[Sugar-news] Sugar DIgest 2014-09-02

[Walter Bender]

== Sugar Digest ==

I took the summer off from blogging, hence I have a lot to report
about the exciting progress we've made of the past three months.

First, congratulations to our ten participants in Google Summer of Code:

Project       Student         Mentor
Music Suite       Aneesh Dogra       Gonzalo Odiard
Turtle Art 3D       Anubhav Jaiswal       Tony Forster
Activity Unit/UI Tests Gaurav Parida       Daniel Narvaez
Port to Python 3       Kunal Arora       Sameer Verma
Bulletin Board       Nazrul Haque Athar      Walter Bender
Hack a Stuffed Animal  Jade Garrett       Stephen Thomas
Social Help for Sugar  Prasoon Shukla       Paul Cotton
Cordova for Sugar      Puneet Kaur       Lionel Laské
Sugar Listens       Rodrigo Parra       Martin Abente

Also, thank you to both Google, for once again letting us participate
in this great program and to our mentors, who gave time and attention
to the students. I am happy to say that we not only learned a great
deal, e.g., Kunal's efforts have informed us as to what we will need
to do to migrate to Python 3, but also, we have landed (or will land)
much of the work.

For example, one of the projects, Turtle Art 3D, is now available for
download from the Sugar activity portal:

http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4757

2. We held a Turtle Art Day in San Antonio Texas in August as part of
Open Ed Jam, organized by Mariah Noelle Villarreal. Tip of the hat to
Ruben Rodriguéz, whose TOAST (Trisquel with Sugar) image was used in
the workshop.

http://www.openedjam.org/

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Trisquel_On_A_Sugar_Toast

We used USB keys donated by Nexcopy as part of their Recycle USB campaign.

3. Speaking of Turtle Art, Cynthia Solomon, Claudia Urrea, and I wrote
a paper, "(More than) Twenty Things to Do in Turtle Blocks" for the
Constructionist Conference in Vienna. We made some videos as well.
See:

http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/More-than-20.pdf

=== In the community ===

4. There will be a Youth Summit held in Montevideo September 20-23.
ANEP (National Administration of Public Education) and Sugar Labs are
organizing a World Junior Programmers Summit, a meeting among  youths
from different parts of the world who are working in software
development. Taking advantage of this gathering, we are soliciting
participation by leaders of educational programs interested in the
potential that technology has on learning and in promoting meaningful
participation of students.

This event will last for four days, three days for the youth meeting,
and the fourth day for a series of strategic to discuss the current
impact and  future of the Sugar learning environment. The first day of
the youth event will be open to anyone interested in joining the
community of free software developers, while the other two days will
be for those who are already actively involved in Sugar development.

Who should attend:
* Youths who have an interest in programming and / or have made
concrete contributions to the development of the Sugar learning
environment;
* Leaders interested in participating in a series of strategic
meetings to define the future of the Sugar learning environment.

Why participate in this meeting:
* To work with internationally recognized young a Python developers;
* Help define the future of the Sugar learning environment and future
generations of software for learning;
* To connect with experts, convinced of the potential of technology in
the development and learning;
* To strengthen the community of users of the Sugar learning
environment around the world.

Anyone interested in participating in this important event should
contact us immediately. ANEP has offered funding to cover the local
costs for  youths to participate in this event.

Resistration is here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1w2pHuRZSeTr6_4WEe3gjj6LjgBqp7v_loxc_yqb9IL0/viewform

=== Tech Talk ===

5. Martin Abente oversaw the release of Sugar 102 and is now gathering
feature requests for Sugar 104. Please see:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.104/Feature_List

=== Sugar Labs ===

6. Please visit our planet at:

http://planet.sugarlab.org


-walter

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