Difference between revisions of "Sugar Labs/Current Events"

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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. (Also visit planet.sugarlabs.org.)

Sugar Digest

1. A dear friend and mentor, Henry Aristide “Red” Boucher, died yesterday at the age of 88. Red taught me never to say never. His energy and enthusiam were infectous and his capacity to do the right thing was boundless. I'll miss him.

2. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Sebastian Dziallas and the Sugar community, Sugar Labs announces the availability of Sugar on a Stick, codenamed "Strawberry". It features the latest version of the Sugar desktop environment—Version 0.84—and a number of additional activities, providing a great learning experience for new and experienced users. For more information and instructions—how to put SoaS on your USB key or how to deploy it—please refer to our release notes.

Help Wanted

3. Lionel Laske has asked for help with the French version of the Sugar FLOSS manual. He is happy to announce the results of their efforts.

4. There is a new page in the wiki, What could I do in an hour?, for collecting ideas for quick contributions. Please add your ideas.

In the community

5. Coming up this week: Sugar at Linuxtag (24–27 June in Berlin). The marketing team has made a great banner to draw attention to our booth.

6. Also, Sugar at FOSSED in Bethel, Maine, 24–26 June. Caroline Meeks and I will be running a three-hour Sugar workshop for teachers.

7. And Sugar at NECC in Washington DC, 28 June–1 July. Mike Lee, Jeff Elkner and others from the Washington DC area will be representing Sugar Labs.

8. Squeakfest will be held in Los Angeles 10–12 August and in Porto Alegre 23–25 Julho (starting today!).

9. There is an on-going discussion about setting up a program similar to the Fedora Ambassadors program to help facilitate more community involvement in Sugar. Sugar "Facilitators" would:

Represent Sugar to the wider public
Help spread the word about Sugar
Be a point of contact for local community members and channel the feedback to the Sugar community
Help recruit contributors
Think of creative ways for promoting Sugar in your region

Tech Talk

10. Tomeu Vizoso has been making great progress on improving support for Gnash/Flash based activities within Sugar.

11. David Van Assche started a thread on personalisation and collaboration. The gist of the discussion is that we should be able to enhance many of the collaboration and evaluation scenarios by capturing and sharing information about user preferences and activities. Please join the discussion as this could be an important topic for Sugar 0.86.

12. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Nexcopy had donated a USB replicator to Sugar Labs. Caroline and I have successfully used the replcator to make Sugar on a Stick keys—we'll be bringin gthe system with us to FOSSED this week. We plan to use it at the Gardner Elementary School this summer as well.

13. Eric Bachard reports on http://planet.go-oo.org/ that starting in July there will be a new collaboration between OpenOffice.org Education Project and Epitech Paris. Thomas Fontenay, Abdelkader Bellabes will work on a forked version of OpenOffice.org, named OOo4Kids for performance improvement on powerless machines, like XO or gdium.

14. Manusheel Gupta reports the release of SocialCalc 0.8.3g for the Sugar environment. Please try SocialCalc.xo and share your feedback. Many thanks to Dan Bricklin, Luke Closs, K.S. Preeti, Nicholas Doiron, Claudia Urrea, and Vijit Singh.

Note to developers: K.S. Preeti has compiled a manual for programmers for SocialCalc.

15. Last week, I mentioned that I had modified Mitchel Charity's Ruler activity to look up the screen resolution so that it would render properly on non-OLPC-XO displays. I had been parsing xdpyinfo to get the display resolution. Tomeu Vizoso recommended that I use gtk.gdk.screen_width_mm() instead. Alas, it turns out that neither method is returning the proper screen resolution (either from within Sugar or otherwise) on any of the machines I have been using. Back to square one.

Sugar Labs

16. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see SOM).

Community News archive

An archive of this digest is available.

Planet

The Sugar Labs Planet is found here.

