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== Sugar Digest 2016-05-25 ==

== Sugar Digest ==

1. Just a quick Marvin Minsky remembrance: Marvin, especially in the days of overhead projectors, would use a bit of theatrics in his talks. He'd walk up to the overhead projector, "accidentally" drop all of his slides on the floor, and then proceed to talk about whatever happened to be on his mind at the moment. Often, part way through his allotted time, he'd bend over, scan the slides, pick on up and say, "this looks interesting", and talk about the theme of the slide. Try doing that with PowerPoint (TM).

It has been a long time since I last wrote a Sugar Labs community new blog. I got tied up with my day jobs: starting a new design college from scratch and launching a new research center at MIT. (And, frankly, I was a bit depressed following the deaths of Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert.) I have a breather on both fronts and given all of the Sugar activity of late, I am inspired to do some writing.

2. John Markoff, former technology writer for the <em>NY Times</em> unearthed a link to a classic paper by Alan Kay on personal computing from 1972, "[http://mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages]". Well worth the read. Alan was actively interacting with Marvin, Seymour Papert, and Cynthia Solomon at the time.

1. A footnote from Google Code-in 2015. Ezequiel Pereira, one of the grand-prize recipients from Sugar Labs was recently acknowledged by Google for discovering a security bug. He got some nice press, e.g., [https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/08/10/highschool-security-research-google-data/#.tnw_5BETRGWT][https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/10/schoolboy_google_bug_bounty_http_host/1]. In one article [http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/google-awards-uruguay-high-school-student-10k-finding/story?id=49249604], he was quoted as saying: "Homework is boring. Looking for bugs is fun.” Ezequiel is one of a generation of children in Uruguay who grew up with Sugar. It is nice to hear the occasional word about their accomplishments.

3. There was an article in <em>The NewYorker</em> last week, "[http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/do-we-really-need-to-learn-to-code Do we really need to learn to code?]" The authors, Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis nicely summarize many of the core challenges in the quest to harness artificial intelligence to automate computer programming, but entirely miss the point of why we need to learn to code. As Cynthia remarked more than 30 years ago, "debugging is the great educational opportunity of the 21st Century." Marcus and Davis do observe that "a good programmer understands, deeply, a problem that needs to be solved, and then creates an architecture for solving a problem that’s never been solved before." The true value of learning to code is that it engages children in the rigors and discipline of problem-solving. For must learners, computation is a "thing to think with", not an end in and of itself.

2. We just wrapped up Google Code-in and Outreachy 2017. We had 9 interns supported by Google and 1 Outreachy intern. You can read about their accomplishments in their [[Summer_of_Code|blogs] and in the meeting logs [http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/meetings] (every Monday from May through August). Highlights from the summer include a new, easy-to-maintain activity portal and a new www.sugarlabs.org, both going live soon. Also of note: a new Sugar image for Raspberry Pi, some new apps, GTK3 ports, a Sugarizer dashboard, and a major overhaul of Music Blocks.

4. The coding period of Google Summer of Code has officially begun. Please help us support the efforts of our six interns as they help expand the possibilities of Sugar over the next three months. [[Summer_of_Code/2016|Details]] can be found in this wiki.

Tip of the hat to our mentors: Abhijit Patel, Cristina Del Puerto, Devin Ulibarri, Hrishi Patel, Ignacio Rodriguez, José Argüello, Lionel Laské, Matias Baez, Michaël Ohayon, Samson Goddy, Samuel Cantero, and Tony Anderson. Lionel help me administer the program again this year. It is nice to note that many of the mentors are former GCI participants.

5. A [[Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2016-05-06|summary]] of the 6 May meeting of the Sugar Labs oversight board is also available in this wiki. At that meeting, and in subsequent email discussions, we passed a motion to fund an effort to do the Yoruba internationalization and localization. We also passed a motion to finalize updating the Sugar License from GPLv2 to GPLv3. The agenda of the 3 June meeting is [[Oversight_Board/Minutes#Agenda_items|posted]] in this wiki. Among the pending motions we will be discussing are a series of motions to restructure the finance manager position; a motion to adopt the 2016 vision for Sugar Labs; a motion regarding allocation of GSoC mentoring stipends; a motion to request a membership donations; and discussion of merits of applying for inclusion in GitHub Education pack. Please join us on irc.freenode.net, #sugar-meeting.

Cristina, Michaël, and Samson will be representing Sugar Labs at the annual mentor summit at Google in October. (For those of you who have been following the saga of Samson's visa, I am happy to say that he was approved!)

6. There has been progress along many fronts with the Music Blocks activity. Devin Ulibarri arranged for a meeting with his mentor, Larry Scripts, at the New England Conservatory (NEC) of music. Larry had positive and productive feedback for us and we hope to incorporate Music Blocks in seminar at NEC in the fall. I also had a fun meeting with Eric Rosenbaum and Derek Breen, along with Cynthia. (Eric was part of the team that created the lovely music widgets that appeared on the Google Homepage a few months back and he wrote a [http://ericrosenbaum.github.io/blockly/demos/musicblocks/ music extension to Blockly].) Eric introduced me to the sampler code in Tone.js, which I am now using for the drum set. What a difference a decent sampler can make!!! (I am using some of the samples that come bundled with the [[Activities/TamTam|Tam Tam activity]].) You can check out all of the latest updates to Music Blocks including a [http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/?file=MusicBlocks_drumexample&run=true simple drum demo] and read the updated [http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/guide guide]. I think Music Blocks is finally stable enough that we should push on the localization efforts. I will be mining some strings from Tam Tam to make the process a bit less tedious for our translation team.

