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| | == Sugar Digest == | | == Sugar Digest == |
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| − | 1. I am writing this issue of the Sugar Digest while once again watching the sun rise at Logan Airport in Boston. On the road, just back from Prague and now continuing west to Los Angeles to give a talk at USC. I have an opportunity to reach out to the freshman engineering class and impress upon them the pleasures of working with Sugar Labs. | + | 1. I spent most of this week on Turtle Blocks. With the help of Ben Berg and Scott Ananian I managed to get the Cairo graphics conversion finished (Tip of the hat to Alan Aguiar, Tony Forster, and Guzman Trindad for help testing). It seems to run well, even on XO-1 hardware and quality of the graphics is markedly improved, i.e., no more jagged lines. New features include the ability to rotate text and images. I documented the process of [[Features/GTK3/Porting#Going_from_Drawable_to_Cairo|converting to Cairo]] as this is something we'll have to do with all of our activities as we make the transition from GTK-2 to GTK-3. |
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| − | Back from Los Angeles, where I am doing my final edits. The lecture, which was not recorded, seemed to go well. Lots of questions, including, "how do I get involved?" One professor with whom I met who designs curricula interventions for STEM in elementary and middle schools remarked that Sugar/OLPC XO was the first computer that made sufficient sense to him to merit bringing into the classroom!!
| + | Scott has been working on a module, [http://git.sugarlabs.org/~cscott/turtleart/cscott-gtk3/blobs/gtk3/util/gtkcompat.py gtkcompat.py], that holds the promise of making that transition less painful than we had previously thought. By including this module, we hope to be able to support both GTK-2 and GTK-3 from the same codebase, making activity maintenance easier. Once we have it working for Turtle Blocks, I'll experiment with it on the other activities that I maintain. |
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| − | 2. There are many reasons to participate in Sugar Labs, but for me personally I am motivated by opportunity it gives me to build within a community of builders. Last weekend's Sugar Camp in Prague organized by Daniel Drake was exhilarating. Being back [[:File:Hackfest-Prague-2011.jpg|among the core Sugar developers]] such as Tomeu Vizoso and Marco Gritti Presenti, along with Simon Schampijer, Raul Gutierrez Segales, Benjamin Berg, Bert and Rita Freudenberg at [http://brmlab.cz/ brmlab], the Prague hackerspace, was a rare treat. We made significant progress on [[Features/GTK3|migrating Sugar to GNOME 3]] (Raul blogged about our daily progress here: [http://www.itevenworks.net]. For my part, I got a tutorial on Cairo development and gtk3 and this managed to get a few activities ported (Abacus with the help of Benjamin and Raul and Turtle Art with additional help from C Scott Ananian). We've begun [[Features/GTK3/Porting|documenting the porting process]] in the wiki. The goal is to have the next release of Sugar run in GNOME 3, which I think will be achievable. | + | 2. Scott has [http://cscott.net/junk/ta-broadway.png a compelling demo] of one reason we are moving to GTK-3: Sugar activities running in a browser. This is just one of many reasons for this effort. See [[Features/GTK3]] for a more detailed discussion. |
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| − | The beer in Prague was a treat as well: Tomeu introduced us to some favorite watering holes and shared some of his delicious homebrew.
| + | 3. While I wasn't wrestling with Cairo, I let me self get distracted by another Turtle Blocks project that had been on my mind for quite some time. I wrote a new plugin for a Physics palette. This palette lets you create Box2d databases to be used with the Physics activity. You can use Turtle Blocks to create precision models. I also expose a number of Box2d object attributes that are not available with the standard Physics activity, including: density, friction, restitution (bounciness), variable torque and speed for motors, and filled polygonal objects. Details can be found on the [[Activities/TurtleArt/Plugins#Physics|Turtle Blocks plugin page]]. |
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| − | 3. While hackfests are a treat, what is even more rewarding is seeing the fruits of one's labor. I was in communication this weekend with Christofer, a young hacker from Uruguay whom I have mentioned in past posts. Christofer has been using Unity on Ubuntu and has embarked upon a effort to build his own version of Sugar that incorporates what he sees as the best of both desktops. How cool is that?
| + | Tony has written detailed instructions on [[Activities/TurtleArt/Plugins#How_to_install_a_plugin|how to install a Turtle Blocks plugin]]. But I find the mechanism too clumbsy for the typical user. I am tempted to create Turtle Physics as a separate activity. Please let me know what you think of the idea. Meanwhile, a decent plugin mechanism is sorely needed. |
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| − | Also, the Butia team continues to impress. In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okw28rSs8fc this video] a 10-year-old explains how he programmed his dancing robot. In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_5b80a7Ooo this video], the Butia team explains how their system works. Great stuff.
