Archive/Current Events/2012-05-24

Sugar Digest

1. Danishka Navin pointed me to an article about Sugar in Sri Lanka. Even though they don't mention Sugar, in fact, both Sugar and GNOME are being used on Hanthana Linux, a Fedora-based Linux, using LSTP. The program is modelled on the Hanthana School Labs. I wonder where else Sugar is being used that I am unaware?

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, 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 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.)

Meanwhile, on the flight to Korea last week, I got caught up on some reading. Even though is it not clear that "you can make yourself smarter" using these techniques, nonetheless, n-back games are fun. So I wrote Activities/Recall. There are three games, with six levels each. It is deceptively easy to get hooked. Enjoy.

In the community

3. EduJAM! is under way in Montevideo. Tune into the webcast and join the code sprint on the 13th and 14th.

4. Next week is Squeakfest, also in Montevideo (May 17-19) and May 21-22 in Buenos Aires.

Sugar Labs

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