Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] review process follow-up.
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 17:48, David Farning dfarn...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@tomeuvizoso.net wrote: Hi David, thanks a lot for putting some new energy on this discussion, there's certainly more opportunities for us in revising this process. Certainly, and I will do my best to insure that the process revision is driven by an increase in useful patches which need to processed And I will be happy to read the reviews from the submitters ;) For background, Bernie and me talked on the phone last week and it helped a lot in aligning our positions on this. When we get the community team up and running I will propose that when a discussion gets a bit too heated, that someone proposes the interested parties to have a conf call. On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 16:00, David Farning dfarn...@gmail.com wrote: I would like to invite input on the new process that Tomeu and Bernie have been developing. I am specifically interested in see how Sugar Labs, OLPC, and third parties such as Activity Central can work together most effectively. Admittedly we are causing a disruption, hopefully one which will cause a net improvement. 1. Value and review of patches. The task we are doing are directly driven by deployments. As such we need to deal with version issues. Most of the deployments are using and will continue to use .82/4 for the near future. Paraguay is leading a push to stabilize on .88 by August of 2010. One of the mantras of Activity Central is upstream. We don't have our own mailing lists or bug trackers. This begs the question of dealing with versions. I am encouraging, but not requiring, that patches fix the issue for the version of sugar the customer uses plus the current develop version if applicable. About the specific issue of stable branches, my recommendation is that they are maintained by someone a bit closer to downstreams and that there's a strong requirement for only pushing backported bugfixes and, occasionally, features. Yes, I am not asking of expecting Sugar Labs to carry they burden of backporting. That is role is often played by a downstream distributor. Well, but if a stable version is deployed by more than one entity, they will have to work together, and isn't the main purpose of SLs to provide a place where people interested in Sugar can work together? Of course, resources will have to come from downstreams, but they will be doing upstream work when they maintain a stable branch. 2. Maintainer-ship. To avoid possible conflicts of interest, ie ramming ideas down the communitie's throat, I have avoided directly engaging key developers, comitters, and maintainer. For this to work we must gain credibility as useful participants. If and only if is acceptable to the current development team, I would like to make an effort to increase the number of activities maintained by Activity Central. Hmm, I'm not sure this decision belongs to the development team. What if AC starts by taking a couple of the several orphaned activities that are seeing more requests and we see how it works? The tricky thing here is that as a company, we are only interested in a few high value activities. So this is a place where crowding out _can_ occur if we are not careful. Sure, but may not be a problem right now if a downstream takes maintenance of 2 orphaned activities. And it could help us understand better how we want to work in the future. In a couple of months we should have the community and deployment teams running, which could be more appropriate forums to discuss this. I support the idea of a stronger emphasis on community engagement via a community team. I am a bit more hesitant about a deployment team. The needs of deployments are very specific and hard for a upstream community to effectively meet. Rather than working top down, it might be more effective to work bottom up by focusing on helping projects like ceibaljam and Ole Nepal push their deployments driven innovations upstream. Yes, this is how things would work ideally. And if it had worked that way, we would have had release managers, a QA team, our modules would be maintained, our teams would have coordinators with lively meetings, and a long etc. We have the same problem in GNOME and I cannot but suggest that upstreams shouldn't expect for their downstreams to behave as they should without some doing some serious and sustained talking. Also, I don't think that having a place in SLs where downstreams talk together about Sugar needs to mean that SLs will control them. SLs is nothing without downstreams and if today's SLs is given shape by people not affiliated to any downstream is because downstreams have been slow to join. But it's not the normal state of an upstream. I personally don't care if downstreams talk instead about Sugar in a mailing list in laptop.org, in groups.google.com or anywhere else, but I want them to stop
Re: [IAEP] Announcing Sugar on a Stick v.3 (Mirabelle)
