Changes

1. I have fallen a bit behind in my writing because I had an unfortunate mishap while I was in Brussels last week: my laptop was stolen. My old laptop, which had been on life support before I had left for Europe was completely dead when I returned, so I am using my old old laptop, which works great as long as I apply pressure to the lower-right corner of the keyboard. Looking forward to getting a replacement machine at the end of the week.

1. I have fallen a bit behind in my writing because I had an unfortunate mishap while I was in Brussels last week: my laptop was stolen. My old laptop, which had been on life support before I had left for Europe was completely dead when I returned, so I am using my old old laptop, which works great as long as I apply pressure to the lower-right corner of the keyboard. Looking forward to getting a replacement machine at the end of the week.

2. Plan Ceibal, the one-laptop-per-child program in Uruguay, held an international conference in Montevideo on 30 November - 1 December. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some old friends from across the region (Gonzalo, Cecilia, Antonio, Laura, Patricia, et al.) and to spend time with many of the teachers and volunteers who have been participating in the program. I finally met [http://www.blogedu-rosamel.blogspot.com/ Rosamel!!] And I got reacquainted with the [http://ceibaljam.org/ Ceibal Jam] team; the students and faculty at[http://www.ucu.edu.uy Universidad Católica del Uruguay], where I gave a [http://www.fedaro.info/audios/ConfWalterBender.ogg talk]; and the [http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/ Butiá] project team, who uses a combination of Turtle Blocks and an Arduino board to turn the XO laptop into a robot -- very cool. (A favorite demo was when they used one laptop to control the robot, one to be the robot, and one to display the video from the robot's webcam -- a great use of the network and the plurality of laptops in Uruguay.) It is also worth noting that a number of commercial software companies are now participating in the project, offering Sugar activities (under FOSS licenses) to the children.

2. Plan Ceibal, the one-laptop-per-child program in Uruguay, held an international conference in Montevideo on 30 November - 1 December. It was a great opportunity to catch up with some old friends from across the region (Gonzalo, Cecilia, Antonio, Laura, Patricia, et al.) and to spend time with many of the teachers and volunteers who have been participating in the program. I finally met [http://www.blogedu-rosamel.blogspot.com/ Rosamel!!] And I got reacquainted with the [http://ceibaljam.org/ Ceibal Jam] team; the students and faculty at [http://www.ucu.edu.uy Universidad Católica del Uruguay], where I gave a [http://www.fedaro.info/audios/ConfWalterBender.ogg talk]; and the [http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/ Butiá] project team, who uses a combination of Turtle Blocks and an Arduino board to turn the XO laptop into a robot -- very cool. (A favorite demo was when they used one laptop to control the robot, one to be the robot, and one to display the video from the robot's webcam -- a great use of the network and the plurality of laptops in Uruguay.) It is also worth noting that a number of commercial software companies are now participating in the project, offering Sugar activities (under FOSS licenses) to the children.

I spent some time at Ceibal discussing Sugar and future directions for the project. Emiliano Pastorino showed me an activity he is developing that uses an RFID-tag reader to help children use their laptops to inventory cattle. I was so intrigued that I decided to add an RFID block to Turtle Blocks so that the children can use RFID in their programs. (The code is in git and will be part of Release 105.)

I spent some time at Ceibal discussing Sugar and future directions for the project. Emiliano Pastorino showed me an activity he is developing that uses an RFID-tag reader to help children use their laptops to inventory cattle. I was so intrigued that I decided to add an RFID block to Turtle Blocks so that the children can use RFID in their programs. (The code is in git and will be part of Release 105.)