[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2014-05-15
Flavio Danesse
fdanesse at gmail.com
Sun May 18 07:31:11 EDT 2014
Beautiful photos, I have no shame that facebook, I can not give in I like.
Congratulations on a job.
Hermosas fotos, lástima que no tengo facebook, no puedo darle en me gusta.
Felicitaciones por el trabajo.
2014-05-15 15:25 GMT-03:00 Mike Lee <curiouslee at gmail.com>:
> And great photos from Turtle Art sessions in Kathmandu posted on Facebook:
>
> Introducing Turtle Art
>
> https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151995403127583&id=187845102582
>
>
> A photo from Turtle Art Day
>
> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152402311569362&set=a.140818034361.110570.552694361&type=1&theater
>
> Turtle Art Day 2
>
> https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151996917067583&id=187845102582
>
> Winning Project of Turtle Art Day
>
> https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151996931477583&id=187845102582
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> ==Sugar Digest==
>>
>> Happy 6th Birthday Sugar Labs
>>
>> 1. I just got back from Turtle Art Day in Kathmandu, Nepal. OLE Nepal
>> helped organize a 2-day workshop with 70+ children from four schools. Many
>> thanks to Martin Dluhos, Basanta Shrestha, Subir Pradhanang, Rabi
>> Karmacharya, Bernie Innocenti, and Adam Holt, all of who contributed to the
>> event.
>>
>> It was not a surprise that children in Nepal are like children everywhere
>> else: they take to programming like ducks to water. We began by taking the
>> children in small groups to learn some basics about controlling the turtle:
>> one child plays the role of turtle, one holds the pen (a piece of chalk)
>> and the rest, in a circle, instruct the "turtle" how to draw a square. They
>> need to be very precise with their instructions: if they just say "forward"
>> without saying how far forward, the turtle keeps walking. If they say
>> "right", without saying how far to turn, the turtle keeps spinning after
>> they draw a square, I ask them to draw a triangle then they are ready to
>> start with Turtle Art. I've posted a few of the chalk drawing in the wiki:
>> simple ones [1] from my session to more elaborate [2] from those working
>> with another one of the mentors.
>>
>> After working with chalk, we went to the computers. On a laptop connected
>> to a projector, I introduced Turtle Blocks, and again ask for a square. I
>> show them that they can snap together blocks, e.g., forward 100, right 90;
>> showed them the repeat block; and then I show them how to use the start
>> block to run their program with the rabbit or snail (fast or slow). Over
>> time, I introduced the pen and let them explore colors for awhile. Next, I
>> introduce action blocks: make an action for drawing a square and then call
>> that action inside of a repeat block followed by right 45 and you get a
>> pretty cool pattern. This was followed by more open-ended exploration. I
>> introduced a few more ideas, such as using "set color to heading" (the
>> color is determined by the direction the turtle is heading); "set color =
>> color + 1" to increment the color; and "set color = time" to make the color
>> slowly change over time. I also introduced a few other blocks, such as
>> show, speak, and random. Finally, I introduced boxes. For this, I use a
>> physical box: I ask the children to put a number (written on paper) in the
>> box; then I ask them what number is in the box. I ask them to take the
>> number in the box and add 1 to it. Again I ask them what number is in the
>> box. I repeat this until they get used to it; then I show them the same
>> thing using Turtle. The example program I write with them is to go forward
>> by the amount in the box, turn right, and add 10 to the number in the box.
>> I asked them what they think will happen and then show them that it makes a
>> spiral. When they run it with the "snail", they can see the number in the
>> box as the program runs. Another block I explicitly introduced was the
>> "show" block. We programmed an animation with "show image", "wait 1", "show
>> image", "wait 1", ... They recorded dance steps using the Sugar Record
>> activity and used those images in their Turtle projects. As often as
>> possible, we tried to have a child show their work to the entire group. At
>> the end of the second day, we had a table set up for an exhibition; we had
>> to keep adding more tables as more and more children wanted to show off
>> their projects.
