Changes

That night I flew to Argentina. I spent Tuesday in Buenos Aires with Kalil Nicholas, Claudia Urea, and Antonio Battro. Antonio was quite taken with the Visual Match activity, which he appropriately renamed "Dimensions". We met with the City of Buenos Aires ministry of education, to whom I demonstrated Sugar. (One of the ministry delegation had Sugar running in a virtual machine on his MacBook.) I spent the afternoon watching Argentina play futbol while talking Sugar with Gonzalo Odiard. Gonzalo and the rest of Sugar Labs Argentina have been doing a great job of squashing bugs, enhancing activities, and, as I was to find out later in the week, helping with the La Rioja deployment. Gonzalo demoed Paint, which he had modified to take advantage of the slide keys at the top of the XO keyboard: running your finger along the slider changes the brush size. It was exactly what I had imaged when we designed the membrane keyboard.

That night I flew to Argentina. I spent Tuesday in Buenos Aires with Kalil Nicholas, Claudia Urea, and Antonio Battro. Antonio was quite taken with the Visual Match activity, which he appropriately renamed "Dimensions". We met with the City of Buenos Aires ministry of education, to whom I demonstrated Sugar. (One of the ministry delegation had Sugar running in a virtual machine on his MacBook.) I spent the afternoon watching Argentina play futbol while talking Sugar with Gonzalo Odiard. Gonzalo and the rest of Sugar Labs Argentina have been doing a great job of squashing bugs, enhancing activities, and, as I was to find out later in the week, helping with the La Rioja deployment. Gonzalo demoed Paint, which he had modified to take advantage of the slide keys at the top of the XO keyboard: running your finger along the slider changes the brush size. It was exactly what I had imaged when we designed the membrane keyboard.

Tuesday night, I was in Montevideo; I stayed with Pablo Flores from Ceibal Jam. Pablo lives downtown, in the old city. Uruguay had already played their last group game, so no futbol. Instead, I rented a bicycle and took a 20K ride along the Rombla (coastal road) to visit Ceibal on Wednesday morning. Stretching my legs after some much time in airplanes as a necessary break. Fiorella Haim hosted my visit to Ceibal (Miguel Brechner was in South Africa, watching futbol). Ceibal has assembled a professional staff of almost 200 people. (The project has generated many jobs for skilled workers.) As a rough estimate, about 50% are working on connectivity, logistics, and infrastructure. There is a large team working on pedagogy and producing materials for the classroom. The Sugar team, although small, is productive and becoming much better integrated with the upstream community. (Thanks in large part to the efforts of Tomeu and the team from Paraguay.) They are putting a lot of effort into adapting Sugar to meet the needs of special education; work that is relevant not only in Uruguay, but in every deployment. Wednesday evening, after another pleasant bike ride, I ended up at the Faculty of Engineering, where I was hosted by [http://ceibaljam.org] Gabriel Eirea. I gave a talk, got a demo of a Turtle Art Arduino-controlled robot, and discussed Sugar with local community.

Tuesday night, I was in Montevideo; I stayed with Pablo Flores from Ceibal Jam. Pablo lives downtown, in the old city. Uruguay had already played their last group game, so no futbol. Instead, I rented a bicycle and took a 20K ride along the Rambla (coastal road) to visit Ceibal on Wednesday morning. Stretching my legs after some much time in airplanes as a necessary break. Fiorella Haim hosted my visit to Ceibal (Miguel Brechner was in South Africa, watching futbol). Ceibal has assembled a professional staff of almost 200 people. (The project has generated many jobs for skilled workers.) As a rough estimate, about 50% are working on connectivity, logistics, and infrastructure. There is a large team working on pedagogy and producing materials for the classroom. The Sugar team, although small, is productive and becoming much better integrated with the upstream community. (Thanks in large part to the efforts of Tomeu and the team from Paraguay.) They are putting a lot of effort into adapting Sugar to meet the needs of special education; work that is relevant not only in Uruguay, but in every deployment. Wednesday evening, after another pleasant bike ride, I ended up at the Faculty of Engineering, where I was hosted by [http://ceibaljam.org] Gabriel Eirea. I gave a talk, got a demo of a Turtle Art Arduino-controlled robot, and discussed Sugar with local community.

Thursday, I flew to La Rioja with Antonio and Claudia. We met up with Jennifer Martino, who is leading the OLPC side of the deployment team. She took us to see a wonderful tango performance – a nice break from hacking. The next two days were spent drilling down into Sugar with Jorge Cabrera's engineering team while Claudia and Antonio met with the pedagogy team. We covered a lot of ground; the agenda was similar to Mel's POSSE meeting, only compressed into 36 hours and more focused specifically on the OLPC implementation of Sugar. None the less, we managed to make a patch to Abacus and set up an IRC channel (irc://freenode/olpc-larioja) where we've been continuing our work. Jorge has a strong team; exciting things will happen in La Rioja.

Thursday, I flew to La Rioja with Antonio and Claudia. We met up with Jennifer Martino, who is leading the OLPC side of the deployment team. She took us to see a wonderful tango performance – a nice break from hacking. The next two days were spent drilling down into Sugar with Jorge Cabrera's engineering team while Claudia and Antonio met with the pedagogy team. We covered a lot of ground; the agenda was similar to Mel's POSSE meeting, only compressed into 36 hours and more focused specifically on the OLPC implementation of Sugar. None the less, we managed to make a patch to Abacus and set up an IRC channel (irc://freenode/olpc-larioja) where we've been continuing our work. Jorge has a strong team; exciting things will happen in La Rioja.