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Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 16:27, 21 August 2010
, 16:27, 21 August 2010→Sugar Digest
==Sugar Digest==
==Sugar Digest==
1. Since the early days of One Laptop per Child I spent a lot of energy combating the accusations that OLPC's plan is to give hardware to children, sit back, and wait for miracles to happen. The sustained efforts of the Sugar community and the enormous investment in support made by the various deployment teams around the world are tangible evidence that we do not waiting for miracles – rather we are doing the hard work to ensure that the opportunity to learn is made available to every child. It is therefore disheartening to hear Nicholas Negroponte once again say "You can, you actually can" [give a kid a laptop connected to the Internet and walk away]. [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20012926-56.html [1]] While there is much evidence to suggest that the informal time spent with computing is valuable, we have a lot of work ahead of us in order to bridge the gulf between using a computer and using a computer for learning. While the much-hyped Whole-in-the-Wall Project demonstrated that children can learn to use computers without any instruction, if we want them to engage with "powerful ideas", we must offer them more and better contexts for learning – on their own, among their peers, and under the guidance of a mentor.
1. The ''New York Times'' reported on a FailFaire gathering last month "over drinks and finger food", where MobileActive, "a network of people and organizations trying to improve the lives of the poor through technology", presented a prize for the worst ICT for Development project. The prize was an OLPC XO laptop, "a program that MobileActive members regard as the emblem of the failure of technology to achieve change for the better." ''The Chronicle of Philanthropy'' subsequently picked up on the article: "One Laptop Per Child was recently laid off some staff members [SIC] after falling far short of its goal of providing inexpensive laptop computers to tens of millions of children in the developing world."
I asked Katrin Verclas, a founder of MobileActive, for the evidence that OLPC was a failure and she said "OLPC was not discussed or presented at the FailFaire." It seems she has no evidence and yet she is sufficiently tone-deaf to be unconcerned that her using the XO as an emblem of failure might be damaging to the effots of the thousands of people trying to help the millions of children who are using the XO and Sugar. I would expect better from the ''New York Times'', the ''Chronicle of Philanthropy'', and from an organization that purports to shed some light on what works/doesn't work in development. I recommended that Verclas read ''Aristotle and and Aardvark go to Washington'' as she might learn a few more techniques for character assassination from Cathcart and Klein.
2. On a positive note, I've archived a short exchange on the #suagr channel on irc.freenode.net.
<marcopg> erikos: approve my trivial patch! :) I want to push again to sugar after so long :)
<erikos> marcopg: just because you have just one module does not mean to not need to specify the module anymore!
marcopg: r!
marcopg: welcome back! :)
<marcopg> erikos haha
thanks :)
For those of you who a relatively new to Sugar, Marco was a lead developer on the Red Hat team that worked with OLPC and Pentagram to develop Sugar. He helped found Sugar Labs but has been missing from our ranks over the past 12 months due to other obligations. It is great to have Marco contributing again.
3. Dinko Galetic, Lucian Branescu Mihaila, and Sebastian Dzaillas all successfully completed their Google Summer of Code projects. Congratulations and thanks to Google for sponsoring the work and to their mentors Stefan (Dogi) Unterhauser, Luis Gustavo Lira, Michael Stone, and Sascha Silbe, and to Tim McNamara for organizing the SUgar Labs GSoC program.
4. This review was posted on the Physics page on activities.sugarlabs.org. I had to share it:
:I love it! It's doodling for inventors! I've had so many ideas from this. Starting live is the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise it would not be obvious what the thing does, silly! Also, stopping time is for losers. build stuff on scaffolding, big tall blocks, then delete them when everything is pinned, or jointed, just like real life. :-)
===In the community===
===In the community===
5. There is a call for presentations for an on-line global education conference that may be of interest to the Sugar community (See [http://www.globaleducationconference.com/call-for-presentations.html [1]]).
6. There is a comprehensive write up of last week's education summit at LinuxCon (See [http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/mini-education-summit-linuxcon-boston-2010 [2]]).
===Tech Talk ===
7. We are making great progress towards Sugar 0.90. Follow the fun at [[0.90]].
===Sugar Labs===
===Sugar Labs===
Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list.
Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list.
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File:2010-July-24-30-som.jpg|2010 July 24th-30th (25 emails)
File:2010-Aug-7-13-som.jpg|2010 August 7th-13th (61 emails)
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