	Free Software Magazine – The Bittersweet Facts about OLPC and Sugar
24 Apr 2009	ars technica – First taste: Sugar on a Stick learning platform
22 Apr 2009	Betanews – Beta of Live USB Sugar OS opens
27 Mar 2009	Mass High Tech – Google promotes summer open-source internships
18 Mar 2009	Metropolis – A Good Argument
16 Mar 2009	Laptop Magazine – Sugar Labs’ New Version of Sugar Learning Platform Is Netbook and PC Ready
16 Mar 2009	Market Watch – Sugar Labs Nonprofit Announces New Version of Sugar Learning Platform for Children, Runs on Netbooks and PCs
14 Feb 2009	OLPC Learning Club – DC – Learning Learning on a Stick
05 Feb 2009	xconomy – Sugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick”
26 Jan 2009	Linus Magazine – Sugar Defies OLPC Cutbacks
19 Jan 2009	Feeding the Penguins – The status of Sugar, post-OLPC
16 Jan 2009	OLPC News – Sugar on Acer Aspire One & Thin Client via LTSP
12 Jan 2009	Bill Kerr – thoughts about olpc cutbacks
07 Jan 2009	ars technica – OLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development
06 Jan 2009	OLPC News – An Inside Look at how Microsoft got XP on the XO
30 Dec 2008	OLPC News – Sugar Labs Status at Six Months
22 Dec 2008	The GNOME Project – Sugar Labs, the nonprofit behind the OLPC software, is joining the GNOME Foundation
16 Dec 2008	Feeding the Penguins – Sugar git repository change
14 Dec 2008	NPR – Laptop Deal Links Rural Peru To Opportunity, Risk (Part 2)
13 Dec 2008	NPR – Laptops May Change The Way Rural Peru Learns (Part 1)
09 Dec 2008	SFC – Sugar Labs joins Conservancy
31 Oct 2008	Linux Devices – An OLPC dilemma: Linux or Windows?
10 Oct 2008	Feeding the Penguin – Sugar on Ubuntu
21 Sep 2008	Groklaw – Interview with Walter Bender of Sugar Labs
17 Sep 2008	Bill Kerr – Sugar Labs
16 Sep 2008	Open Source – Sugar everywhere
28 Aug 2008	OLPC News – An answer to Walter Bender's question 22
20 Aug 2008	OLPC News – Sugarize it: Intel Classmate 2
08 Aug 2008	Investor's Business Daily – 'Learning' Vs. Laptop Was Issue
06 Aug 2008	OLPC News – Twenty-three Questions on Technology and Education
18 Jul 2008	Bill Kerr – evaluating Sugar in the developed world
28 Jun 2008	OLPC News – A Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 Jun 2008	PC World – OLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 Jun 2008	Datamation – If Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 Jun 2008	LinuxInsider – The Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 Jun 2008	Bill Kerr – untangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 Jun 2008	Open Education – Walter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 Jun 2008	BusinessWeek – OLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 Jun 2008	Code Culture – The Distraction Machine
05 Jun 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

See our Press Page

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 == Sugar Digest ==
-It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies. They are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. --Jacob Bronowski
+"Dr. Ambedkar believed that ... to escape from oppression, they had to ... ‘educ
+ate, agitate and organize’ their way to emancipation." --Ramachandra Guha
-. It has been a long while since my last post. Too much travel. I started writing this post sitting at the gate in Tel Aviv, waiting for my flight to New York to depart. (My second overnight flight in three days.) Since then, I have also been to Sydney and back (for the second time in two months).
+. Just for fun, taking inspiration from a conversation with Manuel Quiñones, I added a new sample program to Turtle Art. The [https://git.sugarlabs.org/turtleart/mainline/blobs/raw/master/samples/sensors-record.tb sensor-record.tb project] lets the user draw a picture with the mouse (or touch) and generates on the fly a Turtle Art project that will reproduce the drawing. Silly, but fun nonetheless. It comes bundled with the Version 185 of Turtle Blocks. (I still have the goal to recreate all of Sugar in Turtle Art.)
-Two things brought me to Tel Aviv: the Shaping the Future conference on educational technology and the possibility of a Sugar deployment in the Negev.
+. I also finally got around to writing a variant of [[Activities/Turtle_Confusion|Turtle Confusion ]] based on flags. [[Activities/TurtleFlags|Turtle Flags]] uses a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_sovereign-state_flags database of national flags] from the Wikipedia to present programming challenges. The first flag is Peru, which is red and white stripes. But things get more challenging from there.
-The conference, sponsored by CET [http://cet.org.il] was very stimulating. I hung out in the policy track to try to get an insight into the government decision-making process. Not sure I came away with any new ideas, but I did make some new friends, including former governor Bob Wise from West Virginia. The governor knows Idit Harel, whose MamaMedia group contributed some early apps [http://www.mamamedia.com/] to Sugar. He is presently President, Alliance for Excellent Education [http://www.all4ed.org]. I was impressed by his pragmatism.
+. [http://www.spiritualityforkids.com/ Spirituality for Kids] is a website that attempts to help children "understand the benefits of human dignity, tolerance, connecting to self, community, and the world, they are better equipped to become conscious leaders in their homes, schools and communities." I've worked with them to convert some of their material into a series of Sugar activities (See [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4679]). Two caveats: (1) the activities contain some rather large OGV videos, so be prepared for long download times and make sure you have plenty of available disk space. (I had broken the original activity up into 6 parts to address this, but may have to break it up even further.); and (2) the content is English only at the moment. I am working with them on packaging their Spanish-language videos.
