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==Sugar Digest==
==Sugar Digest==
1. Simon Schampijer and the Sugar release team announced Sucrose 0.88 last night. This is the fourth Sugar release since we launched Sugar Labs last year. Beyond the significance of the numerous improvements made to Sugar over the past six months is the professionalism of the release team. They have a predictable process; this means that deployments can reliably anticipate how Sugar will be able to meet their needs. Also significant is the degree to which deployments participated in this release. Most of the feature requests and many of the patches came from the field. This is a healthy sign, both in terms of Sugar's long-term sustainability and relevance.
1. I was at my mother's house last week when I stumbled across a book that my grandmother had given me as a child: ''How to use the Chinese Abacus'' by F. S. Tom, published in Hong Kong in 1956 by Chong Jan Limited. It is a simple, illustrated guide to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division on a Chinese abacus.
You can read about Sucrose 0.88 in the [[0.88/Notes|extensive notes]] compiled by Simon and the team. (Note that many of the 0.88 features have been backported to Sugar 0.84, the version of Sugar initially being deployed on the OLPC XO 1.5 machines.)
Reinspired, I spent an afternoon writing an Abacus Activity (You can download from [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4293/ Abacus.xo]).
The Abacus Activity lets the learner explore different representations of numbers using different mechanical counting systems (originally developed by the ancient Romans and Chinese). I made several different variants available for exploration: a suanpan, the traditional Chinese abacus with two beads on top and five beads below; a soroban, the traditional Japanese abacus with one bead on top and four beads below; the schety, the traditional Russian abacus, with ten beads per column, with the exception of one column with just four beads used for counting in fourths, and the nepohualtzintzin, the traditional Mayan abacus, with three beads on top and four beads below. (The nepohualtzintzin uses base 20.)
I've begun to write instructions on how to use the abacus in the wiki (See [[Activities/Abacus]]). Please contribute your favorite abacus experiences.
2. I saw Paul Commons in qMiami this week at a meeting at One Laptop per Child. We were trading Sugar stories and he relayed one from the OLPC Corps: they use the Memorize Activity to learn the names of the children they are working with. First they take pictures of the children with Record and then make a deck of cards for Memorize, pairing names with pictures. Very clever.
===In the community===
===In the community===
3. I gave the keynote this past weekend at a Hult International Business School Case Study event. They held a contest for proposals regarding the future of One Laptop per Child. I got to play the role of historian and also had the opportunity to plant a seed regarding a future study of Sugar Labs.
3. Laurence Buchmann has posted her wonderful video of last year's SugarCamp Paris (See [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xct0lp_un-jour-a-paris-ensembles-pour-olpc_tech Un jour a Paris ensembles pour OLPC tech]).
===Help wanted===
===Help wanted===
4. There has been interest expressed in a Sugar program for children to teach their parents to read. Does anyone have any experience with such a program?
===Sugar Labs===
===Sugar Labs===
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:File:2010-Mar-20-26-som.jpg|Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list.
:File:2010-Mar-27-Apr-2-som.jpg|Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list.
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