>>
>> We originally planned on break-out sessions on Day Two, but we had a
>> technical glitch on Day One, that slowed things down quite a bit. The
>> children were running Sugar 0.82 on XO 1 laptops, which is nearly six-years
>> old. They had them connected to the mesh network, which cannot scale
>> properly to 70+ machines. The result was a lot of frozen machines. It took
>> most of the day to figure out what was wrong. Once we turned off the
>> radios, everything worked great. I also had to spin a stripped down version
>> of Turtle Art, since a number of dependencies I use, such as some Python
>> 2.7 features, were unavailable on 0.82.
>>
>> We did have one break-out session for robotics. I brought a Butia to
>> Nepal and I wrote the typical program with the kids to have the Butia go
>> forward until it got to the edge of the circle (everyone was sitting in a
>> circle on the floor); whomever the Butia approached had to push a button so
>> that the Butia would spin and then go in another direction. We then added a
>> few embellishments: the Butia would say "ouch" or "that tickles" when the
>> button was pushed; and we had it take a picture of the child who pushed the
>> button. We saved the files so we could use them to make an animation in
>> Turtle Art.
>>
>> Of note: One child approached me to say he is teaching himself to program
>> Python. I showed him how to export Python from his Turtle Art projects.
>> I'll be curious how he uses that feature. I am making a new set to "Turtle
>> Cards" [3] to demonstrate the steps we took in explaining Turtle to the
>> children.
>>
>> 2. While I was in Kathmandu, I had a chance to meet with the Nepali FOSS
>> community, thanks to Shankar Pokharel, Ankur Sharma, and Subir Pradhanang.
>> We had a nice talk about the challenges and opportunities facing FOSS in
>> Nepal.
>>
>> 3. Just before my trip to Nepal, I was in Mexico attending Aldea Digital
>> [4]. The central plaza in Centro Historico in DF is turned into the world's
>> larget free Internet cafe for two weeks. I gave a lecture about Sugar and
>> ran an impromptu Turtle Art session. (We installed Sugar in a VM on twenty
>> Windows 8 machines and ran a session.) I also had a chance to meet Ian, the
>> 9-month old baby of Carla Gomez: a future Turtle Artist.
>>
>> === In the Community ===
>>
>> 4. Mike Dawson, formally of OLPC Afghanistan, wrote a nice commentary on
>> the Keepod [5] in which he mentions Sugar on a Stick.
>>
>> 5. Google Summer of Code begins on the 19th of May. We'll be meeting
>> every week in IRC on Fridays at 2PM EST.
>>
>> 6. There is still time to enter the Sugar Background Image Contest [6].
>>
>> === Tech Talk ===
>>
>> 7. Daniel Narvaez has been building F20 images for XO [7]: The XO-1 image
>> boots into Sugar (latest from git) and wifi works. He has also built XO-4
>> images.
>>
>> 8. Daniel also built tarballs for 0.101.5 [8, 9]. We are now in string,
>> API and UI freeze.
>>
>> 9. Please help us with testing of Sugar 102. See [10] for details.
>>
>> === Sugar Labs ===
>>
>> 10. Please visit our planet [11].
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> ----
>>
>> [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Chalk1.jpg
>> [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Chalk2.jpg
>> [3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art/Turtle_Cards
>> [4] http://aldeadigitalmx.com/
>> [5]
>> http://www.ictworks.org/2014/05/14/keepod-wasting-40000-to-reinvent-linux-on-a-stick/
>> [6] http://contest.sugarlabs.org
>> [7] http://shell.sugarlabs.org/~dnarvaez/oob/
>> [8]
>> http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar/sugar-0.101.7.tar.xz
>> [9]
>> http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-toolkit-gtk3/sugar-toolkit-gtk3-0.101.5.tar.xz
>> [10] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.102/Testing
>> [11] http://planet.sugarlabs.org
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
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