Changes

2. LiveUSB: It seems that a LiveUSB offers the most simple way to experience Sugar on a preexisting hardware base, such as a school computer lab. (One advantage of a LiveUSB approach—where user data is stored in a disk partition—is that the same key can be used at school and at home, emulating the experience of a one-to-one laptop program, where the laptops go home with the children. The Fedora team has made progress on a LiveUSB this week (See Item 11 below) and we are also working to get "fresher" Sugar bits into the Ubuntu LiveUSB. However, there remains a problem in that many computers do not have boot-from-USB enabled in the BIOS. Steve Pomeroy suggested we look into U3, a proprietary method of launching applications from a USB key. This would provide a work-around for running Sugar on machines that are running Windows (alas, this accounts for the majority of hardware found in schools). Ben Schwartz pointed out that we could do the same thing using autorun.inf (See [http://www.exponetic.com/blog/blog/2006/07/07/autorun-an-executable-from-a-usb-key-in-windows-xp/ autorun an executable from a USB key in Windows XP]), launching an instance of Sugar in QEMU. Running Sugar in emulation requires a reasonably fast machine in order to give an acceptable experience. We need to do more testing in this arena, as it is a path of least resistance for teachers and parents who are interested in trying Sugar.

2. LiveUSB: It seems that a LiveUSB offers the most simple way to experience Sugar on a preexisting hardware base, such as a school computer lab. (One advantage of a LiveUSB approach—where user data is stored in a disk partition—is that the same key can be used at school and at home, emulating the experience of a one-to-one laptop program, where the laptops go home with the children. The Fedora team has made progress on a LiveUSB this week (See Item 11 below) and we are also working to get "fresher" Sugar bits into the Ubuntu LiveUSB. However, there remains a problem in that many computers do not have boot-from-USB enabled in the BIOS. Steve Pomeroy suggested we look into U3, a proprietary method of launching applications from a USB key. This would provide a work-around for running Sugar on machines that are running Windows (alas, this accounts for the majority of hardware found in schools). Ben Schwartz pointed out that we could do the same thing using autorun.inf (See [http://www.exponetic.com/blog/blog/2006/07/07/autorun-an-executable-from-a-usb-key-in-windows-xp/ autorun an executable from a USB key in Windows XP]), launching an instance of Sugar in QEMU. Running Sugar in emulation requires a reasonably fast machine in order to give an acceptable experience. We need to do more testing in this arena, as it is a path of least resistance for teachers and parents who are interested in trying Sugar.

3. Teachers/developers: There was a productive discussion on the IAEP list this week about how to better engage teachers in the Sugar developer community. Rob Costello pointed out that only a small percentage of teachers would participate in the actual development process, building bridges to even that small group would be worthwhile. It was pointed out that the [[Activities/Turtle Art/Patching]] (which is still incomplete) is far from meeting the needs of a teacher (or anyone else new to the community). Bill Kerr wrote up some questions that I tried to answer in the wiki (See [[Talk:Patching Turtle Art]]):  

3. Teachers/developers: There was a productive discussion on the IAEP list this week about how to better engage teachers in the Sugar developer community. Rob Costello pointed out that only a small percentage of teachers would participate in the actual development process, building bridges to even that small group would be worthwhile. It was pointed out that the [[Activities/Turtle Art/Patching]] (which is still incomplete) is far from meeting the needs of a teacher (or anyone else new to the community). Bill Kerr wrote up some questions that I tried to answer in the wiki (See [[Talk:Activities/Turtle Art/Patching]]):  

* Where do you find things (Python files, source code)

* Where do you find things (Python files, source code)