congrats! almost missed this! Walter said: " Finally, in 2012, I wrote a book about the OLPC story [2], which includes a chapter on Sugar, but I need to write a more complete story about Sugar, its goals and its impact. I am setting that as a personal goal for 2013. "
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Change-World-Social-Impact/dp/0230337317/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356809905&sr=1-1&keywords= 2012/12/29, Walter Bender <[email protected]>: > == Sugar Digest == > > 1. We have a newly elected Sugar Labs oversight board. Joining us are > Claudia Urrea, Gonzalo Odiard, and Daniel Francis. Continuing are Adam > Holt, Chris Leonard, Gerald Ardito, and Walter Bender. It is a nice > group -- quite diverse -- which will bring some new perspectives to > the board. Departing are Chris Ball, Aleksey Lim, and Sebastian Silva. > All three will be missed: Chris's calm, thoughtful guidance, Aleksey's > cool insight into the needs of developers and also the reminder that > our mission is broader than just our current collection of tools, and > Sebastian, who lives and breaths on the ground of Sugar deployments, > and has well represented their needs. I hope that our departing > members will continue to participate as non-voting contributors to our > discussions and I also am very grateful for everything they have > contributed in the past. > > 2. Two more weeks of Google Code In [1]. It has really been fun trying > to keep pace with all of these new contributors to Sugar. If you have > ideas for "tasks", it is not too late to add more. Please contact me > or Chris Leonard. > > 3. 2012 is coming to an end, a natural time to reflect on where we > have been and where we are going. > > From the technical perspective, Sugar 0.96 and 0.98, which include the > port to GTK3 and support for touch are important milestones. The > tireless work of the development team under the leadership of Simon > Schampijer have really born fruit. They have guaranteed the stability > Sugar on GNU/Linux for the forseeable future. (A tip of the hat to > Martin Langhoff and OLPC Association, who generously supported Simon > and the much of the devel team in 2012.) Their work will be featured > as the OLPC XO4 is unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) > early next month. > > From the learning perspective, through the participation Claudia and > the Learning Team, we made a lot of headway on the understanding how > Sugar is used and how it can be used to more have more impact on > learning. Their work on "making learning visible" has both academic > merit and practical implications for the learner. > > From the user perspective, we continue to expand our user base, both > in terms of new deployments and new platforms. In 2012, we made > renewed headway in the US market, with projects in Miami, Florida and > Charlotte, North Carolina (sponsored by the Knight Foundation). On the > other side of the globe, Barry Vercoe has launched a program in New > Zealand. Meanwhile, existing programs, such as those in Nicaragua and > Paraguay, continue to expand. In Argentina, while the growth of OLPC > has been slow, the growth of Sugar on other platforms is steadfast. > While it is difficult to track where it is being used, the number of > visits to the Sugar-on-a-Stick download page is >> 600,000. > > We have also grown our developer community. Of particular note is that > the next generation contributors is in large part coming from Sugar > users. Daniel, Agustin, Christofer, Ignacio, Rafael, and others whom > Flavio Danesse has been mentoring in Uruguay have become central to > the Sugar development process. They have realized our goal of having > real responsibility for learning and the tools for learning lie in the > hands of the learners themselves. This is an unprecedented > accomplishment for which the Sugar Community should be proud. Sugar > Labs participation in Google Code-in is icing on the cake. We've got >>50 new youth contributors since the contest began in November. > > From the point of view of localization and internationalization, the > highlights of 2012 are the progress we have made in Aymara and > Quechua. Edgar Quispe and Irma Alvarez have done wonders. (A tip of > the hat to Chris Leonard and Aymar Ccopacatty for their help and > support.) Barry Vercoe has personally funded work on Maori and we have > had much progress on several indigenous languages in Mexico. > Meanwhile, Chris has made numerous contributions upstream, both by > hosting some upstream projects on our Pootle server, but also by being > a strong voice and advocate within the glibc and pootle communities. > > More technical highlights include the work of Daniel Narvaez on > sugar-build, which provides a much more stable development environment > than the unwieldy sugar-jhbuild environment. Under the shepherding of > Peter Robinson and Tom Gilliard, Sugar on a Stick and our virtual > machine support continue to improve in quality and stability. Aleksey, > Sebastian, and Laura Vargas have made contributions to enhance our > ability to support off-line deployments with their work on the Sugar > Network. The work by Team Butia on expanding Sugar into the sphere of > robotics continues to impress me and the work of Guzman Trindad and > Tony Forster, integrating Sugar into the world of rich sensing, > provides endless pleasure. > > Another highlight, seemingly innocuous, was the creation of the > Amazonas page in Facebook. This simple use of social media to provide > a support network for teachers in one of the most isolated places on > earth has exceeded my expectations. It has three times as many members > as had attended the workshop in Chachapoyas, and it has daily updates > of projects, questions, and progress. The recent work by Raul > Gutierrez on integrating Turtle Art with Facebook is a harbinger of > how we might make sharing of the Sugar experience more seamless in > 2013. > > Personally, my biggest thrill in 2012 was working with children, in > Miami and in Khairat (India). I had a chance to teach Turtle Art > workshops and in both cases, the children did dance animations that > were impressive in their depth. > > So what is next? In 2013 we will see the fruit of some of our efforts, > including a chance to see Sugar with touch in the field. OLPC > Australia will be the first deployment of the OLPC XO4. It will be > interesting to learn what impact it has in the classroom. One thing we > already know is that touch makes Sugar more accessible to younger > (pre-K) children. It also is congruent with the expectations of > children coming of age in the tablet/smart-phone era. > > Daniel has been working on revitalizing our automated testing suite, > which will help with maintenance and QA. > > We will see advances in localization. Already, the Ministry of > Education in Peru has opened a bid to follow up on the work of Edgar > and Irma. Translation of other language groups is also being advanced. > > The topic of support for Special Needs was raised numerous times in > 2012. I hope to convene the various interested parties in early 2013 > to lay out a new road map for Sugar in this area. (The work on GTK3 > has helped in that we know have, for example, an on-screen keyboard. > And by eliminating Hippo, we have removed the last vestiges of Sugar > that were preventing us from using the GNOME tools.) > > Perhaps these themes will be the focus of Sugar 1.0, due to be > released in Q2 2013. A few things queued up include setting a > background image on the Home View (thanks to Agustin Zubiaga) and > multiple Home Views (thanks to Daniel Francis). > > I also expect that we will be seeing more learning guides in 2013, a > harbinger of which was pulled together for the Charlotte deployment: > teachers sharing best practice. > > There are two elephants in the room: The Cloud and Android. How we > face these opportunities will certainly become more clear in 2013. > > I hope to organize a Global Sugar conference in 2013. Perhaps at MIT > or perhaps at a deployment. It is time to bring our community together > face to face on a larger scale. > > Finally, in 2012, I wrote a book about the OLPC story [2], which > includes a chapter on Sugar, but I need to write a more complete story > about Sugar, its goals and its impact. I am setting that as a personal > goal for 2013. > > === In the community === > > 4. Rita Freudenberg announced that a new Etoys book is available: > ''Learning with Etoys Imagine, Invent, Insprire''[3]. > > === Sugar Labs === > > Visit our planet [4] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments. > > -walter > > [1] http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2012 > [2] > http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Change-World-Social-Impact/dp/0230337317/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356809905&sr=1-1&keywords=learning+to+change+the+world > [3] http://wiki.squeakland.org/index.php/LearningWithEtoysI3 > [4] http://planet.sugarlabs.org > > -- > Walter Bender > Sugar Labs > http://www.sugarlabs.org > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
