[Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2010-02-23

[Walter Bender]

===Sugar Digest===

1. In a conversation last night with Ivan Krstić, when asked what was
"new and exciting" about Sugar, my response was "nothing, which is a
good thing". I then elaborated: Sugar is approaching a level of
maturity where our milestones are stability and robustness rather than
the introduction of "exciting" new features. This is evident in the
0.88 release—, which has relatively few new user-facing features, but
many advances in terms of "under-the-hood" improvements that will make
long-term deployment and maintenance easier. (I don't mean to imply
that Sugar is no longer an exciting project—the fact that we will soon
surpass 2-million users is very exciting. And I find it thrilling to
eavesdrop on the discussions by teachers regarding how they are using
Sugar in advancing learning.)

You can help us reach our stability goal by testing, reporting bugs,
and joining in our triage efforts. We will be having a triage session
next Monday, 1 March 2010, at 9EST (14UTC) on irc.freenode.net
(channel #sugar-meeting). Please join us as we review open tickets.

2. There is a nice compilation of recent academic papers on one-to-one
computing (See [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_papers#Papers]).
Gary Martin has generated some self-organizing map (SOM) images of the
papers (See [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_papers]). To me, the
most interesting take-away is the observation that access to computing
at home has a significant impact on learning. This is an affirmation
of the OLPC principle of child ownership—all too often children are
not allowed access to school computing resources outside of school
hours—and it suggests that approaches such as Sugar on a Stick, which
allows the learning platform to travel with the child from the
classroom to home may be even more significant than we had realized.

===In the community===

3. Joy Ventura Riach, manager of the One Laptop per Child Africa
Regional Center in Kigali, lead a learning discussion on IRC last
week. It was great to hear something about what is happening on the
ground in the various OLPC deployments. The discussion continues this
Thursday, 25 February, at 10EST (15UTC) on www.oftc.net (channel
#olpc-learning).

4. Marisa E. Conde, who is participating in the OLPC/Sugar deployment
in San Martín, Argentina, shared an informational website to the Sur
list (See [http://www.modelo1a1.com.ar]).

5. The GNOME Foundation has been invited to participate to the
[http://www.idlelo.net/ Idlelo conference] in May in Ghana. This is
one of the biggest free software events in Africa. Please contact me
if you are interesting in representing Sugar at the meeting.

=== Help Wanted ===

6. We could really use someone to take on the leadership role on
testing. While we have some great testing resources and individuals in
the community, having someone who is actively coordinating these
efforts would make a huge difference. Please contact me or Simon
Schampijer (erikos) if you are interested in such a role.

===Tech talk===

7. Aleksey Lim has created a Sugar 0.88-based ppa for Karmic Koala
(Ubuntu 9.10). Instructions for using it can be found here:
[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Community/Distributions/Ubuntu#Sugar-0.88_on_Ubuntu_9.10_.28karmic.29|0.88
on Karmic].

8. Sebastian Dziallas has been compiling more complete documentation
for Sugar on a Stick creation (See
[http://people.sugarlabs.org/sdz/]).

9. Bryan Berry announced the Karma Lesson Template, a simple template
for creating lessons for the XO and elsewhere (See
[http://karmaeducation.org/2010/02/18/introducing-the-karma-lesson-template/]).

===Sugar Labs===

10. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion
on the IAEP mailing list (Please see
[http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2010-Feb-13-19-som.jpg]).

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org