Changes

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 [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org], and archived [[Sugar Labs/Current Events/Archive|here]].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to [[User:walter|walter]] at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit <span class="plainlinks">[http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet.sugarlabs.org].</span>)

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 [http://walterbender.org/ walterbender.org], and archived [[Sugar Labs/Current Events/Archive|here]].) If you would like to contribute, please send email to [[User:walter|walter]] at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit <span class="plainlinks">[http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet.sugarlabs.org].</span>)

=== Sugar Digest ===

===Sugar Digest===

1. I am once again falling behind in my writing. This time I have two excuses: travel and coding. I spent last week in Miami, not to escape the cold Boston winter, but to attend the OLPC deployment meeting. (This is first time since I left OLPC almost two-years ago that I have been invited to participate in an OLPC event.) It was great to see many old friends with passion in their hearts for the project. The highlight of the week was of course the presentations from the deployments. Many of the larger OLPC deployments gave detailed updates of the progress and plans—all of which include Sugar. The variety of means by which the deployments engage in outreach was fascinating. For example, in Paraguay, which still has a relatively modest deployment, they have been setting the stage for an eventual nationwide roll-out by publishing weekly “how-to-use Sugar” storyboards in the newspaper. In every case, the deployment teams have been considering not just the technology, but also their cultural context. The vector is pointing in the right direction.

1. The Sugar Labs Development Team continues to make great progress towards our next release, Sucrose 0.88. Last weekend a "testing day" was held in which most of the new features exercised. There will be another meeting on Monday (February 22) at which we will be discussing various outstanding details as we approach "string freeze" on March 1. What has been significant in this release cycle has not only been the steady progress we have been making on improving and stabilizing the core Sugar platform, but also the introduction of a more systemic mechanism for proposing, vetting, and implementing new features. While the procedures we have put into place are still in need of fine-tuning, we have seen progress on one key goal—greater involvement from Sugar deployments. Sugar remains a volunteer-run project and thus it is what its community makes of it. Our release process is intended to provide a stable and predictable base from which the community can build. Long-term maintenance and growth will come from our community. A goal for Sucrose 0.90 is to have a well-defined set of features, proposed from downstream, and developed downstream. Sugar, like learning itself, is not something done for it. It is something you do for yourself.

A concrete idea that surfaced during the discussions was to explicitly add the creation of a local Sugar Lab to the offering whenever OLPC partners with new deployment. The local lab would provide the means for the local community to nurture growth in their local Free Software community and to engage with the global Sugar community more systemically and efficiently. Another result from the meeting is that Claudia Urrea, one the education/deployment leads for OLPC, will be joining our Design Team meetings. Her direct feedback will be very helpful.

2. Tony Forster, Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés, Michael Stone, and Edward Cherlin have given me detailed feedback on the new Turtle Art. Raúl will be testing it this week in the field and I hope that with that additional feedback to be able to make a final release as part of Fructose 0.88. If you'd like to give it a test drive, please download it from the wiki:

2. Raúl Gutiérrez Segalés and I are finally to the point where we would like some testing and feedback on the Turtle Art refactoring project. We have been rewriting much of code over the past month with several goals in mind: (1) make it easier to maintain; (2) make it easier to localize; (3) make it easier to incorporate new features; and (4) make it easier for the end-user to modify.

[[TurtleArt-83.xo]]

New user-interface features include support for multiple turtles (this enables the learner to engage in many of the types of problems opened up by learning systems such as StarLogo). To facilitate debugging, there is now runtime block highlighting and highlighting of the block that raised an error. Boolean logic is now prefix instead of infix, which makes it consistent with the arithmetic operators and less ambiguous in its visual parsing. Many other UI improvements, a trash palette (with restore), variable-length, editable string blocks, labels on coordinate-grid overlays, etc. were driven by feedback from the field.

** 90% smaller download bundle-size

* added new user interface features

** support for multiple turtles

** trash palette (with a restore button)

** variable-length string blocks

We also completed a major refactoring of the code, resulting in a 90% smaller download bundle-size and a faster first-time launch. Our goal here is greatly simplified maintenance, more decentralized localization and easier extension with new blocks and palettes.

* a new collaboration model, where multiple turtles are shared

* better program visualization during run-time

You can download the new Turtle Art for testing from: [[File:TurtleArt-83.xo]]. The source is in the [http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/turtleart/repos/refactoring/trees/master refactoring branch] of the TurtleArt project on gitorious.

3. Sugar on a Stick, Blueberry, is now in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) permanent collection.

3. It is worthwhile to periodically check on the Sugar-related materials being created in the field. For example, the teachers in Uruguay continue to assemble lesson plans for using Sugar in the classroom at [http://www.reducativa.com/wiki2/index.php?title=Proyecto_OLPC_-_Plan_Ceibal the Plan Ceibal website]. There is a real wealth of materials there.

===In the community===

4. Thanks to an introduction by Chuck Kane, I am in touch with the team that developed GeoGebra. [http://www.geogebra.org GeoGebra] is free software for learning and teaching mathematics. Written in Java, “it combines interactive geometry, algebra, calculus, and spread-sheets in one easy-to-use system for students of all ages.” It could be a candidate for Aleksey Lim's [[Activity_Team/Services|Sugar Services]] efforts.

4. Sorry for the last minute notice, but Joy Ventura Riach from One Laptop Per Child's regional center in Africa is organzing Learning Team chats. The first meeting will be on Thursday, February 18, at 10 EST (15 UTC). Join the [http://bit.ly/9TxkwD discussion].

=== In the community ===

===Tech talk===

5. Kevin Mauricio Benavides Castro pointed out to me an article about the work going on in rural Nicuaragua (See http://impreso.elnuevodiario.com.ni/2010/02/02/contactoend/118357).

5. Thanks to the efforts of Luke Faraone, Sugar Labs has received some  servers donated from the Wikipedia project. They will be deployed in various locations, including RIT, Washington, and Cambridge. Stefan Unterhauser (dogi) is helping in the effort to get the new machines up and running and properly configured to meet our growing needs.

6. Cristian Paul Peñaranda Rojas has created an XO-man-inspired case for Sugar-on-a-Stick. You can download the CAD model from  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1659

===Sugar Labs===

10. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past few weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2010-Jan-30-Feb-5-som.jpg]] and [[:File:2010-Feb-6-12-som.jpg]]).

 

 

 

 

10. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past two weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2010-Jan-16-22-som.jpg|SOM]] and [[:File:2010-Jan-23-29-som4.jpg|SOM]]). The latter image does a nice job of visualizing the on-going [[http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2010-January/009933.html discussion about trademarks]].

=== Community News archive ===

=== Community News archive ===