| + | 4. The Learning Team discussion about Journal enhancements in support of assessment continue. Gonzalo Odiard and I have put together a [[Features/Journal_features_for_0.96|feature page]] as a collection point for these ideas. Please comment as work is being on many of these ideas. |
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| − | 4. My former colleague, Mr. Negroponte, is now saying that the creation of a learning deployment is simply a matter of [http://www.pcworld.com/article/243144/one_laptop_per_child_plans_to_throw_tablets_out_of_helicopters.html dropping laptops from a helicopter]. Some of the [http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/11/03/1158201/olpc-project-to-air-drop-laptops?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Slashdot/slashdot+%28Slashdot%29 discussion on Slashdot] is worth reading. Arguably there are other approaches to deployments. While I would love to have access to Nicholas's yet-to-be-seen-in-the-field reading system, I still believe that a learning community that includes teachers and parents is vital. We have a long ways to go in our learning about learning and undoubtedly we will continue to make some mistakes along the way, but our basic theory of intervention, which includes doing, reflecting, and critiquing is sound. | |
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| − | 5. The Learning Team has been discussing various ways to better utilize the Journal in evaluation. (See [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Chat_Espanol_2011] for the discussion logs). Claudia summarized our discussion topics:
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| − | :(1) Record in the Journal at any time: Here the intent is to enable editing the description, tags or the title at any time easily from the activity, and not have to wait to get out of the activity. Unlike the Keep button we have eliminated from the last Sugar version, no copy is made; it works on a single entry. [This facilitates the use of the Journal as a lab notebook, where notes can be recorded while the user is actively doing something, not just after the fact.]
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| − | :(2) Open an activity-specific directories: This is to use the window that is currently used to select objects from the Journal from the activities, to open files in a specific directory, for example, to find examples in Turtle Art. [This will make it easier to provide and share clip art, example projects, etc.]
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| − | :(3) Modes home / school: A problem raised by some teachers, is that Journals of his students (and school servers) are filled with music or games. With this proposal, Sugar offers you in a "school" when working at school or doing their homework, if you are using Sugar for their own interests, put your work in a "house". What is recorded in the Journal will be this way, and also can be changed from the detail view.
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| − | :This mode also works as a filter, so when school is not listed in the Journal all the games and songs. Furthermore, it only makes backup servers that has been recorded so school, this solves the problem of server space and preserves the privacy of students.
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| − | :[In discussing this, we agreed that home vs. school is perhaps the wrong dichotomy. Nonetheless, the ability to organize ones work into several different desktops has merit.]
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| − | :(4) Operations on multiple files in the Journal: allow selecting multiple files for copying to a USB or delete them. [Martin Abente has a much of this feature coded already.]
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| − | :(5) Activity-specific metadata: The work we have begun with the learning community. The idea is to record data related to the use of activity and display it in the detail view of the Journal. An example can be found here: wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/5/5f/TAtags.png
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| − | :These data will be used for searching the Journal and will be copied to the server when you have a backup.
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| − | :(6) Default tags: At this time a tag is any text you type into the Tag field. This makes their use is unclear and not used much. We believe we can improved by making the selection of labels from a predefined (Which you can add new or remove) and display more prominently in the Journal (See [[Journal_NewUI#Mockups|a mock-up]]).
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| − | :(7) Labels on the activities: We could assign labels to the activities to be seen into the Home View; for example, by selecting activities programming or media handling. [As a start, we can pull these labels from the categories assigned by the activity developer on activities.sugarlabs.org (ASLO).]
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| − | :(8) Audio Tags: We could add the ability to record a short audio associated with the journal entry. We have to think how to record, display and how to limit the length of the audio so it does not take up much space.
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| − | :(9) Activity achievement badges: Portfolio and work activity showing Journal entries generated by other activities, could have an activity dedicated to show levels of achievement or badges earned by the done in other activities. While simple linear games like Maze or The writer is simple Turtle Art systematically define these awards, can not do something smart to analyze the quality of a drawing, a text or a melody. It could also be a space for the teacher provide feedback and reward achievement. We need to discuss this further.
