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| | === Sugar Digest === | | === Sugar Digest === |
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| − | 1. I am writing this update today while waiting to see if I will called to jury duty. I was originally supposed to report last week, but a deferment was granted since I was in Bolzano. I am not sure why I had never been called before—both my wife and children have served several times. But unlike the airport in Rome, there is at least a place to sit and plug in my laptop and get on-line while I wait, so here it goes. | + | 1. When Tony Forster [[Activity_Team/Modifing_an_Activity#Modifying_Physics|modified the Physics activity]] within 24 hours of its initial posting on activities.sugarlabs.org, it was a sign that educations, not just developers, were beginning to take a lead in determining the shape of Sugar. But even more important than contributing patches is contributing to the growing body of knowledge about how to use Sugar for learning. Rosamel Norma Ramirez Mendez has been an outspoken voice on the [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/ Sur list], telling stories from her classroom (Rosamel is a teacher in Uruguay) and challenging the community in regard to using technology for learning to its maximum potential. She has recently [http://blogedu-rosamel.blogspot.com/2009/11/tortugarte.html blogged about some innovative uses of Turtle Art], which naturally caught my attention, and wrote a [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/2009-November/004984.html remarkable post on the Sur list about guided discovery]. It is really gratifying to hear these stories from the field. |
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| − | I was in Rome overnight in transit from Bolzano, where we held a week-long [[Marketing_Team/Events/Sugarcamp_Bolzano_2009|Sugar Camp]]. Bolzano is in South Tyrol, in the Italian Alps. The autonomous regional government is a user of free software and is exploring ways in which they can engage the FOSS community more deeply. They have a regional development organization, [http://www.tis.bz.it/ TIS], that fosters FOSS projects in the region, provides infrastructure and support, and an annual Free Software Week. It was in the context of [http://www.freesoftwareweek.org/ Free Software Week] that we came to Bolzano.
| + | 2. We held an oversight board meeting on 20 November. We passed a motion to close the slobs@ list to just SLOBs, move current slobs@ traffic to iaep@ with a [SLOBS] subject line tag where at all possible. We also passed a motion to give a two-week deadline to the Sugar-on-a-Stick decision panel. We spend the remainder of the meeting discussing our trademark policy. We are examining the policies of other projects to get ideas about how we might ammend our own policy going forward. We'll continue the discussion on iaep@ and at the next scheduled meeting, Friday, 04 December, 2009 – 15:00 UTC (10:00 EST). [[Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2009-11-20|Minutes]] and a [[Oversight_Board/Meeting_Log-2009-11-20|log]] from the 20 November meeting are available in the wiki. |
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| − | Rather than meet at TIS, we (Simon Schampijer, Tomeu Vizoso, Dave Farning, Sean Daly, Stefan Unterhauser (Dogi), Carlo Falciola, Adam Holt, Christian Vanizette, and I) spent the week at [http://www.cts-einaudi.it/ CTS Luigi Einaudi], a technical school a short walk from the city center. We were given a comfortable room with Internet access, just upstairs from the school's coffee bar and next door to where the [http://live.gnome.org/ZeitgeistHackFest2009 Gnome Zeitgeist team] was meeting. Over the course of the week, we interacted with teachers, students, developers, and a variety of people in the region who have an interest in Sugar.
| + | === Help Wanted === |
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| − | We had a busy week. My typical day was to get up at 6:00, go down stairs for an early breakfast with David, who would have already been up for at least an hour, take a 20-minute walk to the school, arriving at 8:00, in time for the first espresso of the day. We'd write code, discuss ideas, brainstorm, and write more code until 20:00, at which point we'd make a plan for dinner—usually a pizza or some knudel and the local weizenbier or a glass of Lagrein. Somehow or other, we would never manage to get back to the hostel until after midnight. Pizza, Python, and friends, surrounded by the Dolomites—not a bad way to spend the week.
| + | 3. The Sugar-on-a-Stick team is looking from someone to help them with documentation. Please contact the list (soas@) if you are interested. |
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| − | We made progress on the roadmap for 0.88, having [[File:Ideas_0.88_0.90.pdf|brainstormed on a number of topics]]. The themes that rose to the top were: a simplified collaboration model; resolution of some outstanding issues regarding the Home View, e.g., how to best launch new versus resume activities; and some changes to the Journal—possibly the incorporation of versions and a better integration of the Journal into the activity workflow, e.g., making it possible to modify the description field while the activity is open. Other themes include accessibility and testing.
| + | 4. There is interest at the ministry of education in the Republic of Macedonia in learning more about Sugar. If a quick trip to Skopje is wihin the realm of possibilities, please contact me. |
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| − | Simon organized the discussions through the week. He kept us focused and productive. He also got some hacking in, spending time working through many of the issues associated with providing global support for spell-check. In doing this, he'll have laid out the framework for providing other global services.
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| − | Tomeu spend most of his week being interrupted by people asking him questions. (Five minutes of Tomeu time usually was enough to keep me busy for a few hours.) But he did manage to make progress on his work on Python introspection. This work will lead to a much more efficient use of Python modules in Sugar.
