Changes

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. The Learning Team held a discussion about the Portfolio activity this week, which prompted me to make some enhancements. One request was the ability to export your portfolio to a PDF file. It turns out that Cairo supports a PDF surface, making it really easy to export PDF. So one nice by-product of moving Sugar activities to Cairo graphics -- which is a necessary step in our migration to GTK3 -- is that it will be much easier to enable activities to export files to the Journal for printing. The other feature I added was the ability to make voice annotations on each page in your portfolio. These voice notes are played back when the portfolio is viewed. They are also saved went the contents are exported to HTML. Alas, PDF does not support audio, as far as I know. Please try [[Activities/Portfolio|Portfolio]] and give me feedback as to how I can improve it.

1. The Oversight Board (SLOB) election results are in. Congratulations to new board members Chris Leonard and Gerald Ardito. I am very pleased that they will be joining the board as they broaden our perspective and will help Sugar Labs be better tuned to the needs of our users. You'll also be stuck with me for another term. I'll do my best to help steer Sugar Labs towards ever more relevance to the learning and education communities.

2. Monday is the deadline for new feature proposals for Sugar 0.96. There are a number of proposals that have already been submitted (See [[Features]]). Gonzalo Godiard and I have aggregated a number of proposals concerning the Journal in a [[Features/Journal_features_for_0.96|collector page]]. These proposed features are a result of the past month of discussion with the Learning Team. Additional feedback on these and all of the new-feature proposals is most welcome. Please add to the discussion on the "Talk" page of each individual proposal.

Luke Faraone deserves our thanks for once again organizing the solicitation of new members and running the election itself. It would be great if we could get a heads start on next year by inviting more of our user community, e.g., teachers, to join Sugar Labs. Please spread the word. Also, anyone who would like to help Luke on the membership committee should please contact him directly.

3. I mentioned last week that I wrote a plugin for Turtle Blocks that adds a palette for creating models for the Physics activity. (Physics uses a 2D engine called [http://box2d.org/ Box2D].) I've made a few additions this week, including a block that creates a gear. Building a simple machine should be a bit easier than trying to use the tools exposed by Physics. Of course, there are limits to what one can do with a simple machine. Working directly with sensors may be a more productive approach. But I have to say, it is really fun to create Box2D models in Turtle Blocks. (See [[Activities/TurtleArt#Plugins]] for more details on how to load the plugin and run it.)

My apologies to two community members who were unable to vote because their ballots were rejected by their mail hosts. We are discussing with Mako Hill how best deal with this issue (in a more timely fashion) for next year's election.

It is difficult to strike a balance between giving the student a tool and giving the student the skills to make tools. I've wrestled with this quite a bit in Turtle Art over the years. Lately, I am leaning more towards exposing more functionality in the form of predefined blocks than asking that these blocks be built by the user. For example, I recently added blocks for getting mouse x,y coordinates, whereas before, I shipped Python code that could be loaded by the user to accomplish the same thing. Of course, View Source is still available. But where to draw the line is not obvious, at least to me.

Finally, a word of thanks to Bernie and Mel, our two departing board members. Both of them have made numerous contributions to the project and its governance. Bernie has been a tireless advocate for decentralization of authority on the theory that the intelligence is in the leaves. Mel has been a stickler for clarity of process. Together, they have made Sugar Labs a better project. I look forward to their continued contributions as community members.

4. Cherry Withers pointed out Mr Steve's Exploratorium Blog earlier this week, but I thought it merited mentioning it again (See http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html).

2. Last week was Sugar Camp Lima organized by Somosazucar. From all reports, Laura and Sebastian did a great job organizing the gather. Chris Leonard reports that there was great start made on Aymara and Quechua during the camp (Please see [http://translate.sugarlabs.org/aym/ Aymara (Aru)] and [http://translate.sugarlabs.org/quz/ Quechua (Cusco-Collao)]). Rubén Rodríguez [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-November/014523.html posted a detailed summary] of the progress he made on Trisquel (TOAST) during the camp, including the locale support for aym_PE and quz_PE. Bernie Innocenti traveled to Puno to help with a variety of logistical and infrastructure issues. Everyone sung the praises of Aleksey Lim (alsroot) who seems to be everywhere at once, helping people solve problems. We have a real community of doers!

 

3. Trinidad Guzman continues to amaze. Check out his latest [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jorxl6b7pMo video] of his work with Turtle Art and sensors on the XO.

 

4. Carlos Rabassa posted a link to a fun game, [http://www.members.shaw.ca/gf3/circle-the-cat.html Circle the Cat] in the context of a question he posed to the list: "Why couldn´t all educational applications be as simple to use as this one?" My glib response was to quote the French mathematician, Blaise Pascal:

 

But while Carlos did not want to discuss the value Circle the Cat as an educational program, to not do so seems to skirt the central question of Sugar: it is an education project after all!! I am interested in how we can use a simple game or activity to drive the children to deeper principles. So I wrote a Sugar Activity inspired by Circle the Cat, but with a twist: The user is invited to experiment with the algorithm (Please see [[Activities/Turtle_in_a_Pond|Turtle in a Pond]])--of course I had to use a turtle instead of a cat. The game itself is fun to play and arguably of some educational benefit. But there is perhaps more to learn from algorithm development. For better or for worse, the user needs to load their algorithms written in Python from their Sugar Journal. This probably precludes the younger children from experimenting, but it presents an open-ended invitation to those willing to take the challenge.

 

 

5. Simon Schampijer led a discussion of the new features proposed for Sugar 0.96. A summary of the discussion is found on the [[0.96/Feature_List]] page.

=== Sugar Labs ===

=== Sugar Labs ===

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File:2011-Nov-5-11.jpg|2011 Nov 5th - Nov 11 (80 emails)

File:2011-Nov-19-25-som.jpg/275px-2011-Nov-19-25-som.jpg|2011 Nov 19th-25th (48 emails)

File:2011-Nov-12-18-som.jpg/275px-2011-Nov-12-18-som.jpg|2011 Nov 12th-18th (45 emails)

</gallery>

</gallery>