Thank you Walter! :) Great stuff! On 25 May 2016 at 09:42, Walter Bender <[email protected]> wrote:
> == Sugar Digest == > > 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). > > 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. > > 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. > > 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]. > > 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 irc.freenode.net, #sugar-meeting. > > 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. > > === In the Community === > > 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. > > 8. There is a nice article about Sugar on a Stick in the Fedora Insider > blog [10]. > > 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]. > > === Tech Talk === > > 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.) > > 11. Sebastian Silva has been experimenting with GTK Broadway [15], a GTK > backend to provide support for displaying GTK+ applications in a web > browser. > > 12. Dave Crossland is exploring PocketChip [16], which he calls "the > closest thing to an XO being released this year." > > === Sugar Labs === > > 13. Please visit our planet [17]. > > ---- > > 1. http://mprove.de/diplom/gui/kay72.html > 2. > http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/do-we-really-need-to-learn-to-code > 3. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/2016 > 4. > https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Meeting_Minutes-2016-05-06 > 5. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/Minutes#Agenda_items > 6. http://ericrosenbaum.github.io/blockly/demos/musicblocks/ > 7. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TamTam > 8. > http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/?file=MusicBlocks_drumexample&run=true > 9. http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks/guide > 10. > http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Fedora-Based-Sugar-on-a-Stick-Is-One-Sweet-Desktop-83446.html > 11. > http://sites.ed.gov/oese/2016/04/open-discussion-on-the-role-of-education-technologies-in-early-childhood-stem-education/ > 12. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Walter/DOE_Response > 13. https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Fedora_24#livemedia-creator > 14. > https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Build_Your_Own_Remix_with_Fedora#Install_the_necessary_software > 15. https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-broadway.html > 16. http://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip > 17. http://planet.sugarlabs.org > > -walter > > -- > Walter Bender > Sugar Labs > http://www.sugarlabs.org > <http://www.sugarlabs.org> > > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > -- Cheers Dave
_______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