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 04:01, Sebastian Dziallas sebast...@when.com wrote: Mirabelles have arrived! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/enil/3892066169/) Congratulations to all involved! Tomeu I am proud to announce the availability of Sugar on a Stick v.3, code-named Mirabelle. More information about Sugar on a Stick, including download and installation details, are available at http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/. Changes in Sugar on a Stick since the last release (v.2 Blueberry): Sugar version 0.88. The most recent release of the Sugar Learning Platform features support for 3G connections, increased accessibility, and better integration with our Activity Portal (http://activities.sugarlabs.org) allowing students and teachers to update their sticks with additional Activities. More information about the 0.88 release of Sugar is available at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.88/Notes. Customize your own remix of Sugar on a Stick. You'll notice that v.3 Mirabelle has a smaller Activity selection than its predecessors, Blueberry and Strawberry. We realized we'll never be able to create an Activity selection suitable for all deployments - instead, we've chosen to include and support a core set of basic, teacher-tested Activities in the default image, and invite deployments to use this as a base on which to build a customized Activity selection for their classrooms. Instructions on how to do this are available at http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/docs/customization-guide/. Sugar on a Stick is now a Fedora Spin. After two prior releases of being based on the Fedora distribution, Sugar on a Stick has recognized by the Fedora Project as an official Spin. This ties us more closely to Fedora's release cycle and gives us resources from their engineering and marketing teams, which extends the reach of Sugar on a Stick and makes the project itself more sustainable. In exchange, users of Fedora have access to an easily deployable implementation of the Sugar Platform; it's a great example of a mutually beneficial upstream - downstream relationship. The biggest difference in v.3 of Sugar on a Stick has been in its release processes and engineering sustainability; it's now much easier for new contributors to get involved. We continue to move towards our long-term vision of bringing stability and deployability to Sugar's personalized learning environment, and invite all interested parties to join us. If you'd like to contribute to the next version, due for release in early November, join us at our Contributors Portal at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick. All types of contributions are welcome, from the technical to the pedagogical, and we're happy to teach what we know and learn what you have to share. Thank you especially to the Sugar on a Stick team and all the people involved for their awesome work on this release! Sebastian Dziallas Sugar on a Stick Project Lead ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Books and educational achievement
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 05:26:37PM -0400, Chris Leonard wrote: This study seems to make a powerful argument in favor of ramping up the quantity of e-book content on school servers. Books in the home as important as parents’ education level http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/templates/details.aspx?articleid=5450zoneid=8 The article itself: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B82Y4-4YC2XKM-1/2/7c2bbf36de3f004c7cd8606ee7d851cc Anyone have a link to the paper itself or a draft thereof? I love reading a 2007 paper for $31.50 as much as the next person, but... cjl pgpWZ3Py6rpcI.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Books and educational achievement
Chris, I'm as big a believer in the value of e-books as anyone you're likely to meet, but I don't think we can assume that laptops that can download potentially a million e-books would have the same effect as a home library of conventional books. My parents had a fair number of books in the house, plus they bought us a set of Doctor Seuss and other kid's books, plus I had a Willy Ley book on going to the moon, Mr. Wizard's Science Secrets, and some others. There is something about having a real book that you may not get with an e-book. I agree we need to get more e-books for children, but we won't know the real effect of that from this study. James Simmons Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 17:26:37 -0400 From: Chris Leonard cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.com Subject: [IAEP] Books and educational achievement To: iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Message-ID: aanlktindsg6eir7w15v7q8wmjl0n1zadpgjxdmm65...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 This study seems to make a powerful argument in favor of ramping up the quantity of e-book content on school servers. Books in the home as important as parents? education level http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/templates/details.aspx?articleid=5450zoneid=8 cjl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Books and educational achievement
