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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==

I took the summer off from blogging, hence I have a lot to report about the exciting progress we've made of the past three months.

1. September was an exciting month. We held the first Sugar Youth Summit in Montevideo, organized by Daniel Francis and Jose Miguel Garcia and generously hosted by ANEP. The event featured a day-long symposium and series of workshops, including ones on Turtle Art, Butia, and how to write a Sugar activity. One teacher who attended the Turtle Art workshop exclaimed that she could not believe the progress she made.

The symposium and workshops were held on Software Freedom Day. Given the number of Python programmers in attendance, it occurred to me that we should petition the city of Montevideo to rename itself Monty Python (after whom the language was named) for Software Freedom Day each year.

|Activity Unit/UI Tests||Gaurav Parida||Daniel Narvaez||[http://gp94me.tumblr.com/tagged/gsoc]

|Port to Python 3||Kunal Arora||Sameer Verma||

|Social Help for Sugar||Prasoon Shukla||Paul Cotton||[http://sugargsoc.wordpress.com/]

|Sugar Listens||Rodrigo Parra||Martin Abente||[http://tmblr.co/ZLEL4t1Gv4jqp]

Also, thank you to both Google, for once again letting us participate in this great program and to our mentors, who gave time and attention to the students. I am happy to say that we not only learned a great deal, e.g., Kunal's efforts have informed us as to what we will need to do to migrate to Python 3, but also, we have landed (or will land) much of the work.

The day before the symposium Gonzalo Odiard, Mariana Herrera, Jose Miguel, and I visited a school for children with special needs. As a result, during the code sprint that followed the symposium, we wrote three new activities that have their content and user interface tailored to the school's population. Lorena Paz from Argentina, also in attendance, resurfaces a number of issues around accessibility that we will consider in the coming months as well.

For example, one of the projects, Turtle Art 3D, is now available for download from the Sugar Activity Library [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4757].

Coincident with the weekend of hacking was a robo-Sumo contest at FING. It was a good opportunity to spend time with Andres Aguirre and Alan Aguiar of Butia fame and to recruit some new talent. Several of the more competitive kids joined us in the workshops. They took a special interest in Turtle Blocks 3D, one of the Google Summer of Code projects that is coming into its own.

2. We held a Turtle Art Day in San Antonio Texas in August as part of [http://www.openedjam.org/ Open Ed Jam], organized by Mariah Noelle Villarreal. Tip of the hat to Ruben Rodriguéz, whose [[Trisquel_On_A_Sugar_Toast|TOAST]] (Trisquel with Sugar) image was used in the workshop.

Gonzalo and I also got a chance to meet with a group of teachers convened by Jose Miguel at his office at ANEP. These teachers are engaged in various project-based learning initiatives across the country. Really good work -- utilizing the computer as a tool to enhance authentic inquiry by the children. I look forward to continued interactions with them.

We used USB keys donated by Nexcopy as part of their Recycle USB campaign.

2. At the workshop, Martin Abente presented the initial plans for Sugar 104. (Martin has generously offered to be the release manager.) The new features under consideration can be found at [[0.104/Feature_List]].

3. Speaking of Turtle Art, Cynthia Solomon, Claudia Urrea, and I wrote a paper, "(More than) Twenty Things to Do in Turtle Blocks" for the Constructionist Conference in Vienna. We made some videos as well. See [http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/More-than-20.pdf].

We'll be discussing these features in an online meeting on 2 October at 13 UTC. Please join us on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting.

=== In the community ===

3. I've been working on polishing up the Turtle Blocks 3D code over the past few weeks. There are a number of improvements from where we (Anubhav and I) left things this summer. Notably, the interface between Turtle Blocks and Blender is much richer. You can export .OBJ files from Turtle and import them into Blender and export .OBJ files from Blender and import them into Turtle. Currently I am working on adding a 3D cursor, which I designed and rendered in Turtle Blocks 3D itself. See [http://github.com/Anubhav-J/turtleart.git] for a preview.