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| − | David and Dogi (working with Bernie and Aleksey from afar) did an overhaul of some of our back-end systems, which had been becoming stressed as more and more people are using Sugar. (For example, we've already surpassed 1.5-million downloads from activities.sugarlabs.org. It was just a few weeks ago that we reached the 1-million milestone.) They have also stream-lined the process for setting up local mirrors. We encourage you to set up a mirror in your region. (Argentina and Paraguay have recently set up mirrors.)
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| − | Carlo helped us in drafting [[a set of guidelines]] by which third parties might work with Sugar Labs in establishing various value-added services to the Sugar user community. We will be discussing these guidelines over the next few weeks. We also spent time with Patrick Ohnewein from TIS to discuss opportunities specific to South Tyrol.
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| − | Sean and Christian discussed a number of different opportunities regarding marketing. One idea that emerged is ''The Sugar Journal'', along the lines of ''The Perl Journal'', which would include articles written by teachers, developers, and other community members.
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| − | For my part, I spent most of the week sketching out some ideas. I coded up a [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xb44q3_color-selector-2_tech color selector] for both the control panel (it has changed a bit since I made the screencast) and the initial start screen and started coding up an activity toolbar widget for accessing the journal detail view from within an activity (as opposed to as you exit an activity), and I learned a bit more about Cairo (it uses a display list) from Tomeu in my efforts to refactor the turtle graphics within Turtle Art.
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| − | We had a series of really good discussions with the [http://live.gnome.org/GnomeZeitgeist Zeitgeist] team. Their work definitely has long-term implications for the Journal and they expressed interest in making their work relevant to our needs.
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| − | We also got some help on the Record activity from Daniel Siegel, the author of [http://projects.gnome.org/cheese/tour Cheese] diagnosed the problems we are having with Blueberry (apparently there is a Cairo bug in Fedora 12) and on the OLPC XO 1.5 hardware (there is a missing driver).
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| − | 2. Before heading to Bolzano, I made a quick trip to the West Coast to give a keynote that the QT Developers Day conference. Lots of enthusiasm for Sugar and lots of work being put into Qt on small-footprint devices.
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| − | 3. Eric Bachard has announced [http://eric.bachard.free.fr/news/2009/11/ooo4kidsactivityxo-is-available.html the availability of the Sugar port of OOo4Kids] (Open Office for Kids). A .xo bundle should be available for download from [http://activities.sugarlabs.org activities.sugarlabs.org] soon.
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| − | 4. We had a Sugar Labs oversight board meeting last Friday in which we discussed mailing list policies. The meeting [[Oversight_Board/Meeting_Log-2009-11-13|log]] is available in the wiki. The next meeting is scheduled for Friday, 20 November 2009 at 15:00 UTC (10:00 EST).
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| − | 5. The Spanish-language version of Sdenka Z. Salas Pilco's guide to using Sugar in the classroom is available on the wiki (Please see [[File:La_Laptop_XO_en_el_Aula.pdf]]).
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| − | === In the community ===
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| − | 6. OLPC Germany will meet in Hamburg on November 22. Please see [http://wiki.olpc-deutschland.de/wiki/Mitgliederversammlung/2009 Mitgliederversammlung 2009]. Everyone interested in OLPC and Sugar is invited!
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| − | 7. OLPC-San Francisco and OLPC NYC are planning community summits on November 21. Please see [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea/OLPCSF_Community_Summit_2009 OLPC SF Community Summit 2009].
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| | === Tech Talk === | | === Tech Talk === |
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| − | 8. Sebastian Dziallas announced that after considering input from the various teams involved in Sugar Labs and the Sugar on a Stick creation, we're shifting the release schedule as follows:
| + | 5. Erick Lavoie and the Tutorious team have put together an .iso image that is available for testing. Please download tutorius-20091118.iso from http://bobthebuilder.mine.nu/isos/. The image is based upon the soas04.iso. |
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| − | :2009-11-17 Fedora 12 Final Release | + | To create a tutorial inside the Calculate Activity: |
| − | :2009-11-29 Image Gold Master Creation & Upload
| + | # Start the Creator by pressing the "double bubble" icon near the Tutorial list under the Activity tab; |
| − | :2009-12-08 Sugar on a Stick (Blueberry) Public Release
| + | # Add actions like BubbleMessage from the toolbox window shown on the right; |
| | + | # Add events like Gtk Event Catcher (choose the "clicked" event type); |
| | + | # Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until satisfied; |
| | + | # Save; |
| | + | # Quit |
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| − | Please consider Sugar on a Stick V2 to be in freeze.
| + | To execute the tutorial created: |
| | + | # Close and restart the Activity; |
| | + | # Select the tutorial from the list |
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| | === Sugar Labs === | | === Sugar Labs === |
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| − | 9. Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past two weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-Oct-31-Nov-6-som.jpg|SOM]] and [[:File:2009-November-7-13-som.jpg|SOM]]).
| + | 6. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-November-14-20-som.jpg|SOM]]. |
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| | === Community News archive === | | === Community News archive === |
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