Sugar in the news

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
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 7: / Line 7: @@
 ===Sugar Digest===
-. It seems that once per month the computer vs. phone debate reemerges. This time, [http://edutechdebate.org/ Educational Technology Debate] has taken up the theme. Wayan Vota posed the question: Mobile Phones: Better Learning Tools than Computers? Michael Trucano takes the affirmative position in his essay, [http://edutechdebate.org/mobile-phones-and-computers/phones-are-a-real-alternative-to-computers/ "Phones Are a Real Alternative to Computers"] while Robert B. Kozma argues that [http://edutechdebate.org/mobile-phones-and-computers/computers-are-more-capable-than-mobile-phones/ Computers are More Capable than Mobile Phones"]. The usual arguments of pervasiveness (phones) and capacity (computers) were made.
+. A dear friend and mentor, [http://community.adn.com/adn/node/141909 Henry Aristide “Red” Boucher], died yesterday at the age of 88. Red taught me never to say never. His energy and enthusiam were infectous and his capacity to do the right thing was boundless. I'll miss him.
-We touched on a different set of themes when we discussed this topic ([http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-May/005484.html versus, not]) back in May. We were responding in part to Mark Guzdial's blog: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK3F4TMBURELZZK Does "There's an App for That" Hurt or Help Computing Education?]. At the time I said that I was optimistic about the role of phones in learning—a u-turn from my long-standing position. The arguments about the differences in affordances between phones and computer remain relevant: e.g., you wouldn't write an essay on your phone if you have a computer at hand; and as Kozma points out, the large installed base of phones is not composed primarily of the latest iPhone on a 3G network. The current installed base has much less capacity. But that will change over time.
+. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Sebastian Dziallas and the Sugar community, Sugar Labs announces the availability of Sugar on a Stick, codenamed "Strawberry". It features the latest version of the Sugar desktop environment—Version 0.84—and a number of additional activities, providing a great learning experience for new and experienced users. For more information and instructions—how to put SoaS on your USB key or how to deploy it—please refer to our [[Sugar_on_a_Stick/Strawberry|release notes]].
-My disregard of phones for learning had been based on my fear that "phone culture" was turning us into a society of consumers of those services that "Ma Bell" chose for us. But the iPhone and the Android are changing that. The meme that is rapidly becoming part of our culture is that phones are programmable, i.e., computers. This is a huge step forward. There is merit in Guzdial's argument that the Apple marketing pitch discourages end-users from becoming active participants in the creative process—we must be vigilant in combating this trend. But now that the phone company's model of "phone as a service" is eroding, there is reason for optimism that the corresponding model of "learning as a service" will also wane. The end of restrictions on who can develop what for whom is an important cultural development that will have an overall positive impact on learning, regardless of the platform. Sugar, which is designed for relatively lightweight environments, will become more significant to learners.
+===Help Wanted===
-. [http://nexcopy.com Nexcopy] has generously donated a USB replicator to Sugar Labs. It will be a great help in our various Sugar-on-a-Stick pilot programs this summer.
+. Lionel Laske has asked for help with the French version of the Sugar FLOSS manual. He is happy to announce [http://olpc-france.org/docs/OLPC%20Guide%20de%20l'ordinateur.pdf the results of their efforts].
-===Help Wanted===
+. There is a new page in the wiki, [[What_could_I_do_in_an_hour%3F|What could I do in an hour?]], for collecting ideas for quick contributions. Please add your ideas.
+===In the community===
+. Coming up this week: Sugar at [http://linuxtag.org Linuxtag] (24–27 June in Berlin). The marketing team has made a great [http://www.flickr.com/photos/39656470@N02/3650748717/ banner] to draw attention to our booth.
+. Also, Sugar at [http://www.fossed.com/ FOSSED] in Bethel, Maine, 24–26 June. Caroline Meeks and I will be running a three-hour Sugar workshop for teachers.
-. Hamilton Chua has written some patches to enable SoaS images to register with School Servers, thus enabling backup and restore. The patch is described in Ticket [http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/916 #916]. Please try to test it.
+. And Sugar at [http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/ NECC] in Washington DC, 28 June–1 July. Mike Lee, Jeff Elkner and others from the Washington DC area will be representing Sugar Labs.
