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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 [[Archive/Current Events|archived 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 [[Archive/Current Events|archived 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 first met Alan Kay in the late 1970s. I was working on a personalized news project – think ''Google News'' meets ''Facebook'' – for which Alan came up with the name ''NewsPeek'' – a play off of George Orwell's ''New Speak''.

1. After a long absence, Turtle Art with Sensors is back! The original fork was written by Arjun Sarwal when he was an intern at OLPC (See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Turtle_Art_with_Sensors); however, when we migrated Sugar to non-XO platforms, we stopped supporting this fork due to problems with the alsaaudio library. With help from Tony Forster, Turtle Blocks (the mainline version of the project) has a [[Activities/TurtleArt#Sensors_Palette|sensor palette]] with blocks for sound (raw microphone input), volume, and pitch, and on OLPC XO hardware, resistance and voltage sensors.

It was then that I first heard Alan's definition of technology: "anything invented after you were born." Taking technology down off of its pedestal is never easy for someone at MIT, but over the years I have come back to those words again and again, as they help me to combat the spell that cool engineering casts and thus I am reminded to look at the essence of ''what is being accomplished by the technology''. The words also serve to remind me to take the long view – those to whom technology is just 'stuff' will be the ones who will be best able to wield it to their advantage. It is in this spirit that I have been advocating that computation should be "on the low shelf" of every child – a "thing to think with" readily at hand to every child. I'll return to this theme in a moment.

I used a Hall-effect sensor to build a bicycle odometer in Turtle Art.

Another lesson from Alan at the time was his list of five things computers were (or would be) good for: (1) getting and holding our attention; (2) word processing; (3) information retrieval; (4) simulation; and (5) interpersonal communication. A remarkable list, especially considering that he compiled it 40-years ago. Perhaps the only thing missing from the list is reflection: computers, with their ability to capture a record of everything we do, can be a great medium for reflecting upon our work. And arguably, these 5 (or 6) things underly all of the best efforts to use computers in school and as a facility to learning.

[[File:Bike_odometer.png|300px]]

Why am I reminiscing about Alan Kay? When I read Christoph Derndorfer's [http://edutechdebate.org/olpc-in-south-america/olpc-in-peru-one-laptop-per-child-problems/ article about OLPC Peru], Oscar Becerra's response, and the subsequent follow up discussions spread across several threads on the [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/ Sur list], I was struck by the dichotomy that seems to exist within the community: those who see and voice problems and those who are trying, despite the challenges, to amplify the things that are good. While criticism is a necessary component of any effort to bring about change, it is important to frame the criticism within a context whereby it can be used in service of our collective goal: to raise a generation of critical thinkers and problem-solvers by establishing a culture of independent thinking and learning.

Tony has begun writing up [[Activities/TurtleArt/Using_Turtle_Art_Sensors|a detailed description of the sensor input]]. Claudia Urrea has documented [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Making_XO_sensors|how to build sensors] that work with the XO microphone input. Enjoy.

We can and do argue about how to achieve this goal (and some within the community take issue with the goal itself, e.g., our focus should be on helping children do better on their national exams, as if it were a black-and-white choice), but as we argue and criticize, we need to avoid the temptation to sensationalize (e.g., "it will require a significant overhaul of the whole strategy") or draw premature or out of context conclusions (e.g., the [http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ecp2124/papers/computer.pdf 'Romanian study'] often cited by Yamandú proves... [1]).

Also note that [[the Butiá robot team|Archive/Current_Events/2010-10-26]] added Arduino support to a fork of Turtle Art.

Christoph made a number of observations on his whirlwind tour of OLPC deployments in South America. While his observations are of anecdotal interest, none of them have any statistical significance and yet he presumes to draw far-reaching conclusions. Even when he relies upon data gathered by others, his conclusions are overstated. For example, he cites from an [http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=35370099 IDB report] "that almost 5% of the schools which have already received XOs don’t even have electricity yet." He goes on to assert "that the Ministry of Education’s data on the infrastructure available at schools doesn’t seem to be up to date and accurate enough." I don't know how he can draw that conclusion from the data. (As Oscar points out, the source of the problem was that the solar panels were not available as soon as expected.) Another way of saying the same thing is, "more than 95% of the schools that have already received XOs have electricity." Or he could have used the data as a rallying cry for support for OLPC's efforts to build a more power-efficient, ARM-based machine.

