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| | == Sugar Digest == | | == Sugar Digest == |
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| − | 1. A few weeks ago there was a guest op-ed piece, "Can students have | + | 1. I just returned from India, where I had the pleasure of giving the keynote at BITs Pilani (my theme was how Sugar can provide the means for appropriate of knowledge) and then headed to Mumbai to give some Turtle Art workshops. At Pilani, which draws upon students from across all of India, I had a chance to spend time with students to discuss Sugar in greater detail and met with several GSoC candidates. In Mumbai, I was able to use the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education as a base (thanks to G Nagarjuna). Turtle Art Day was split across two venues: first, a workshop for educators, where we put the new Javascript version through a workout, and then at a nearby school, where we worked with a fourth grade classroom using some XO-1 laptops. Both groups seemed to take to turtle -- "hard fun" had by all. While in Mumbai, I also had a chance to visit with Tata Trusts, to discuss possible venues for collaboration, including a possible Sugar pilot in Assam. And I visited IIT Bombay, where I met with the IITB Tata Centre, which pursues education and development projects across the subcontinent. Many thanks to Harriet Vidyasagar, who both helped to organize the Mumbai visits and to provide insights into local culture and needs. |
| − | too much tech?", in the 'NY Times' arguing among other things that
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| − | Internet access was undermining programs like One Laptop per Child. I
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| − | found it surprising that Susan Pinker would cite One Laptop per Child
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| − | as the principle example of the children using computers to chat and
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| − | play games on the Internet (which she soundly criticised), since
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| − | almost none of the children who received laptop computers through OLPC
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| − | programs have ready access to the Internet (at school or at home). The
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| − | exception of course being Uruguay, where every child has both a laptop
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| − | and Internet access. Indeed, as a 2010 survey showed, the children in
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| − | Uruguay play games – they are children after all – but they also use
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| − | email, search for information, chat (also known as reading and
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| − | writing), make music, artwork, and videos, program, and, in general,
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| − | use the computer as a tool for problem solving. Contrary to the
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| − | assertion that the program is “drive-by” education, a continuing
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| − | effort is put into teacher training, community support, and outreach.
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| − | That said, some people associated with OLPC, including my former
| + | 2. At Monday's Sugar Labs oversight board (SLOB) meeting, we voted to add two new members to the Sugar Labs Membership committee: Sebastian Silva and Caryl Bigenho. They have tasked themselves with getting the members list refreshed. We are looking to recruit another committee member (or two) to help with outreach. Someone connected to the community of youths contributing patches to Sugar would be ideal. Also, recruiting more educators who use Sugar in their classrooms would help round out the committee. |
| − | colleague Mr. Negroponte, are outspoken advocates for solutions that
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| − | mitigate the need for teachers in elementary education. The X Prize
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| − | for Education is designed around that approach and further requires
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| − | that any proposed solutions be Android-tablet based. Not to say that
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| − | it may be possible to engineer such a solution, to constrain the
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| − | contest to an unproven pedagogical framework seems ill-advised. (Many
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| − | tablet-based solutions have begun to distribute physical keyboards in
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| − | acknowledgment that no one serious about writing or programming works
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| − | exclusively with an on-screen keyboard. And while it is theoretically
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| − | possible to exercise Software Freedoms on an Android tablet, in
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| − | practice it is still well beyond most of us.) Meanwhile, here at Sugar
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| − | Labs, we encourage open collaboration among students, teachers, and
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| − | our community.
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| − | 2. Martin Abente, our Sugar Release Manager, is pleased to announce
| + | 3. 67 students have applied to work as interns for Sugar Labs as part of [[Summer_of_Code/2015|Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2015]]. I've read through the applications and we have some very strong candidates. It will be a difficult decision as to how assign the slots we receive from Google -- the number is still to be determined. I have already begun looking for other means of support we might offer to some of the qualified students who don't make the cut. The mentors are meeting this evening to discuss the applications. |
| − | the release of Sugar (sucrose) 0.104.0. This release includes new
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| − | features and a multitude of bug fixes from Google Code-In and Summer
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| − | of Code students, deployments and community members. | |
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| − | We are compiling detailed release notes at [[0.104/Notes]].
| + | === In the community === |
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| − | Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release and special thanks
| + | 4. I'll be doing a Turtle Art Day in Kingston, Jamaica, on 23 April. Details to follow. I'd love to reconnect with any Sugar users while I am in the area. |
| − | to Martin for shepherding the process.
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| − | 3. Sugar Labs is applying to Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2015. The
| + | === Tech Talk === |
| − | application to Google has been submitted and we are in the process of
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| − | building the associated wiki pages [[Summer_of_Code/2015]]. We often use GSoC as a way of
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| − | exploring new ideas and future directions; for example, last summer we
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| − | had projects on extending Turtle Blocks into three-dimensions and
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| − | porting Sugar to Python 3, among others. This year we are going to
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| − | take a more focused approach, concentrating on fleshing out and making
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| − | more robust the Javascript support within Sugar. Sample projects will
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| − | be added to the wiki over the next few days. We can always use more
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| − | project ideas (please add them to the wiki) and more mentors (if you
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| − | are interested, please contact me over the next few weeks).
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| − | === In the community ===
| + | 5. James Cameron has been running performance tests on the XO-1 hardware, comparing boot and activity launch times across a number of builds [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2015-April/049916.html]. It is great to have some data to look at. The good news is that we have been making steady progress over the past few releases in terms of reducing boot and launch times. Those of you running old versions of Sugar/Fedora on XO-1 hardware should consider looking at Sugar 104. Many bug fixes, improved stability, etc., and as James has demonstrated, seemingly minimal impact on performance. |
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| − | 4. Tony Anderson reports that he has finally has most of the Project
| + | 6. Peter Robinson announced the availability of Release Candidate 1 of Sugar 104 on Fedora 22. Please help with testing. (The .iso files can be found at [https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/22_Beta_RC1]. Look for SoaS images for your preferred architecture.) |
| − | Bernie website [http://www.projectbernie.org] completed. This website shows what content is
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| − | available on the School Server. (The School Server is a repository of
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| − | content and services for Sugar deployments.) Tony reports that there
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| − | are about 200 Sugar activities available to be installed from the
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| − | school server; digital textbooks from Siyavula, and courses on Python,
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| − | Web technology, and the Command Line Interpreter (Terminal activity).
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| − | | |
| − | === Tech Talk ===
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| − | 5. Peter Robinson, who has been coordinating the Sugar on a Stick
| + | 7. We will be meeting on Saturday, 11 April, to continue discussing plans the 106 release. Please join Martin Abente Lahaye and the Developer team on irc.freenode.net (#sugar-meeting) at 22:00 UTC. |
| − | releases (most recently for Fedora 21 [http://download-ib01.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/21/Live/x86_64/Fedora-Live-SoaS-x86_64-21-5.iso],
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| − | [http://download-ib01.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/21/Live/i386/Fedora-Live-SoaS-i686-21-5.iso]) is looking for help
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| − | coordinating testing and general community communications and
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| − | facilitation. Peter is a great mentor, so it would be a nice
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| − | opportunity for someone(s) to both contribute to the project and to
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| − | learn more about packaging. Please contact Peter (pbrobinson AT gmail
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| − | DOT com) if you are interested.
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| | === Sugar Labs === | | === Sugar Labs === |
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| − | 6. Please visit our planet [http://planet.sugarlabs.org].
| + | 8. Please visit our [http://planet.sugarlab.org planet]. |
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| | == Community News archive == | | == Community News archive == |