[Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2012-05-11

[Walter Bender]

== Sugar Digest ==

1. Danishka Navin pointed me to an article [1] about Sugar in Sri
Lanka. Even though they don't mention Sugar, in fact, both Sugar and
GNOME are being used on Hanthana [2], a Fedora-based Linux, using
LSTP. The program is modelled on the Hanthana School Labs [3]. I
wonder where else Sugar is being used that I am unaware?

2. In the spirit of procrastination, I wrote two new Sugar activities
this week. The first is a simple activity around the concept of
narrative. Claudia Urrea had come across a game in which nine picture
are chosen at random (by throwing nine dice). The players then
construct a narrative based on the pictures. Easier enough to
implement Story in Sugar [4]. I took advantage of a nice source for
SVG artwork, The Noun Project [5]. When shared -- with up to eight
other users -- everyone sees the same pictures and hence can tell a
story in a round-robin fashion. (One of these days, I will write the
Exquisit Cadavar [6] activity, based on the Dadaist storytelling
technique that is a nature fit with Sugar collaboration. There is a
variant that combines pictures and text: you draw a picture
illustrating my text; the next person writes text describing your
picture, and so on. Stay tuned.)

Meanwhile, on the flight to Korea last week, I got caught up on some
reading [7]. Even though is it not clear that "you can make yourself
smarter" using these techniques, nonetheless, n-back games are fun. So
I wrote Recall [8]. There are three games, with six levels each. It is
deceptively easy to get hooked. Enjoy.

=== In the community ===

5. EduJAM! is under way in Montevideo. Tune into the webcast at [10]
and join the code sprint at [11] on the 13th and 14th.

6. Next week is Squeakfest, also in Montevideo (May 17-19) and May
21-22 in Buenos Aires (See [12]).

=== Sugar Labs ===

Visit our planet [13] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.

-walter

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

----

[1] http://www.ft.lk/2012/05/12/reconstructing-sri-lankas-education-system-with-hanthana/
[2] http://www.hanthana.org/
[3] http://school.hanthana.org/lab/
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Story
[5] http://thenounproject.com/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-yourself-smarter.html?_r=2&ref=magazine
[8] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Recall
[9] http://ceibaljam.org/?q=edujam2012
[10] http://www.ustream.tv/channel/edujam
[11] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/EduJAM/CodeSprint
[12] http://squeakland.org/squeakfest
[13] http://plant.sugarlabs.org