Changes

those. --Nate Silver

those. --Nate Silver

1. Not to be deterred by Nate Silver's words of warning, Claudia Urrea and I continue to work on mechanisms for visualizing learning Sugar. Along with the Pacita Pena and other members of the Learning Team, we have been designing rubrics that capture the level of fluency with the technology as well as the creative use of the individual Sugar tools by children. The rubrics are captured automatically in some Sugar activities, e.g., Turtle Art and a modified version of Write.  We are aiming for evaluations that look more broadly than those data that are captured by standardized tests. We just submitted a paper, "Visualizing Learning with Turtle Art", in which we present some measurements calculated from 45 Turtle Art projects [1] created by children working with [http://fundacionqt.org/conectandonos.htm Quirós Tanzi Foundation].

1. Not to be deterred by Nate Silver's words of warning, Claudia Urrea and I continue to work on mechanisms for visualizing learning Sugar. Along with the Pacita Pena and other members of the Learning Team, we have been designing rubrics that capture the level of fluency with the technology as well as the creative use of the individual Sugar tools by children. The rubrics are captured automatically in some Sugar activities, e.g., Turtle Art and a modified version of Write.  We are aiming for evaluations that look more broadly than those data that are captured by standardized tests. We just submitted a paper, "Visualizing Learning with Turtle Art", in which we present some measurements calculated from 45 Turtle Art projects created by children working with [http://fundacionqt.org/conectandonos.htm Quirós Tanzi Foundation].

[[File:QTFprojects.png|200px]]

[[File:QTFprojects.png|200px]]

We want children not just to learn about the computer, but also to learn with the computer. Providing activities such as Turtle Art that engage them in computational thinking in the context of personal expression is necessary, but not sufficient. Giving them tools for reflection enhance the learning experience. Giving their teachers simple-to-use mechanisms for assessment increase the odds that activities like Turtle Art will find more mainstream acceptance. Making it easier to assess open-ended projects lowers one of the barriers that are preventing more use of the arts in school.   

We want children not just to learn about the computer, but also to learn with the computer. Providing activities such as Turtle Art that engage them in computational thinking in the context of personal expression is necessary, but not sufficient. Giving them tools for reflection enhance the learning experience. Giving their teachers simple-to-use mechanisms for assessment increase the odds that activities like Turtle Art will find more mainstream acceptance. Making it easier to assess open-ended projects lowers one of the barriers that are preventing more use of the arts in school.   

2. Google Code-In ended last week. We had 52 contestants working on almost 200 tasks supported by 22 mentors. On February 4, Google will announce the two winners from Sugar Labs. But in the meantime, I want to thank everyone who participated and thank Google for this opportunity for outreach. Chris Leonard, the co-administrator from Sugar Labs, has made [[a page in the wiki|Google_Code-In_2012/GCI2012_followup]] summarizing the accomplishments of our students. Worth checking out.

2. Google Code-In ended last week. We had 52 contestants working on almost 200 tasks supported by 22 mentors. On February 4, Google will announce the two winners from Sugar Labs. But in the meantime, I want to thank everyone who participated and thank Google for this opportunity for outreach. Chris Leonard, the co-administrator from Sugar Labs, has made [[Google_Code-In_2012/GCI2012_followup|a page in the wiki]] summarizing the accomplishments of our students. Worth checking out.

3. Sean Daly, our PR guru, is back with a vengeance. We are planning to make some noise around Google Code In, the up-coming Sugar 1.0 release, and many other accomplishments in order to broaden our community of contributors and users. Please contact Sean if you have themes we should consider promoting.

3. Sean Daly, our PR guru, is back with a vengeance. We are planning to make some noise around Google Code In, the up-coming Sugar 1.0 release, and many other accomplishments in order to broaden our community of contributors and users. Please contact Sean if you have themes we should consider promoting.

I added a few more sample projects, including an ambition project (640 blocks), game-trianglepaint.ta. The inspiration comes from a simple paint program that Brian Silverman wrote in Javascript and that Lionel Laske has packaged for Sugar. The Turtle Blocks version is not really usable as a paint program, but it does work and it exposes a lot of different ideas that will hopefully inspire some up and coming young hackers.

I added a few more sample projects, including an ambition project (640 blocks), game-trianglepaint.ta. The inspiration comes from a simple paint program that Brian Silverman wrote in Javascript and that Lionel Laske has packaged for Sugar. The Turtle Blocks version is not really usable as a paint program, but it does work and it exposes a lot of different ideas that will hopefully inspire some up and coming young hackers.

Finally, out of the blue, yet another third party Turtle Blocks plugin has appeared. The [[Logic plugin|Activities/TurtleArt#Logic]] was written by Roman Pollak. It adds more bitwise operations to Turtle Blocks, such as AND, OR, XOR, NOT, logical shift left, logical shift right. Nice to see that people are using the plugin mechanism. We should consider generalizing it for all activities.

Finally, out of the blue, yet another third party Turtle Blocks plugin has appeared. The [[Activities/TurtleArt#Logic|Logic plugin]] was written by Roman Pollak. It adds more bitwise operations to Turtle Blocks, such as AND, OR, XOR, NOT, logical shift left, logical shift right. Nice to see that people are using the plugin mechanism. We should consider generalizing it for all activities.

=== In the community ===

=== In the community ===