3. I was invited to represent Sugar Labs at the Plan Ceibal 10th anniversary in Montevideo a few months ago. It was great to see children still using Sugar 10  years after the first deployment in a small school in the Florida Department. It was also an opportunity to catch up with many old friends and Sugar contributors, including Ignacio, Andres, Alan, Jose Miguel, Guzman, etc. I am not sure if my talk is on line, but I wrote a paper based on the talk which is available for [http://www.um.es/ead/red/54/bender.pdf download].

=== In the Community ===

4. Lionel just announced a new release of Sugarizer (v0.9). See [http://sugarizer.org] for all of the details.

7. Dave Crossland lead a team of volunteers on a weekend wiki gardening adventure. While there is still more work to be done, we managed to prune lots of stale material and we began migrating stable pages to the static website we maintain on github. Thanks to everyone who volunteered. We'll probably have another go at it in July.

5. James Cameron is working towards the release of [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2017-September/054631.html Sugar 0.111], our first new release in nearly one year. It is mostly planned as a maintenance release.

8. There is a nice article about Sugar on a Stick in the [http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Fedora-Based-Sugar-on-a-Stick-Is-One-Sweet-Desktop-83446.html Fedora Insider] blog.

6. There are only a few more days left (15 Sept.) to register as a candidate for the Sugar Labs oversight board. Please consider joining the board as we need some fresh voices and perspectives. See [[Oversight_Board/2017-2019-candidates]] for details. You also have until 27 Sept. to register as a member in order to be given a vote in the election. See [[Sugar_Labs/Members]] for details.

9. Devin and I wrote a response to a [http://sites.ed.gov/oese/2016/04/open-discussion-on-the-role-of-education-technologies-in-early-childhood-stem-education/ call for comments] by the US Department of Education on the role of education technologies on early childhood STEM education. Our focus was on the potential of Free/Libre Software in education. You can read our response in the [[User:Walter/DOE_Response|wiki]].

7. One of the first decisions the new board will be making is whether or not Sugar Labs should apply for GCI 2017. I am hopeful that the board will see the merits of the program and give a green light to apply again this year. If we do apply, I will be looking for mentors, project ideas, and a co-administrator. Please contact me if you are interested.

 

 

10. Thomas Gilliard has documented a [[Fedora_24#livemedia-creator|mechanism for creating a livemedia-creator remix]] in Fedora 24. (The [[Build_Your_Own_Remix_with_Fedora#Install_the_necessary_software|previous mechanism]], which as dependent on livecd-creator, will be phased out soon.)

 

11. Sebastian Silva has been experimenting with [https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-broadway.html GTK Broadway], a GTK backend to provide support for displaying GTK+ applications in a web browser.

 

 

 

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

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==Sugar in the news==

==Sugar in the news==

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{|

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|align=right valign=top|09 Feb 2016||'''www.montevideo.com''' &ndash; [http://www.montevideo.com.uy/auc.aspx?299096 DOS URUGUAYOS ENTRE GANADORES DEL CONCURSO GOOGLE CODE-IN]

|align=right valign=top|09 Feb 2016||'''www.montevideo.com''' &ndash; [http://www.montevideo.com.uy/auc.aspx?299096 DOS URUGUAYOS ENTRE GANADORES DEL CONCURSO GOOGLE CODE-IN]

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|align=right valign=top|06 Feb 2013||'''el Observador''' &ndash; [http://www.elobservador.com.uy/noticia/242936/joven-uruguayo-gana-la-competencia-google-code/ Joven uruguayo gana la competencia Google Code] (Also see [http://people.sugarlabs.org/aguz/gci-press-interviews.html GCI press interviews])

|align=right valign=top|06 Feb 2013||'''el Observador''' &ndash; [http://www.elobservador.com.uy/noticia/242936/joven-uruguayo-gana-la-competencia-google-code/ Joven uruguayo gana la competencia Google Code] (Also see [http://people.sugarlabs.org/aguz/gci-press-interviews.html GCI press interviews])

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|align=right valign=top|07 Sep 2012||'''NDTV''' &ndash; [http://gadgets.ndtv.com/laptops/news/one-laptop-per-child-initiative-a-hit-in-rural-india-263867 One Laptop Per Child initiative a hit in rural India]

|align=right valign=top|07 Sep 2012||'''NDTV''' &ndash; [http://gadgets.ndtv.com/laptops/news/one-laptop-per-child-initiative-a-hit-in-rural-india-263867 One Laptop Per Child initiative a hit in rural India]

|align=right valign=top|06&nbsp;Aug&nbsp;2008||'''OLPC News''' &ndash; [http://www.olpcnews.com/people/leadership/23_questions_on_technology_education.html Twenty-three Questions on Technology and Education]

|align=right valign=top|06&nbsp;Aug&nbsp;2008||'''OLPC News''' &ndash; [http://www.olpcnews.com/people/leadership/23_questions_on_technology_education.html Twenty-three Questions on Technology and Education]

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|align=right valign=top|18&nbsp;Jul&nbsp;2008||'''Bill Kerr''' &ndash; [http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/07/evaluating-sugar-in-developed-world.html evaluating Sugar in the developed world]

|align=right valign=top|18&nbsp;Jul&nbsp;2008||'''Bill Kerr''' &ndash; [http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/07/evaluating-sugar-in-developed-world.html evaluating Sugar in the developed world]

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