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| − | Also, Claudia Urrea and Gonzalo Odiard have put together several pages in the laptop.org wiki for aggregating ideas: please add to [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Datos_diario] and/or [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Meta_Data] your ideas about those data you think would be useful to record when running an activity; and please use [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feedback_Actividades] to provide feedback on activities. (Note that we still prefer bugs to be filed at bugs.sugarlabs.org but acknowledge that it may be easier for many people to edit a wiki page than use our bug-tracking system.)
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| − | 6. The latest [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrD3-0HnYwg&feature=feedu sensor project] from Guzman Trindad is worth checking out.
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| − | 7. I attended a lecture from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Subra Suresh last week in which he highlighted a joint program between the NSF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) launched as international joint initiative to address global development challenges. This [http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=121003 new program] for "peer" projects. May be an opportunity for revisiting some of the unfunded collaborations we had proposed in 2008 and 2009. If anyone is interested in putting together a join proposal, please contact me.
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| − | :PEER, "Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research," capitalizes on competitively-awarded investments to support and build scientific and technical capacity in the developing world.
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| − | 8. I was looking at a collection of African art recently and was inspired by one of the patterns I saw. It was challenging, but I managed a reasonable facsimile in Turtle Art (See [[:File:Bamileke.png]]). It occurs to me that we could ask our young learners to find patterns--in nature, in their environment, in their culture--and replicate them programmatically. In the spirit of Barry Newell's [[Activities/Turtle Confusion|Turtle Confusion]] but driven by the direct observations of the kids themselves.
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| | === In the community === | | === In the community === |
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| − | 9. Reminder: As a community member, it is important that your voice be heard. On
| + | 5. Only a few days left to announce your candidacy [[candidate list]] for one of the SLOB positions coming up for election later this month. It is important that we have a plurality of voices on the oversight board, so if you feel you represent a constituency within the community that is not being heard, please consider running for one of the open positions. |
| − | e mechanism is for you to participate in our upcoming election: We will be holding an election for three Sugar Labs oversight board (SLOB) positions at the end of next month. If you are not already a ''member'' of Sugar Labs, please send your name and an explanation of your contribution to Sugar Labs in an email to '''members at sugarlabs dot org'''. If you are a member, please consider being a candidate for one of the SLOB positions.
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| − | 10. Laura Vargas announced that there will be a Sugar Camp in Peru 18-19 November (Details are available at http://sugarcamp.somosazucar.org).
| + | 6. Sugar Camp in Peru is this week (18-19 November). Details are available at http://sugarcamp.somosazucar.org. |
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| − | 11. Is anyone interested in exploring how Sugar Labs might participate in Google Code-in 2012? Information about 2011 can be found [http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2011 here].
| + | 7. Hilaire Fernandes has prepared some [http://blog.ofset.org/hilaire/index.php?post/2011/11/12/English-video-tutorial English-language video tutorials] on DrGeo features. DrGeo is a powerful geometry engine written in Etoys. |
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| | === Tech Talk === | | === Tech Talk === |
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| − | 12. Daniel Drake announced 883 as the official [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/11.3.0 OLPC 11.3.0 release]. This is the first release to include Sugar 0.94 and it represents a big step forward in terms of stability. Congratulations to everyone who contributed.
| + | 8. Peter Robinson has announced the release of [[Sugar on a Stick]] Version 6 (codename Pineapple). It is Available for both i686 and x86_64 platforms and it features [[0.94/NotesNotes|Sugar 0.94.1]] on a base of [http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Release_Notes/index.html Fedora 16]. It includes a lot of new and updated Activities as well as improved support for booting on Apple Intel-based devices. Download from http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas |
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| − | 13. Meanwhile, Peter Robinson is in the final stages of releasing SoaSv6. He is asking for more testing and feedback. It is looking to be a big improvement over previous releases and, as reported by Tom Gilliard, it is much easier to use on Apple laptops.
| + | 9. Anish Mangal has announced the availability of an Alpha release of Dextose 3 for testing. For XO-1 hardware, please download from http://download.sugarlabs.org/dextrose/testing/dx3/xo1/dx3g055.img |
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| | === Sugar Labs === | | === Sugar Labs === |
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| | <gallery> | | <gallery> |
| − | File:2011-Oct-29-Nov-4-som.jpg|2011 Oct 29th-Nov 4th (32 emails) | + | File:2011-Nov-5-11.jpg|2011 Nov 5th - Nov 11 (80 emails) |
| − | File:2011-Oct-22-28-som.jpg|2011 Oct 22nd-28th (44 emails)
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| | </gallery> | | </gallery> |
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