2. There is growing interest in using Sugar as part of a computer-science curriculum. I have started to accumulate links to syllabi here:

[[Activity_Team#Sugar_Activity_development_courses]]

 

 

If we can keep in mind Alan Kay's axioms as a guide both to not over value technology and to be aware of what is its potential good; and if we work together as a community [2] – not moving blindly without critique, but also not engaging in sensationalism – doing, making, deploying, mentoring, and sharing, we will make a positive difference, in Peru and everywhere else.

 

 

:[2] One place where Christoph and I are somewhat on the same page is in regard to the level of community involvement in Peru. While there are fruitful collaborations with some of the local universities, as described by Oscar, and while parents are becoming more involved in their children's learning, as hinted at in the IDB report, there is an untapped potential in the people of Peru to engage in much the same way that Ceibal RAP and Ceilbal JAM contribute to the efforts in Uruguay. How to unleash that potential within Peru remains an unresolved question. (The community in Peru has been active; for example the community in Puno and Local Lab Somos Azucar organized a [http://www.drepuno.gob.pe/?ws=noticia&ver=567 camp] to translate Sugar into Quechua and Aymara.)

 

2. A long-standing hole in the Sugar activity collection has been filled by a 14-year-old Sugar hacker. NTT's [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/downloads/latest/4349/addon-4349-latest.xo?src=addondetail Edit Activity] lets you edit plain text in a simple, collaborative environment. Previously one had to use the rich-text Write activity for plain-text editing, which had the potential of causing formating errors and, unless one was careful, often resulted in the wrong mime-type being associated with your text. So kudos to our young contributor on record for developing such a useful tool.

===In the community===

===In the community===

3. We are finalizing the list of candidates for the upcoming election to fill opening in the Sugar Oversight Board. I'm very pleased that we have so many outstanding candidates:

3. I was in Lima last week where I got a chance to discuss some details of the Peru OLPC deployment with Oscar Becerra. We spent much of our time discussing how to better coordinate with community efforts in Peru. Oscar is organizing a meeting -- tentatively scheduled for mid-February -- which will hopefully serve as a vehicle for more cooperation.

 

* [http://google.com/search?q=adam+holt+mit Adam Holt] ([[User:Holt|7-point platform]], [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2010-October/011885.html look-reform-in-the-eye proposal])

* [[User:Pacita|Pacita Peña]] de Paraguay Educa, [http://departamentodeeducacion-pyeduca.blogspot.com/ ver blog!]

4. DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP, an international forum on development and social inclusion through the use of ICT in Uruguay will be held on 29th and 30th November 2010 at the Uruguayan Laboratory of Technology (LATU) in Montevideo, Uruguay.

4. DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP, an international forum on development and social inclusion through the use of ICT in Uruguay will be held on 29th and 30th November 2010 at the Uruguayan Laboratory of Technology (LATU) in Montevideo, Uruguay.

===Tech Talk===

===Tech Talk===

5. Aleksey Lim has been drafting [[User:Alsroot/Sugar_Architecture|some notes]] on re-architecting the Sugar platform team.  

5. Aleksey Lim, Bernie Innocenti, et al. have been working on an upgrade to the Sugar Gitorious server. They have been running a test environment, jita.sugarlabs.org, with much success; git.sugarlabs.org will be switched to the new Gitorious code base soon.

===Sugar Labs===

===Sugar Labs===

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File:2010-October-23-29-som.jpg|2010 October 23rd-29th (68 emails)  

File:2010-Oct-30-Nov-5-som.jpg|2010 October 30th – November 5th (58 emails)  

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