Sugar Labs/Current Events

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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 and blogged at walterbender.org.) If you would like to contribute, please send email to walter at sugarlabs.org by the weekend. (Also visit planet.sugarlabs.org.)

Sugar Digest

1. We are getting very close: Caroline Meeks and I visited the computer lab at the Waltham Massachusetts YMCA to test the latest Sugar on a Stick images built by Sebastian Dziallas and the release team. The lab is a small room with 10 tower PCs of different models and manufaturers. We managed to get nine out of ten machines to boot. Three of the machines required a "helper CD", since they didn't have USB boot ability in the BIOS. The one machine that would boot Sugar on a Stick wouldn't even power on, so arguably we had a 100% success rate!!

There are still a few issues to work out: the helper CD, which is based on Fedora 9, only seems to work for SoaS-1 (the Fedora-10-based images). Sebastian, Sascha Silbe, and Simon Schampijer are investigating (and issued a new helper CD will I was writing this). A seemingly more intractable issue is the network. The lab has a wired network with static IP addresses assigned to each machine. I was able to get the network working but the process is tedious—I don't think we can expect teachers and youn children to use ifconfig, route, etc. from the shell. I also had to boot each machine in Windows, get the IP address, netmask, gateway, and DNS, but this is something that needs only to be done once per machine. Configuring the network on Sugar on a Stick has to happen every time, presuming the children will be jumping from machine to machine. A control panel widget for setting up a static IP address is a first step, but I wonder if there is an easier way.

Caroline and I will be back to the Y in a week (Healthy Kids Day) to test the set up with children and parents attending a day-long open house. This will be the first real test of Sugar on a Stick by children in a real-world setting.

Many thanks to the release team, everyone who has been helping with the testing, and a tip of the hat to Sebastian, who has made an extraordinary effort.

2. I am more than a little behind in my weekly Sugar update. Between planes, trains, and automobiles I have not had the time or ability to concentrate on writing.

After leaving the SkoleLinux meeting in Bergen, I went to Paris where I spent a couple of days meeting with Sean Daley, Patrick Sinz, and the crowd at Solutions Linux. Sean and I demoed Sugar on a Stick to a crowd gathering around the Open Office booth–Open Office has a team in France working on a version for children (and maybe for Sugar?). Other potential projects we discussed at Solutions Linux included extending the file sharing and privacy models within Sugar.

From Paris I went to Bolzano, where I spent two days with another Patrick—Ohnewein—and Bernie Innocenti at the TIS Innovation Park. We met with Prof. Alessandro Efrem Colombi and some of his colleagues and students from the Free University of Bozen - Bolzano faculty of education. We had an animated discussion about how to advance the engagement of teachers in constructionist thinking as facilitated by Sugar. He and his students seem ready to engage from both a pedagogical and technological perspective.

Back in Boston, I met with Seth Weinberger. His foundation, Innovations for Learning, makes the TeacherMate, a small hand-held device with embedded Gnash applications running in it. He and his team have developed some nice reading and math activities that could be readily ported to Sugar in the form of Gnash deasktop activities, as per the discussion about bundles being led by Wade Brainerd on the sugar-devel list.

In the community

3. Looks like Sugar Labs be joining OLPC France at a "Sugar Camp" in Paris on the weekend of 16 May. Details forthcoming.

Tech Talk

4. Luke Macken has added support in the Fedora liveusb-creator for automatically downloading various Fedora releases, as well as Sugar on a Stick!

Sugar Labs

5. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see SOM).

Community News archive

An archive of this digest is available.

Planet

The Sugar Labs Planet is found here.