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Martin Dengler mar...@martindengler.comwrote: On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 05:26:37PM -0400, Chris Leonard wrote: ... Books in the home as important as parents’ education level http://www.unr.edu/nevadanews/templates/details.aspx?articleid=5450zoneid=8 The article itself: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B82Y4-4YC2XKM-1/2/7c2bbf36de3f004c7cd8606ee7d851cc Anyone have a link to the paper itself or a draft thereof? I love reading a 2007 paper for $31.50 as much as the next person, but... I've requested permission to share the article on our wiki: https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlethttps://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet Title: Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations Author: M.D.R. Evans, Jonathan Kelley, Joanna Sikora, Donald J. Treiman Publication: Research in Social Stratification and Mobility Publisher: Elsevier Date: June 2010 Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Logged in as: Frederick Grose Sugar Labs https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet Permission Request Submitted *Your request is now under review. You will be notified of the decision via email. Please print this request for your records.* Get the printable order detailshttps://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet . Order number 500567352 Order date May 26, 2010 11:44 AM Licensed content publisher Elsevier Licensed content publication Research in Social Stratification and Mobility Licensed content title Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations Licensed content author M.D.R. Evans, Jonathan Kelley, Joanna Sikora, Donald J. Treiman Licensed content date June 2010 Volume number 28 Issue number 2 Pages 27 Type of Use Website Requestor type Academic / Educational Portion Full article Format Electronic You are the author of this Elsevier article No Are you translating? No Order Reference Number Home page URL for posting content http://wiki.sugarlabs.org Expected publication date May 2010 Duration of posting 3 years Customer Tax ID EIN 41-2203632 Elsevier VAT number GB 494 6272 12 Billing type Invoice Company Sugar Labs Billing address c/o Software Freedom Conservancy 1995 BROADWAY FL 17 NEW YORK, NY 10023-5882 United States Customer reference info Permissions price Not Available Value added tax 0.0% Not Available Total Not Available https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet Copyright © 2010 Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.http://www.copyright.com/ All Rights Reserved. Privacy statementhttps://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet . Comments? We would like to hear from you. E-mail us at customerc...@copyright.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Fwd: Why Science is Cool National K-12 Video Contest in partnership with The Kavli Foundation and SciVee
-- Forwarded message -- From: supp...@scivee.tv Date: Wed, May 26, 2010 at 8:17 AM Subject: Why Science is Cool National K-12 Video Contest in partnership with The Kavli Foundation and SciVee To: supp...@scivee.tv Why Science is Cool National K-12 Video Contest in partnership with The Kavli Foundation and SciVee The USA Science Engineering Festival's Kavli Science Video Contest is looking for videos that are creative, surprising, and can be used to share students' love of science with other kids. Videos can be linked to current curriculum, a science fair project or can be whatever students' decide works for them. Winners will receive cash prizes for their school, electronics prizes, tickets to meet the MythBusters and possibly even a trip to the Expo in Washington, DC. The top videos will be featured during the Expo and at other Festival events. Submission Deadline: July 15, 2010. To learn more visit: http://www.usasciencefestival.org/2010festival/contests/kavli-science-video-contest Unsubscribe http://www.scivee.tv/optout/_useremailaddress_ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Really cool developments with SoaS v3
There have been some nice little changes in various parts of SugarLabs recently which make me happy to see that core contributors are really thinking about sugar sustainability and sugar in the field, but I think we've all just been blown out of the water with 4 really great things about the new SoaS release that I'd like to highlight: 1. Scaling to appropriate resources - given that the community isn't that big, they've cut back to something that's maintainable and sustainable, with clear processes, and ideas on how to grow as more resources become available. 2. Piggybacking from other communities - by making sure that everything is sparkly clean and by positioning themselves within the bounds of Fedora's organization, rules and guidelines, they've won support and assistance of Fedora and its community, to the point where SoaS is a download from Fedora itself, and is prominently featured in the Fedora 13 release notes (extremely cool!): http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F13_one_page_release_notes?F13an 3. Local requirements - I see a change in model with the v3 release, from a model that I never thought would work well (1 version of SoaS for the whole world) to the simple distribution of a reference platform with a clean process for making customizations, which is realistically something that the vast majority of significant soas deployers would want to do. 4. Build/customization documentation - in addition to actually adjusting the process to make customization clean and possible, they've written *good documentation* on how to do it, even ready for the release date and not done as an afterthought: http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/docs/customization-guide/ Thanks to the SoaS contributors, great work! Daniel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
