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== Sugar Digest ==
 
== Sugar Digest ==
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"When I want to read a novel, I write one." -- Benjamin Disreali
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1. The ''New York Times'' had an article about the tablet invasion, [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/no-child-left-untableted.html ''No Child Left Untableted''], in this Sunday's magazine section [1]. The author of the article was a skeptical of the approach taken by the Murdoch-backed Amplify tablet. I've not seen the Amplify tablet yet, so it is difficult to judge, but there is one [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/09/15/magazine/15klein3/15klein3-sfSpan.jpg photograph] in the article that says it all: a tablet showing a blue screen with the words "Eyes on Teacher". When technology becomes the affordance used by the teacher to control the class, it is a sure sign that the use of technology has gone seriously awry. With Sugar, we celebrate the fact that the students are so engaged with learning that the teacher can (in some cases literally) throw the stick out the window. It seems with Amplify, they are handed a $199 digital stick.
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“An expert is a man who has stopped thinking because ‘he knows.” -- Frank Lloyd Wright
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2. There has been a renewed discussion on the lists about Android. (The topic seems to come up once every 2-3 months.) Meanwhile, the Sugar developer team continues to make great headway. Our approach has two stages. The [http://developer.sugarlabs.org/web-architecture.md.html first stage] is to make HTML5/Javascript a first-class development environment for Sugar. The basics are largely complete: we already have about a dozen new activities that use the new framework. There are many details that still need addressing and undoubtedly the framework will change as we gather more experience, but please do try it: early feedback is very helpful. The [http://developer.sugarlabs.org/android.md.html second stage] is to migrate to the HTML5/JS apps to the Android platform. We also need to migrate some Sugar services to Android, such as the data store, and design some mechanisms for collaboration (we are exploring, among other things, a web-services approach to collaboration).
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1. Flavio Danesse made a post on the [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/2013-August/012118.html Sur list] about his approach to teaching Python programming to children of age 12. He eschews the use of IDEs and other affordances in favor of giving them a basic understanding of simple, readily available tools.
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There are other approaches to getting Sugar up on Android. I blogged about some efforts last year by students at the Homi Baba Center to get Linux running on a generic tablet in order to run Sugar. George Hunt has been taking a similar approach. Ruben Rodríguez has been working with Ubuntu on Android, which would also support Sugar. These efforts would likely provide more backward compatibility to existing Sugar deployments; the downside is the need to reboot to launch Android apps. As always, the problem with dual-boot in a school setting is that the maintenance and support costs double.
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:Yo me hice 5 repartidos básicos en pdf que conforman los tres talleres base de python joven, donde se les enseña a usar la terminal, a escribir código en un archivo, a ejecutarlo, luego se enseñan los tipos de datos, los operadores de todo tipo, control de flujo, conversiones de tipo, colecciones, funciones, clases, y poca cosa más.
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At the core of both efforts remains a dedication to what makes Sugar valuable to the learner: the emphasis on tools for constructing; the Journal providing interoperability between objects and a place for reflection; the facility with which learners can collaborate; the empowerment of the end user as the constructor of both tools and knowledge. We remain dedicated to the principles of Free Software, even in the commercial world of Android.
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:A eso hay que agregar que también hay que enseñarles donde pueden consultar el api, como buscar ayuda en internet, etc . . .
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=== In the community ===
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Flavio goes on to say that when they are beginning to understand these things, he starts them on small exercises and only then the GTK API. Some of the students go on to use IDEs, but only after they have a strong foundation.
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3. International Turtle Art Day will be on October 12. Pacita Peña and Cecilia Alcala will be hosting an event in Caacupé and there will be other events around the world sharing ideas and resources. Brian Silverman and Artemis Papert will be featured guests. There are guides to holding a Turtle Art Day event available in [http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Ingles_10-08-2013.pdf English] and [http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Esp_12-08-2013.pdf Spanish]. (Tip of the hat to Claudia Urea, who has led this effort.)
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There is evidence that his approach has merit: many of the young programmers from Uruguay who have contributed so much to Sugar are current and former students of Flavio.
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4. From 10-13 October, there will be an [http://ceibaljam.org/drupal/?q=edujam2013 EduJam!], in Asunción. On the 13th, we will hold a hack-a-thon, and hopefully make some headway on some of the open issues with Sugar on Android. We will also take advantage of the occasion of so many Sugar oversight board members (Gonzalo, Daniel, Claudia, and me) in one place to hold a SLOB meeting (most likely on Sunday morning).
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2. We continue to make great progress in our efforts to make HTML5/Javascript a first-class development environment in Sugar. An indication of progress is that community members not directly affiliated with the development effort are beginning to write [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4697 Sugar Apps] using the new API. More details can be found at [http://developer.sugarlabs.org/ here].
