[Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2009-09-03

[Walter Bender]

=== Sugar Digest ===



1. The car allowance rebate system (CARS), more commonly known as the
“Cash for Clunkers” program, was used to bail out the US auto
industry. People who had purchased gas guzzlers were rewarded with
$4500 towards the purchase of a more fuel-efficient car.  Of course
there was no subsidy for those of us who commute by bicycle—I could
use some new panniers.

Maybe it is time to bail out the US education industry. When will the
US government announce the "Sugar for Clunkers"? It would work a bit
differently than the car program in that with Sugar, there is no need
to subsidize the purchase of replacement hardware—we'll have to find
another program to bail out the computer industry. Simply replace the
clunker software that most schools are using—Windows 2000 or Windows
XP—with Sugar.  Sugar is, of course, free—as in speech and as in beer.
Any government subsidy could go towards teacher workshops. “Yes we
can!”


2. I had the opportunity to present to Sugar to HRH Princess
Ubolratana Mahidol at an MIT Symposium, “Miracle of Life”, which
focused on her youth development program in Thailand. John (J5)
Palmieri and I demoed Sugar on a Stick to the princess (See
[http://picasaweb.google.com/somponnat/MiracleOfLifeSymposium?authkey=Gv1sRgCLib8uPkpqzjoAE&feat=email#5377118272203559266]).
We had an animated discussion and I will be following up with Khun
Paron, a leading pedagogist in Thailand regarding next steps.


===Help wanted/help offered===



3. Today is Fedora Testing Day. Sebastian Dziallas is leading an
effort to test the latest Sugar on a Stick beta (based on Fedora 12).
Please join us in #fedora-test-day on irc.freenode.net. See
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2009-09-03_SoaS Fedora Test
Day] for details.

4. Caroline Meeks has found a volunteer in NYC who has offered to help
us make videos for Sugar Labs.  Is there someone who could help him
get up to speed on Sugar?


===In the community===



5. Simon Schampijer has posted notes about his Sugar pilot in Berlin.
See [http://erikos.sweettimez.de/] or read about it in the Sugar Labs
planet.


6. Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero reports that there is documentation
about the Sugar pilots in Colombia at
http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_con_fedora11_sobre_un_desktop and
http://co.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_con_fedora11_sobre_el_classmate


===Tech Talk===



7. As mentioned above, we are testing the Sugar on a Stick v2 Beta
Release, based on the Fedora 12

Alpha as well as the latest Sugar 0.85.3 release. Please download and
test your version of this release from here:


http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-2-beta.iso


8. Tomeu Vizoso has pushed new Sugar Base and Sugar Toolkit releases
with many of the fixes and features we expect to land in 0.86. Please
help us with testing.

===Sugar Labs===

9. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on
the IAEP mailing list (Please see
[[File:2009-August-22-28-som.jpg|SOM]]).

-walter

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