-. Lionel Laske reports that OLPC France has launched a French FLOSS Manual Sprint, and a large part of the work has been completed. They are now looking for help with "Help." Lionel asks, is there a way to do quickly a “one shot” build of the Help Activity in French (and other languages)?
+. [http://squeakfest.org Squeakfest] will be held in Los Angeles 10–12 August and in Porto Alegre 23–25 Julho (starting today!).
-. Samy Boutayeb is seeking input on [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-mg/2009-June/000169.html digital media] for the OLPC/Sugar pilot in Madagascar.
+. There is an [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-June/006272.html on-going discussion] about setting up a program similar to the [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors#Fedora_Ambassadors_Goals Fedora Ambassadors program] to help facilitate more community involvement in Sugar. Sugar "Facilitators" would:
+* Represent Sugar to the wider public
+* Help spread the word about Sugar
+* Be a point of contact for local community members and channel the feedback to the Sugar community
+* Help recruit contributors
+* Think of creative ways for promoting Sugar in your region
-. David Van Assche published [http://www.nubae.com/collaboration-session-sugar-june10 a report] from the collaboration-testing session that took place last week (10 June 10). Please leave your comments, especially those who took part. We plan to continue testing again on Wednesday, 17 June, at 20:00 UTC, irc.freenode.org, channel #sugar-collaboration.
+===Tech Talk===
-===In the community===
+. Tomeu Vizoso has been making great progress on [http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2009/05/progress-on-sugar-activities-with-swf.html improving support for Gnash/Flash based activities] within Sugar.
-. Coming up next week: Sugar at [http://linuxtag.org Linuxtag] (24–27 June in Berlin).
+. David Van Assche started a [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-June/006233.html thread on personalisation and collaboration]. The gist of the discussion is that we should be able to enhance many of the collaboration and evaluation scenarios by capturing and sharing information about user preferences and activities. Please join the discussion as this could be an important topic for Sugar 0.86.
-. Also, Sugar at [http://www.fossed.com/ FOSSED] in Bethel, Maine, 24–26 June.
+. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Nexcopy had donated a USB replicator to Sugar Labs. Caroline and I have successfully used the replcator to make Sugar on a Stick keys—we'll be bringin gthe system with us to FOSSED this week. We plan to use it at the Gardner Elementary School this summer as well.
-. And Sugar at [http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/ NECC] in Washington DC, 28 June–1 July.
+. Eric Bachard reports on http://planet.go-oo.org/ that starting in July there will be a new collaboration between OpenOffice.org Education Project and Epitech Paris. Thomas Fontenay, Abdelkader Bellabes will work on a forked version of OpenOffice.org, named OOo4Kids for performance improvement on powerless machines, like XO or gdium.
-. The OLPC Learning Club, DC, is hosting a [http://olpclearningclub.org/meetings/june-meeting-the-brightest-light-in-the-library/ Family XO Mesh Meetup] Saturday, 20 June from 10 AM to 1 PM.
+. Manusheel Gupta reports the release of SocialCalc 0.8.3g for the Sugar environment. Please try [http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=SocialCalc_on_Sugar#Downloads SocialCalc.xo] and share your feedback. Many thanks to Dan Bricklin, Luke Closs, K.S. Preeti, Nicholas Doiron, Claudia Urrea, and Vijit Singh.
-===Tech Talk===
+Note to developers: K.S. Preeti has compiled [http://seeta.in/wiki/index.php?title=Guide a manual for programmers] for SocialCalc.
-. I modified Mitchel Charity's [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4192 Ruler activity] to look up the screen resolution so that it would render properly on non-OLPC-XO displays. I'm parsing xdpyinfo, which may not be the most reliable way to get the display resolution; feedback from testers would be appreciated.
+. Last week, I mentioned that I had modified Mitchel Charity's [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4192 Ruler activity] to look up the screen resolution so that it would render properly on non-OLPC-XO displays. I had been parsing xdpyinfo to get the display resolution. Tomeu Vizoso recommended that I use gtk.gdk.screen_width_mm() instead. Alas, it turns out that neither method is returning the proper screen resolution (either from within Sugar or otherwise) on any of the machines I have been using. Back to square one.
 ===Sugar Labs===
-. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2009-June-6-12-som.jpg|SOM]]).
+. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2009-June-13-19-som.jpg|SOM]]).