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Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 09:32, 5 October 2011
, 09:32, 5 October 2011→Sugar Digest
== Sugar Digest ==
== Sugar Digest ==
1. It seems that this is the season for Sugar Camps. The Paris Camp was by all reports quite successful. Christoph Derndorfer reported on Days [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-September/014040.html 1] and [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-September/014053.html 2] of the camp, which focused mainly on deployments and emerging educational activities from OLPC France. Daniel Drake reported progress on the Sugar development front during the [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2011-September/033343.html code sprint] track:
1. [[0.94/Notes|Sugar 0.94]] has been released! Many thanks to the Release Team for pulling together this latest version of Sugar. It has many improvements, particularly around Journal interaction. The Internationalization Team did a big push to get updated translations into place. And the Activity Team used the release as an opportunity to do a major cleanup of the [[Design_Team/Toolbar_Catalog|activity toolbars]]. It is great to see Sugar continuing to make improvements. Congratulations to all of you who contribute through writing patches, designing, testing, providing feedback, supporting infrastructure, translating, documenting, marketing, and, most important, deploying.
2. My friend Laura Marés Serra sent me a link to the plot summary of a movie from 2002 of which I had was unaware: ''The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest''.
:To just give a quick update, we made a lot of progress. Many things that had been hacked or disabled in the initial efforts were restored with clean code. We got down to just a handful of closing tasks.
:Andy, a successful marketing guy quits his job, because he feels disconnected with the values about work he learned from his father. He gets a new job at a top notch research facility, where he quickly makes a powerful enemy who makes him volunteer for a nearly impossible project: The $99 Personal Computer. He recruits the only available guys at the lab, three sociopaths. Together they really compile a revolutionary PC for $99, but then they become the victims of a venture capitalist and Andy's old foe from the research lab. Can he and his new friends find a way to overcome the problems? ([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280674/plotsummary Plot summary by kaeng[)
No mention of the learning software that runs on the laptop. We'll have to have a screening to see if it is a harbinger of Sugar as well as OLPC.
3. There was an article the Oct 3 issue of ''The New Yorker'' magazine about mentoring that I found quite interesting. [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_gawande "Personal Best"] is by Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, who describes how coaching has helped him eclipse the performance plateau he had reached in his practice. He goes on to describe coaching in the context of classroom teaching. I was reminded of some of the interventions being done in classrooms in Caacupé. We need to continue to look for ways to help teachers better leverage available tools and techniques to reach their children.
Mariana Ludmila Cortés, Pablo Flores, and I are giving a [http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Taller_Sugar_Ciudad_de_Mexico_Setiembre_2011 Sugar workshop] on the tail end of an OLE conference in Mexico City at the end of the month.
4. Mariana Cortez Ludmila hosted Pablo Flores and me in Mexico DF last week. Together we ran a workshop on how to write a Sugar Activity. I had asked the participants to prepare by reading the first few chapters of [http://en.flossmanuals.net/como-hacer-una-actividad-sugar/ Jim Simmons's book] on the topic and most had attended a seminar on Sugar and learning taught by Mariana the day before. We started off the morning with a puzzler intended to identify the more tech-oriented (geeky) attendees. This was followed by a quick review of some goals for activity developers, including encouraging risk taking by the children. I concluded with a favorite quote from Samuel Beckett: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." After brief introductions, we broke into teams to work on projects. I went from team to team, kibitzing on their progress and occasionally brought something to the attention of the entire room. In parallel, my team--myself, Chris Rowe, and Paulina Clares--worked on an activity ''en plein air''. My laptop was being projected throughout the entire day so that everyone could watch me take two steps forward and one step backward. In the end, we had a new activity, [[Activities/FractionBounce|FractionBounce]] and many more works in progress. I am hoping that this hands-on approach to the workshop had impact.
5. The Butia Team Sumo robotics competition held last month has been written up on the [http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/mediawiki/index.php/Review Butia Wiki]. Looks like a great event!!
6. Andres Aguirre (along with other members of the Butia Team) have also been working in accessibility. They've developed a new activity, [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4487 MouseCam], that lets children with disabilities control the XO by holding up picture cards. You can see it in action [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=4FX7uf-QeZ8 here].
7. Ed Cherlin, who is creating a series of tutorials for exploring math and programming, gets this month's prize for the most unexpected use of Turtle Art: [[Activities/TurtleArt/Tutorials/Stack_Programming|Stack Programming]]. Ed has emulated Forth in Turtle Art. Coming soon: a Turtle Art version of the great [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Forth_Lessons Forth lessons] being written by Mitch Bradley.
=== In the community ===
8. The winners of the [http://blog.worldlabel.com/2011/winners-of-the-2011-summer-tux-paint-contest.html International TuxPaint Contest] were announced. Winners are getting Sugar on a Stick!!
9. The Junin Sugar Camp has been written up on the [http://ar.sugarlabs.org/go/SugarDay_Junin_Argentina_2011 Sugar Labs Argentina] wiki. Looks like it was a really nice venue.
10. October 21-23: the SF summit. Read about it [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SanFranciscoBayArea/OLPCSF_Community_Summit_2011 here].
11. I gave a short talk at Software Freedom Day in Boston ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9k9LjLXXwQ video starting at 6:30]).
=== Tech Talk ==
12. Aleksey Lim has released the latest version of Sweets, a Zero Install-based package management system for Sugar. The [[Platform_Team/Sweets/1.0/Notes|release notes]] are in the wiki, but also, [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2011-October/033631.html a very nice explanation of his goals] is available in the sugar-devel archives. Aleksey's ultimate goal is to encourage more "doing" by the community and he makes a compelling argument that infrastructure does matter in advancing this goal.
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===
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File:2011-Sept-10-16-som.jpg|2011 Sept 10th-16th (49 emails)
File:2011-Sept-24-30-som.jpg|September 24-30 (38 emails)
File:2011-Sept-17-23-som.jpg|September 17-23 (30 emails)
File:2011-Aug-27-Sept-2-som.jpg|2011 Aug 27th-Sept 2nd (40 emails)
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