[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-05-11

[Walter Bender]

You are welcome to email to the Sugar developers list or post a ticket
in Trac (dev.sugarlabs.org) or post it on irc.freenode.net #sugar or
send it to Sebastian, but the latter is probably the least scalable of
the options.

-walter

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Kathy Pusztavari
<kathy at kathyandcalvin.com> wrote:
> Walter, how does one report problems with Soas - directly to Sebastian
> Dziallas or is there a place for that?  If to Sebastian, what is the email
> address?
>
> -Kathy
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: iaep-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org
> [mailto:iaep-bounces at lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Walter Bender
> Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 8:40 AM
> To: community-news at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Cc: iaep; sugar List
> Subject: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-05-11
>
> ===Sugar Digest ===
>
> The discussion about pedagogy on the IAEP list intensified this week.
> My takeaway from the discussion is that while we won't (and don't need
> to) reach consensus about "one right way" to teach, we must have consensus
> around our goals as a community or our efforts will become too diffuse to be
> of any practical use; we are not engaged in an academic exercise-we are
> touching the lives of real children on a global scale. Indeed, the primary
> reason we spun One Laptop per Child from MIT (and Sugar Labs from One Laptop
> per Child) is because we intend to deliver "things to think with" to
> learners everywhere.
>
> As a community, we have consensus that Sugar and Sugar activities should be
> freely and readily available to learners everywhere. This would suggest that
> the developer community continues to strive to make it "simple" to create
> and share Sugar activities and its efforts to create versions of Sugar that
> run on multiple operating systems and on multiple hardware platforms.
>
> But what is Sugar? At one level, Sugar is an API that provides a unified
> framework for activity developers to support collaboration, reflection, and
> sharing in their programs. But those features were chosen with a purpose: to
> encourage learners to engage in authentic problem-solving and a critical
> dialogue about whatever problem in which they are engaged. This engaged,
> learners will develop skills that help them in all aspects of life.
>
> Sometimes that dialog is with your peers, sometimes it is with a teacher or
> mentor. Sometimes it is open-ended and sometimes it is within the context of
> structured instruction. In every case, it involves expressing, debugging,
> critiquing, and reflecting. In every case, it is enhanced by "the hard
> things to learn", Alan Kay's "non-universals", e.g., reading and writing;
> deductive abstract mathematics; model-based science; etc.
>
> The culture of FLOSS, with its emphasis on ''en plein air'' debugging and
> critique, is part of our pedagogy. Sugar embodies the message that everyone
> has an opportunity and responsibility to contribute to our knowledge
> commons. That contribution need not be Python code. Members of the Sugar
> community must:
>
> * explore, share, evaluate, and debate best practices;
> * provide technical and pedagogical support; and
> * create new learning activities and pedagogical practice.
>
> ----
>
> Roland Gesthuizen has a concrete set of suggestions for teacher
> participation in our community:
>
> * report back issues that make using the Sugar interface difficult when used
> it in the classroom (collaborate)
> * develop and share lessons built around applications that work on Sugar
> (curriculum)
> * share by word of mouth, blog and twitter with colleagues that we are using
> Sugar (communication)
> * ask deep and hard questions about the learning that goes on when students
> use Sugar (pedagogy)
> * work to answer these questions (research)
> * and more...
>
> ===Help Wanted===
>
> In the run up to the June Beta release of Sugar on a Stick, Sebastian
> Dziallas has asked for help with testing all of the activities being
> considered for inclusion. We'd like to be more thorough in finding any
> problems so that we can be sure to address them in time for the final
> release in September/October.
>
> ===In the community===
>
> The OLPC France Sugar Camp meeting will be held in Paris on May 16 (See
> http://sugarcamp.eventbrite.com/).
>
> There will also be a Sugar meeting on the 17th (See
> Marketing_Team/Events/MiniCamp_Paris_2009).
>
> A team of Babson College management students will be working with Sugar Labs
> beginning this fall as part of a Management Consulting Field Experience
> (MCFE) Program.
>
> ===Tech Talk===
>
> Christian Schmidt led a Design Team meeting this weekend that covered topics
> such as improvements to the Home View, a clock extension on the Frame;
> support for printing within Sugar; a global strategy for keyboard shortcuts;
> and a global dictionary (See
> http://meeting.laptop.org/sugar-meeting.log.20090509_1013.html).
>
> The Food Force team has a new release and is looking for feedback (Download
> the .xo bundle from http://code.google.com/p/foodforce/downloads/list).
>
> ===Sugar Labs ===
>
> Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP
> mailing list (Please see [[Image:2009-May-2-8-som.jpg]]). It is worth a
> close look this week.
>
> -walter
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> _______________________________________________
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>
> _______________________________________________
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>



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