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5. [[Summer_of_Code/2013|Google Summer of Code]] is coming to a close. We have had a terrific group of student interns, who contributed to a wide range of projects. Many thanks to: Kalpa Welivitigoda, Akshit Khurana, Marion Zepf, Casey DeLorme, Erik Price, Rahul Gaur, and Suraj KS. Also, many thanks to our community mentors, including Marten Abente, Lionel Laské, Claudia Urrea, Gonzalo Odaird, Remy DeCausemaker, and Aneesh Dogra.
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3. Gonzalo Odiard and I have been doing some work on classroom management in support of the OLPC AU deployment. The basic idea is to make it easier for the exchange of a variety of data within a classroom setting: the Journal Share activity enables bi-directional sharing of Journal objects, facilitating the distribution of materials and resources, as well as handing in homework assignments; the Share Favorites activity enables a group of students to share their Sugar desktop favorites settings, so that when embarking on a group or class project, everyone has access to the same set of tools; the Share Stats activity enable students to share activity-usage statistics with the classroom teacher, part of a general effort to make learning visible to both students and teachers.
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=== Tech Talk ===
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Regarding statistics gathering, we've implemented an age/gender setting in the Sugar control panel so that data can be sorted by age. This work is not yet up-streamed, but the patches are available [https://github.com/walterbender/sugar-artwork/tree/age-gender-2 here] and [https://github.com/walterbender/sugar/tree/intro-2 here].
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4. I've been working with [http://www.spiritualityforkids.com Spirituality for Kids] to make their videos and lessons available as Sugar activities. We published [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4679 English-language activities] one month ago and [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4698 Spanish-language activities] this week.
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5. "Dog bites man": I've made some changes to Turtle Blocks. In response to a request from a teacher in the OLPC Charlotte deployment, I changed the way in which the coordinate rescaling works. (Chances are you didn't even know Turtle Blocks lets you transform the coordinate scale. It is done with a button on the View toolbar.) By default, the turtle coordinates are scaled to pixels: if the turtle moves forward 100, it moves 100 pixels. But traditionally, Logo is scaled from 0 to 100; in that mode, forward 100 would move the turtle from the center of the screen (0, 0) to the top of the screen (0, 100). But for young children just being to learn numeracy, they typically use only one- and two-digit numbers. So I changed the scale from 0 to 20. In this new scaling, moving forward by single digits results in a readily visible change on the screen. I now save the coordinate scaling in gconf so that the user need only set it the first time they use Turtle Blocks (or it can be set as part of a deployment's configuration.) See [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addons/versions/4027#version-187 Turtle Blocks v187].
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Speaking of Turtle Blocks, Google Summer of Code intern Marion Zepf continues to make great progress on the [[Summer_of_Code/2013/Turtle_Blocks_Python_export_project|export-to-Python extension]]. As a result of her work, Turtle Blocks projects can be exported as Python code. Our hope is that this will facilitate some of our users in making the transition from block-based programming languages to text-based programming languages, which are better suited for more complex tasks. (For example, the most complex Turtle Blocks program I have ever written uses about 1000 blocks. But Turtle Blocks itself is more than 25,000 lines of code. This suggests there is a gulf between the complexity we can reach in a block-based environment and a text-based environment.)
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=== In the community ===
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6. We are wrapping up Sugar 100 and need all hands helping with both closing [http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=accepted&status=reopened&priority=Immediate&priority=Urgent&component=Sugar&status_field=New&order=priority a few outstanding tickets] and helping with testing. Gonzalo and Jerry have been preparing [http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/os/sugar-100 images (Fedora 18)] for OLPC AU that can be used for testing [10]. Kudos to our release manager Daniel Narvaez!!!
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6. International Turtle Art Day will be on October 12. Pacita Peña and Cecilia Alcala will be hosting an event in Caacupé and there will be other events around the world sharing ideas and resources. Brian Silverman and Artemis Papert will be featured guests. There are guides to holding a Turtle Art Day event available in [http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Ingles_10-08-2013.pdf English] and [http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Esp_12-08-2013.pdf Spanish]. (Tip of the hat to Claudia Urea, who has led this effort.)
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=== Tech Talk ===
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7. Daniel Narvaez announced that we have entered the final phase of the run up to the Sugar 1.0 release. Please help us with testing. There is a short [http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/query status=new&status=assigned&status=accepted&status=reopened&priority=Immediate&priority=Urgent&component=Sugar&status_field=New&order=priority list of bugs] we are hoping to quash in time for the final release at the end of September.
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7. Tom Gilliard has been making SoaS images on [[Fedora_20#SoaS_86_64-dm_.28remix.29|Fedora 20]] that can also be used for testing. Meanwhile, the previous release of Sugar (98.8) is available on [[Ubuntu#Ubuntu_12.04.2_LTS_-_Dextrose_Sugar_Live|Ubuntu]] (12.04) thanks to the efforts of Quidam.
    
=== Sugar Labs ===
 
=== Sugar Labs ===
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7. Please visit (and contribute to) [http://planet.sugarlab.org our planet].
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8. Please visit (and contribute to) our [http://planet.sugarlab.org planet].
    
== Community News archive ==
 
== Community News archive ==
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