[IAEP] Sugar Digest [2016-05-25]

[Dave Crossland]

Thank you Walter! :) Great stuff!

On 25 May 2016 at 09:42, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:

> == 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).
>
> 2. John Markoff, former technology writer for the <em>NY Times</em>
> unearthed a link [1] to a classic paper by Alan Kay on personal computing
> from 1972, "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.
>
> 3. There was an article in <em>The NewYorker</em> last week [2], "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.
>
> 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. Details can be found in
> the wiki [3].
>
> 5. A summary of the 6 May meeting of the Sugar Labs oversight board is
> also available in the wiki [4]. 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 posted [5]. 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.
>
> 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 music extension to Blockly [6].) 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 Tam Tam activity [7].) You can check out
> all of the latest updates to Music Blocks including a simple drum demo at
> [8] and read the updated guide at [9]. 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.
>
> === In the Community ===
>
> 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.
>
> 8. There is a nice article about Sugar on a Stick in the Fedora Insider
> blog [10].
>
> 9. Devin and I wrote a response to a call for comments by the US
> Department of Education on the role of education technologies on early
> childhood STEM education [11]. Our focus was on the potential of Free/Libre
> Software in education. You can read our response in the wiki [12].
>
> === Tech Talk ===
>
> 10. Thomas Gilliard has documented a mechanism [13] for creating a
> livemedia-creator remix in Fedora 24. (The previous mechanism [14], which
> as dependent on livecd-creator, will be phased out soon.)
>
> 11. Sebastian Silva has been experimenting with GTK Broadway [15], a GTK
> backend to provide support for displaying GTK+ applications in a web
> browser.
>
> 12. Dave Crossland is exploring PocketChip [16], which he calls "the
> closest thing to an XO being released this year."
>
> === Sugar Labs ===
>
> 13. Please visit our planet [17].
>
> ----
>
> 1. http://mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html
> 2.
> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/do-we-really-need-to-learn-to-code
> 3. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2016
> 4.
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2016-05-06
> 5. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes#Agenda_items
> 6. http://ericrosenbaum.github.io/blockly/demos/musicblocks/
> 7. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TamTam
> 8.
> http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/?file=MusicBlocks_drumexample&run=true
> 9. http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/guide
> 10.
> http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Fedora-Based-Sugar-on-a-Stick-Is-One-Sweet-Desktop-83446.html
> 11.
> http://sites.ed.gov/oese/2016/04/open-discussion-on-the-role-of-education-technologies-in-early-childhood-stem-education/
> 12. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Walter/DOE_Response
> 13. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_24#livemedia-creator
> 14.
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Build_Your_Own_Remix_with_Fedora#Install_the_necessary_software
> 15. https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-broadway.html
> 16. http://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip
> 17. http://planet.sugarlabs.org
>
> -walter
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> <http://www.sugarlabs.org>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>



-- 
Cheers
Dave
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