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Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 14:50, 24 February 2009
, 14:50, 24 February 2009→What's new
=== Sugar Digest ===
=== Sugar Digest ===
1. Kathleen A. Madigan, the founder of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, wrote a polarizing opinion piece in the ''Boston Globe'' this weekend ([http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/02/14/a_repackaged_education_proposal/ “A repackaged education proposal”], Opinion, Feb. 14) Madigan demonstrates that she values what she can measure rather than measure what she values. It is of course no surprise that a Hirschian, “standards-based reform" will lead to higher scores on standardized tests. But while Madigan assets that higher scores are a “success", she does not present any supporting evidence that there is a correlation between standardized test scores and achievement in the “real world.” In fact, many universities are dropping standardized tests from their admissions requirements precisely because they find little correlation between high scores and high achievement. Madigan's characterization of Darling-Hammond's “critical thinking and problem-solving” approach as antithetical to “academic content” and “specificity” is unsubstantiated. Undoubtedly, having basic facts readily at hand—on the "low shelf”—is important, but how you use those facts is equally as important. We can achieve and measure such a balance. A portfolio assessment that measures the whole child will tell us more about our children, their teachers, and our schools and closing the “knowledge gap” through authentic problem-solving can keep learning relevant. Further, since much of life in “the real world” outside of the classroom involves wrestling with open-ended problems, re-instating the arts—for which there seems to be no part in a Madigan standards-based school—should be part of any reform package that aspires to develop life-skills in our children.
1. I have spent much of the past two weeks finalizing the details of a proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). We are proposing to create hubs of international collaboration, leverage the diverse capabilities of partner institutions, to conduct a longitudinal study of the Sugar program on a global scale. Drafting this proposal is a first step towards to goal of rallying universities around the world to address some of the challenges I raised in a blog entry last year [http://walterbender.org/?p=6 “A page from the Hilbert playbook”]. What attracted me to this particular program, [http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09505/nsf09505.htm Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE),] is that it encourages international collaboration. Sugar is global and to understand its impact, one needs to work globally.
2. Several different discussion threads this week have prompted me to write about the relationship between Sugar Labs and free software.
2. I finally heard from the Free Software Foundation (FSF) that [http://directory.fsf.org/project/sugar/ Sugar] is listed in their directory of free software projects. I hadn't ever noticed that on their homepage they say, "Free software is the foundation of a learning society – where the tools we all use are free to share, study and modify." Is the tip of their hat to learning new? In any case, it is great to see them acknowledging the synergy between free software and learning.
=== Community jams, meet-ups, and meetings ===
=== Community jams, meet-ups, and meetings ===
3. There will be a Family XO Mesh Meetup on Saturday, February 21st, 2009, 10 AM to 1 PM at
3. Mike Lee has posted some great photos from the DC Learning Club meeting, where they tried booting SoaS on a variety of netbooks (See
http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/sets/72157614277170318/).
=== Help Wanted / Help Received ===
4. It is dizzying trying to floow the pace of the activity leading up to the release of 0.84. Simon Schampijer and the release team are engaged in a testing sprint. You can join them on irc.freenode.net, #sugar. Interwoven with the testing of 0.84 is a flurry of work on Sugar on a Stick (SoaS)—indeed, much of testing is happening in that environment: Thanks to the hard work of Sebastian Dziallas and the SoaS team, Sucrose 0.83.6, the 0.84 Release Candidate 2, has find it's way into Sugar on a Stick (http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/1/Soas-200902231225.iso). Aleksey Lim has been chasing down bugs seemingly across every package. And Sayamindu Dasgupta and the localization team have been very patiently updating the translations.
5. Christian Marc Schmidt has been making great progress on the new static website (See http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com/projects/sugarlabs/betasite). We are still seeking more screenshots of the work of children using Sugar, i.e., "authentic" Sugar images.
=== Tech Talk ===
=== Tech Talk ===
6. Lionel Laské has been looking into the use of Mono as a Sugar resource, opening up to us the .NET community. Please see his post, “Mono on Sugar for dummies”, on the French .NET community site (http://www.techheadbrothers.com/Articles.aspx/developper-mono-xo).
7. S. Page, in reminding us, "Don't bet against the browser", posted a link to a Pippy-like tool for Javascript (See http://billmill.org/static/canvastutorial/).
8. Sascha Silbe "finally managed to get Linux working" on his phone, so he couldn't resist installing Sugar. See [http://sascha.silbe.org/photos/dsc04708.jpg [1]], [http://sascha.silbe.org/photos/dsc04709.jpg [2]], [http://sascha.silbe.org/photos/dsc04710.jpg [3]], and [http://sascha.silbe.org/photos/dsc04711.jpg [4]]). Sascha says, "No, it isn't really usable - only 64MB of physical RAM [5,6] means swapping ~30MB to SD just to start Sugar (no activities running). Sugar isn't touchscreen-"compatible" as well (there are no "plain" movements, just clicks and drags)." But it looks great.
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===
9. Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2009-February-14-20-som.jpg|SOM]]).
=== Community News archive ===
=== Community News archive ===