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Incredible that the pocketchip is as close as the industry can come
to match the XO - not even close.<br>
<br>
Tony<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05/25/2016 03:42 PM, Walter Bender
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CADf7C8si21Y6z1t3wXQ5gz0T2k9WZBtqptHoOhmgX5Z-zQBPqw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>== Sugar Digest ==</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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].</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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 <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://irc.freenode.net">irc.freenode.net</a>,
#sugar-meeting.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>=== In the Community ===</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>8. There is a nice article about Sugar on a Stick in the
Fedora Insider blog [10].</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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].</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>=== Tech Talk ===</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>11. Sebastian Silva has been experimenting with GTK
Broadway [15], a GTK backend to provide support for displaying
GTK+ applications in a web browser.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>12. Dave Crossland is exploring PocketChip [16], which he
calls "the closest thing to an XO being released this year."</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>=== Sugar Labs ===</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>13. Please visit our planet [17].</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>----</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>1. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html">http://mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html</a></div>
<div>2. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/do-we-really-need-to-learn-to-code">http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/do-we-really-need-to-learn-to-code</a></div>
<div>3. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2016">https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2016</a></div>
<div>4. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2016-05-06">https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2016-05-06</a></div>
<div>5. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes#Agenda_items">https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes#Agenda_items</a></div>
<div>6. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://ericrosenbaum.github.io/blockly/demos/musicblocks/">http://ericrosenbaum.github.io/blockly/demos/musicblocks/</a></div>
<div>7. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TamTam">https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TamTam</a></div>
<div>8. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/?file=MusicBlocks_drumexample&run=true">http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/?file=MusicBlocks_drumexample&run=true</a></div>
<div>9. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/guide">http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/guide</a></div>
<div>10. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Fedora-Based-Sugar-on-a-Stick-Is-One-Sweet-Desktop-83446.html">http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Fedora-Based-Sugar-on-a-Stick-Is-One-Sweet-Desktop-83446.html</a></div>
<div>11. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://sites.ed.gov/oese/2016/04/open-discussion-on-the-role-of-education-technologies-in-early-childhood-stem-education/">http://sites.ed.gov/oese/2016/04/open-discussion-on-the-role-of-education-technologies-in-early-childhood-stem-education/</a></div>
<div>12. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Walter/DOE_Response">https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Walter/DOE_Response</a></div>
<div>13. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_24#livemedia-creator">https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_24#livemedia-creator</a></div>
<div>14. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Build_Your_Own_Remix_with_Fedora#Install_the_necessary_software">https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Build_Your_Own_Remix_with_Fedora#Install_the_necessary_software</a></div>
<div>15. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-broadway.html">https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-broadway.html</a></div>
<div>16. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip">http://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip</a></div>
<div>17. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://planet.sugarlabs.org">http://planet.sugarlabs.org</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-walter</div>
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div class="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><font><font>Walter Bender</font></font><br>
<font><font>Sugar Labs</font></font></div>
<div><font><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank"><font>http://www.sugarlabs.org</font></a></font><br>
<br>
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