4. There will be a Youth Summit held in Montevideo September 20-23.  

4. I've been working on a new activity similar to the Portfolio activity that is geared towards reflection. Like Portfolio, it draws upon Journal items that have been starred. It also allows the user to create reflections unrelated to any Journal items. The presentation is quite different from Portfolio, which is modeled after a slide show. Reflect is more like a stream, similar to the news feeds in Facebook and Google+. The stream supports comments and attaching media, and it can be searched by #tags. A preview is available at [http://github.com/walterbender/reflect.git]. Feedback most welcome.

ANEP (National Administration of Public Education) and Sugar Labs are organizing a World Junior Programmers Summit, a meeting among youths from different parts of the world who are working in software development. Taking advantage of this gathering, we are soliciting participation by leaders of educational programs interested in the potential that technology has on learning and in promoting meaningful participation of students.  

This event will last for four days, three days for the youth meeting, and the fourth day for a series of strategic discussions on the current impact and future of the Sugar learning environment. The first day of the youth event will be open to anyone interested in joining the community of free software developers, while the other two days will be for those who are already actively involved in Sugar development.

5. It is time to begin preparing for the annual Sugar Labs Oversight Board election (AKA SLOBs). Four (4) seats are open (due to staggered seat terms) for election / re-election to the Sugar Labs Oversight Board for 2013-2014, those of Daniel Francis, Gonzalo Odiard, Adam Holt, and Claudia Urrea. Please let me know if you are interested running for one of our board seats and also, please add your self to the candidates' [[Oversight_Board/2014-2015-candidates|wiki page]]. Also, since only members receive ballots, please be sure to [[Sugar_Labs/Members#Applying_for_membership|sign up for membership]] by following the instructions in the wiki. Finally, we need help running the election itself. Please contact me (or Luke Faraone) if you are interested in helping.

=== In the community ===

* Youths who have an interest in programming and / or have made ​​concrete contributions to the development of the Sugar learning environment;

Why participate in this meeting:

6. Several of us will be in the Bay Area for the Google Summer of Code summit in late October. In conjunction with that event, we'll be holding a code sprint to look at the collaboration stack. If

* Help define the future of the Sugar learning environment and future generations of software for learning;

* To connect with experts convinced of the potential of technology in development and learning;

* To strengthen the community of users of the Sugar learning environment around the world.  

Anyone interested in participating in this important event should contact us immediately. ANEP has offered funding to cover the local costs for youths to participate in this event.  

7. The next Turtle Art Day event will be a workshop at Prospect Hill Academy in Somerville. Caroline Meeks is hosting the event. I've been busy making Sugar-on-a-Stick USB keys to give the kids. (I'm using Ruben Rodriguez's [[Trisquel_On_A_Sugar_Toast|Trisquel TOAST image]], which has an up-to-date copy of Turtle Blocks.)

Registration is here: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1w2pHuRZSeTr6_4WEe3gjj6LjgBqp7v_loxc_yqb9IL0/viewform]

We are also planning a Turtle workshop in San Francisco in October.

=== Tech Talk ===

=== Tech Talk ===

5. Martin Abente oversaw the release of Sugar 102 and is now gathering feature requests for Sugar 104. Please see [[0.104/Feature_List]].

8. Lionel Laské recently announced the fourth version (0.4) of [http://sugarizer.org Sugarizer], a taste of Sugar for any device. Sugarizer reproduces the main features of Sugar in HTML5/JavaScript. It is available from a browser or as an Android application. Lionel presents [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1rvdma_sugarcamp-3-sugarizer-what-if-sugar-could-be-on-every-device_school Sugarizer] in a talk at SugarCamp Paris.

 

9. Sebastian Silva and Laura Vargas recently announced that > 20000 children are now using Sugar Network. Tip of the hat to Aleksey Lim who has been working diligently behind the scenes on the project.

=== Sugar Labs ===

=== Sugar Labs ===

6. Please visit our planet at http://planet.sugarlab.org

10. Please visit our planet at [http://planet.sugarlabs.org].

== Community News archive ==

== Community News archive ==