-CET itself is quite impressive in the degree to which they mix deep thinking about pedagogy with practical development of learning materials. Many thanks to my hosts, Gila, Avi, and Cecelia. They will be involved in whatever ends up happening in the Negev. It is looking as if it will be an Android tablet deployment, so they are hoping to pull together a team to help the Sugar community to accelerate its efforts to get Sugar (or a Sugar-like experience) running on Android. Stay tuned.
-I met up with Claudia Urrea and Gonzalo Odiard in Sydney. We spend five days with Rangan Srikhanta and the OLPC AU team. The first day we visited a school in the outskirts of Sydney that is using Sugar. I was thrilled to see the children engaged in problem solving, using the computer as a tool, working in small groups in the classroom, each group self-directed. No babysitting with rote-learning games.
-At the OLPC AU office, we spent several days brainstorming about ways to add value to the overall program in Australia, which goes beyond distributing hardware and software to providing training, support, and sharing of resources. It is a program with great potential.
-One highlight was meeting Ian Mackie, who is deeply invested in the prosperity of the indigenous peoples of Australia. He is excited about the prospects of getting local language support into Sugar. I have connected him with Chris Leonard.
-I also got to spend some time with a former student, Vadim Gerasimov, who is working for Google in Sydney. Vadim is helping me with a GDrive webservice for Sugar. We have a command-line version working and I hope to have it integrated into Sugar in short order.
-. During my blogging hiatus, Google Summer of Code began. Our Google Summer of Code students are Kalpa, Marion, Rahul, Suraj, Akshit, Anna, Casey, and Erik. We have a group meeting every Friday at 13:00 EST on #sugar-meeting. Please join us.
-. I neglected to mention that Sugar Labs has received about 200 USB keys from the Recycle USB program [http://www.recycleusb.com] run by Nexcopy [http://www.nexcopy.com]. My plan is to distribute these keys (with Sugar installed) on Turtle Art Day, which is scheduled for 12 October.
 === In the community ===
-. The RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction & Creativity (MAGIC) is pleased to announce that a student-led project entitled “Sky Time” has been selected for inclusion in the White House Champions of Change event on July 23rd in Washington, D.C. [http://foss.rit.edu/skytime-whitehouse].
+. It is official: International Turtle Art Day will be on October 12. Pacita Peña and Cecilia Alcala will be hosting an event in Caacupé and there will be other events around the world sharing ideas and resources. More details soon.
 === Tech Talk ===
-. A few months back, George Hunt announced the release of XSCE 0.3 [http://schoolserver.org/0.3]:
+. I've been working in enhancing the intra-Sugar statistics gathering mechanism in order to "make learning visible" to the child and classroom teacher. We landed a patch to Sugar a while ago to record activity launch times (previously, just the most recent launch time was recorded). With these new data, it is possible to not just make visible which activities have been used, but also, how often each instance of an activity has been used. I've modified the [[Activities/Analyze_Journal|Analyze Journal activity]] to reflect these changes and Gonzalo Odiard and I are working on a [[Features/Classroom_management|classroom management system]] to facilitate sharing of these data between the learner and the classroom teacher. This is very early in the effort: comments and feedback most welcome.
-* XSCE now runs on the XO-1.5,XO-1.75 and  XO-4.
-* Modular Architecture: cleanly integrate extendable services.
-* XSCE runs on the XOs' current OS 13.1.0 (we discovered some wrinkles with 13.2.0 which push its use off to the next release)
-* Moodle is Back!
-* Content filtering via openDNS.com
-* Script for formatting of SD cards, and integration into system for content sto
-rage and memory extending swap file (does not work on XO4's)
-Since then, there has been another School Server code sprint (hosted by Jerry Vonau) documented here [https://www.facebook.com/UnleashKids].
-. We are making much progress on the road to the Sugar 0.100 (1.0) release. Daniel Narveaz and Manuel Quiñones continue pushing forward on the HTML5/Javascript support [http://developer.sugarlabs.org/web-architecture.md.html]. Suraj has been blogging about his efforts [http://surajgillespie123.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/gsoc/]. I spent the weekend  writing my first JS Sugar activity [http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/ConnecttheDots-1.xo]. Lots to learn.
+. Daniel Drake got married this week in Nicaragua! Congratulations and best wishes for a joyful union. The festivities did not deter Daniel from announcing the release of OLPC OS 13.2.0 for XO-1, XO-1.5, XO-1.75 and XO-4. Details of new features, known issues, and how to download/install/upgrade can all be found in the [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.2.0 release notes]. Many thanks Daniel, who lead the release process and to all contributors, testers, up-streams, and those who have provided feedback of any kind. This is by far the best OLPC/Sugar release yet! (Also, there is a really nice article about what else Daniel has been doing in Nicaragua [http://www.laprensa.com.ni/2013/07/24/reportajes-especiales/155871-isla-maestros?movil here].)
 === Sugar Labs ===
-. Please visit (and contribute to) our planet [http://planet.sugarlab.org].
+. Please visit (and contribute to) our [http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet].
 == Community News archive ==