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| | == Sugar Digest == | | == Sugar Digest == |
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| − | 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. | + | 1. I was on a flight from Miami to Boston with Reuben Caron last night during which we discussed the hot-button topic of Flash games. Reuben was on his way back from a deployment that was heavy into Flash and was looking for a way to wean itself from a dependency on deprecated software that was both opaque and power hungry. Having just finished porting a Flash game to Sugar--it really is not so difficult--I suggested that we encourage the deployment to Sugarize their Flash assets. So we took a quick scan through their library and chose a reflective-symmetry game as a place to start. Two hours later, we had [[Activities/Reflection|Reflection]] running in Sugar. Version 2, which I wrote on the train into Cambridge this morning includes collaboration and a mode of symmetry not available in the original Flash game. |
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| − | Thanks too to Sridhar Dhanapalan, Laura Victoria Vargas, Nick Doiron, and David Farning for making the effort to run for a board seat. It is a sign of dedication to the project and much appreciated.
| + | Ultimately, it comes down to sustainability. It is my opinion that deployments are capable of building capacity and writing simple Sugar activities that they can tailor to their needs is a skill that pays off in the short term--no need to sustain Flash--and the long term--they learn to build tools to solve problems. |
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| − | 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.
| + | 2. I've been busy this week with some other programming tasks as well: enhancing Measure and Turtle Art to take advantage of stereo input: both analog audio and DC resistance modes. As a result, you can now attach multiple sensors to the microphone input of an XO 1.5 and read two channels of data. I wrote a simple [[File:TA-multisensor.png|Turtle Art program]] to paint using a photo-resistor and a mechanical switch. Try doing that in Flash!! |
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| − | 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 to deal with this issue (in a more timely fashion) for next year's election.
| + | 3. Great photo: [https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/303924_152746174826035_100002719595747_169168_604539697_n.jpg] |
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| − | 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. Aleksey Lim has gotten multilingual chat working again on the Sugar IRC channels (Well, just bilinugual for the moment: Spanish and English). Instructions on how to use the service are found [[Service/meeting/Usage#Multi-lingual_relaying|here]]. Translation is provided by the [http://apertium.org Apertium project]. The project accepts [http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Contributing_to_an_existing_pair contributions] to their translation system--those of you who are bilingual should please try to help. |
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| − | 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!
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| − | 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.
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| − | 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:
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| − | :''Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.''
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| − | In other words, reaching to simplicity takes time and effort. Alan Kay chimed in about Hypercard, reminding us that it took years of refinement for it to reach its polished state. It is an open debate as to if and when Sugar will ever reach that level of polish and the path towards achieving it.
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| − | But while Carlos did not want to discuss the value of 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.
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| − | === Tech Talk ===
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| − | 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.
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| | === Sugar Labs === | | === Sugar Labs === |
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| − | Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list. | + | Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list: |
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| | <gallery> | | <gallery> |
| − | File:2011-Nov-19-25-som.jpg|2011 Nov 19th-25th (48 emails) | + | File:2011-Nov-26-Dec-2-som.jpg|2011 Nov 26th-Dec 2nd (45 emails) |
| − | File:2011-Nov-12-18-som.jpg|2011 Nov 12th-18th (45 emails)
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| | </gallery> | | </gallery> |
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