[Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2013-09-16

[Anish Mangal]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 1:18 PM, David Farning <dfarning at activitycentral.com
> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > == Sugar Digest ==
> >
> > 1. The 'New York Times' had an article about the tablet invasion, No
> > Child Left Untableted, in this Sunday's magazine section [1]. The
> > author of the article was a skeptical of the approach taken by the
> > Murdoch-backed Amplify tablet. I've not seen the Amplify tablet yet,
> > so it is difficult to judge, but there is one photograph [2] in the
> > article that says it all: a tablet showing a blue screen with the
> > words "Eyes on Teacher". When technology becomes the affordance used
> > by the teacher to control the class, it is a sure sign that the use of
> > technology has gone seriously awry. With Sugar, we celebrate the fact
> > that the students are so engaged with learning that the teacher can
> > (in some cases literally) throw the stick out the window. It seems
> > with Amplify, they are handed a $199 digital stick.
> >
> > 2. There has been a renewed discussion on the lists about Android.
> > (The topic seems to come up once every 2-3 months.) Meanwhile, the
> > Sugar developer team continues to make great headway. Our approach has
> > two stages. The first stage [3] is to make HTML5/Javascript a
> > first-class development environment for Sugar. The basics are largely
> > complete: we already have about a dozen new activities that use the
> > new framework. There are many details that still need addressing and
> > undoubtedly the framework will change as we gather more experience,
> > but please do try it: early feedback is very helpful. The second stage
> > [4] is to migrate to the HTML5/JS apps to the Android platform. We
> > also need to migrate some Sugar services to Android, such as the data
> > store, and design some mechanisms for collaboration (we are exploring,
> > among other things, a web-services approach to collaboration).
> >
> > There are other approaches to getting Sugar up on Android. I blogged
> > about some efforts last year by students at the Homi Baba Center to
> > get Linux running on a generic tablet in order to run Sugar. George
> > Hunt has been taking a similar approach. Ruben Rodríguez has been
> > working with Ubuntu on Android, which would also support Sugar. These
> > efforts would likely provide more backward compatibility to existing
> > Sugar deployments; the downside is the need to reboot to launch
> > Android apps. As always, the problem with dual-boot in a school
> > setting is that the maintenance and support costs double.
> >
> > At the core of both efforts remains a dedication to what makes Sugar
> > valuable to the learner: the emphasis on tools for constructing; the
> > Journal providing interoperability between objects and a place for
> > reflection; the facility with which learners can collaborate; the
> > empowerment of the end user as the constructor of both tools and
> > knowledge. We remain dedicated to the principles of Free Software,
> > even in the commercial world of Android.
>
> Thanks for the detailed response. I must confess that I am suffering a
> bit from Android fatigue. My personal position is  to wait and see.
> The chatter that the Association led Android UI and framework is not
> free software is a bit disappointing.
>
>
I'm also pretty upset about OLPC's direction with the tablet, to go down
the proprietary/non-free/locked-down route (or that is what it seems like
at the moment).

There was a time when in our community we had energetic discussions over
*just* transitioning from GPL v2 to v3.

http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2011-April/030926.html


> The HTML5/JS work on Sugar seems to be a reasonable midterm approach.
> The lingering question is how much work will it take to make the sugar
> bits available within the framework. Is there an implementation plan
> and funding available to complete the work?
>
> > === In the community ===
> >
> > 3. International Turtle Art Day will be on October 12. Pacita Peña and
> > Cecilia Alcala will be hosting an event in Caacupé and there will be
> > other events around the world sharing ideas and resources. Brian
> > Silverman and Artemis Papert will be featured guests. There are guides
> > to holding a Turtle Art Day event available in English [11] and
> > Spanish [12]. (Tip of the hat to Claudia Urea, who has led this
> > effort.)
> >
> > 4. From 10-13 October, there will be an EduJam!, in Asunción [7]. On
> > the 13th, we will hold a hack-a-thon, and hopefully make some headway
> > on some of the open issues with Sugar on Android. We will also take
> > advantage of the occasion of so many Sugar oversight board members
> > (Gonzalo, Daniel, Claudia, and me) in one place to hold a SLOB meeting
> > (most likely on Sunday morning).
> >
> > 5. Google Summer of Code [8] is coming to a close. We have had a
> > terrific group of student interns, who contributed to a wide range of
> > projects. Many thanks to: Kalpa Welivitigoda, Akshit Khurana, Marion
> > Zepf, Casey DeLorme, Erik Price, Rahul Gaur, and Suraj KS. Also, many
> > thanks to our community mentors, including Marten Abente, Lionel
> > Laské, Claudia Urrea, Gonzalo Odaird, Remy DeCausemaker, and Aneesh
> > Dogra.
> >
> > === Tech Talk ===
> >
> > 6. We are wrapping up Sugar 100 and need all hands helping with both
> > closing a few outstanding tickets [9] and helping with testing.
> > Gonzalo and Jerry have been preparing images (Fedora 18) for OLPC AU
> > that can be used for testing [10]. Kudos to our release manager Daniel
> > Narveaz!!!
> >
> > 7. Tom Gilliard has been making SoaS images on Fedora 20 that can also
> > be used for testing [11]. Meanwhile, the previous release of Sugar
> > (98.8) is available on Ubuntu (12.04) [12] thanks to the efforts of
> > Quidam.
> >
> > === Sugar Labs ===
> >
> > 8. Please visit (and contribute to) our planet [13].
> >
> > ----
> >
> > [1]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/no-child-left-untableted.html
> > [2]
> http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/09/15/magazine/15klein3/15klein3-sfSpan.jpg
> > [3] http://developer.sugarlabs.org/web-architecture.md.html
> > [4] http://developer.sugarlabs.org/android.md.html
> > [5] http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Ingles_10-08-2013.pdf (en)
> > [6] http://people.sugarlabs.org/walter/Guia_Esp_12-08-2013.pdf (es)
> > [7] http://ceibaljam.org/drupal/?q=edujam2013
> > [8] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2013
> > [9]
> http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=accepted&status=reopened&priority=Immediate&priority=Urgent&component=Sugar&status_field=New&order=priority
> > [10] http://build.laptop.org.au/xo/os/sugar-100
> > [11] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_20#SoaS_86_64-dm_.28remix.29
> > [12]
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Ubuntu#Ubuntu_12.04.2_LTS_-_Dextrose_Sugar_Live
> > [13] http://planet.sugarlab.org
> >
> >
> > --
> > Walter Bender
> > Sugar Labs
> > http://www.sugarlabs.org
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sugar-devel mailing list
> > Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
>
>
> --
> David Farning
> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
> _______________________________________________
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> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
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