Sugar in the news

27 Mar 2009 Mass High TechGoogle promotes summer open-source internships
18 Mar 2009 MetropolisA Good Argument
16 Mar 2009 Laptop MagazineSugar Labs’ New Version of Sugar Learning Platform Is Netbook and PC Ready
16 Mar 2009 Market WatchSugar Labs Nonprofit Announces New Version of Sugar Learning Platform for Children, Runs on Netbooks and PCs
14 Feb 2009 OLPC Learning Club – DCLearning Learning on a Stick
05 Feb 2009 xconomySugar Beyond the XO Laptop: Walter Bender on OLPC, Sucrose 0.84, and “Sugar on a Stick”
26 Jan 2009 Linus MagazineSugar Defies OLPC Cutbacks
19 Jan 2009 Feeding the PenguinsThe status of Sugar, post-OLPC
16 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsSugar on Acer Aspire One & Thin Client via LTSP
12 Jan 2009 Bill Kerrthoughts about olpc cutbacks
07 Jan 2009 Ars TechnicaOLPC downsizes half of its staff, cuts Sugar development
06 Jan 2009 OLPC NewsAn Inside Look at how Microsoft got XP on the XO
30 Dec 2008 OLPC NewsSugar Labs Status at Six Months
22 Dec 2008 The GNOME ProjectSugar Labs, the nonprofit behind the OLPC software, is joining the GNOME Foundation
16 Dec 2008 Feeding the PenguinsSugar git repository change
14 Dec 2008 NPRLaptop Deal Links Rural Peru To Opportunity, Risk (Part 2)
13 Dec 2008 NPRLaptops May Change The Way Rural Peru Learns (Part 1)
09 Dec 2008 SFCSugar Labs joins Conservancy
31 Oct 2008 Linux DevicesAn OLPC dilemma: Linux or Windows?
10 Oct 2008 Feeding the PenguinSugar on Ubuntu
21 Sep 2008 GroklawInterview with Walter Bender of Sugar Labs
17 Sep 2008 Bill KerrSugar Labs
16 Sep 2008 Open SourceSugar everywhere
28 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsAn answer to Walter Bender's question 22
20 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsSugarize it: Intel Classmate 2
08 Aug 2008 Investor's Business Daily'Learning' Vs. Laptop Was Issue
06 Aug 2008 OLPC NewsTwenty-three Questions on Technology and Education
18 Jul 2008 Bill Kerrevaluating Sugar in the developed world
28 Jun 2008 OLPC NewsA Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo
18 Jun 2008 PC WorldOLPC Spin-off Developing UI for Intel's Classmate PC
17 Jun 2008 DatamationIf Business Succeeds with GNU/Linux, Why Not OLPC?
11 Jun 2008 LinuxInsiderThe Sweetness of Collaborative Learning
06 Jun 2008 Bill Kerruntangling Free, Sugar, and Constructionism
06 Jun 2008 Open EducationWalter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation
06 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
05 Jun 2008 Code CultureThe Distraction Machine
05 Jun 2008 BusinessWeekOLPC: The Open-Source Controversy
27 May 2008 The New York TimesWhy Walter Bender Left One Laptop Per Child
26 May 2008 Ars TechnicaOLPC software maker splits from X0 hardware, goes solo
22 May 2008 BetaNewsLinux start-up Sugar Labs in informal talks with four laptop makers
16 May 2008 OSTATICOLPC's Open Source Sugar Platform Aims for New Hardware
16 May 2008 PCWorldBender Forms Group to Promote OLPC's Sugar UI
16 May 2008 MHTBender jumps from OLPC, founds Sugar Labs
16 May 2008 News.comSugar Labs will make OLPC interface available for Eee PC, others
16 May 2008 Feeding the PeguinsThe future of Sugar
16 May 2008 Sugar listA few thoughts on SugarLabs
16 May 2008 xconomyBender Creates Sugar Labs—New Foundation to Adapt OLPC’s Laptop Interface for Other Machines
16 May 2008 BBC'$100 laptop' platform moves on
15 May 2008 OLPC wikiDual-boot XO Claim: OLPC will not work to port Sugar to Windows.
16 May 2008 SoftpediaBender Launches Sugar Labs for Better Development of OLPC's Sugar UI

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