Re: [IAEP] SoaS feedback (Physics)
Bill I have been putting together a guide on reprogramming the Physics Activity http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Physics because: I like Physics, its good learning The Python/Sugar 'wrapper' code is not too difficult to program So another option is to modify the code to get the behaviour you want Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] An interview with Ch. Kane
Hi, An interesting interview with Charles Kane has just been published in Australian IT: Cheap PCs for kids spinoff http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25843285-24169,00.html Regards Samy ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Dave Neary's Barriers to community growth
Hi, this might be of interest to people worried about growing the Sugar Labs' community: http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2009/07/22/barriers-to-community-growth/ Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] community influence on development
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 14:58, Bastienbastiengue...@googlemail.com wrote: Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org writes: About having a person at every deployment, some months ago I started creating this list of contacts: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployment_Team/Places Thanks for the reminder. My idea was more to have only *one* person in Sugar responsible to get/filter/dispatch deployments feedback - just as Greg was answering requests from various horizons (cc'ing Greg to this thread.) Ok, thought you wanted both. Maybe this time we'll have more luck having people listed there? Yes - but I'm afraid having the role I mention above is the only way to activate the list in Deployment_Team/Places Could be, yes. Btw, why is this thread in sugar-devel instead of in IAEP? (Well, I'm just a bit cautious about threads jumps...) CC'ing IAEP. I think sugar-devel should be only for technical matters and iaep should be cc'ed for everything not strictly technical. Regards, Tomeu -- Bastien ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Shaftsbury, VT Technology Camp
Recently I just had a summer technology camp at an elementary school in Shaftsbury, Vermont. It was a week long camp consisting of fourteen children from surrounding schools (Shaftsbury, North Bennington, Bennington) in grades 4/5/6-into-7th. Students learned how to install and configure Ubuntu on their laptops early in the week along with going on a geocaching treasure hunting trip and learning how to solder and make contact mics and create experimental electronic instruments. The highlight of the week was when on Friday July 24th Caroline Meeks came up to do a workshop with the children on using SoaS. The students were given 2GB Patriot ruggedized usb drives to run Sugar on Nexlink rebranded Compal EL81 laptops (fairly new). A good chunk of the time on Sugar was on using Turtle Art which some of the kids were somewhat familiar with since I had shown them KTurtle last year. All of the children picked up Turtle Art though and really flew with it! It was really incredible to see so many children just completely engrossed on a computer operating system and it's software! I had children from a very wide demographic with varying interests. Some of the kids were you're typical techy-gamer types while most were not at all. One particular child was actually coming from a local private school and had been very nervous to be at this camp where she knew no one and had never done anything like this before in her life. She is a very shy individual, though highly intelligent and very advanced for her age (she can beat me in chess!) and is more likely to be found drawing or painting, gardening, or building a fairy home out in the woods. Before this camp she has never had much to do with computers and never had much of a reason to. Well on Friday July 24th she was really taking off with Sugar! After the camp had ended she immediately went home and figured out how to boot her parents laptop from the USB drive and spent the rest of the day playing with Turtle Art and making really neat designs. I want to thank the team at Sugar Labs for putting all of their time, effort, and energy into creating this wonderful platform for young children to use. It is so obvious to me that the traditional platforms that we currently use in our buildings are just completely un-child oriented and something needs to be changed. Thank you Caroline for coming up here and presenting this to the children of Southern Vermont, you have definitely made a few converts and the comments and things they wrote on the wiki later on were super positive about Sugar! -Nicco -- Niccolo Botticelli Eneidi ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Back to school with XOs or SoaS?
Hi... My neice is a TV producer for a local station in Florida. She is looking for interesting back-to-school articles they might be able to follow-up with. Anything out there that anyone knows about that talks about the XO or SoaS? Must be in the USA. Caryl___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Back to school with XOs or SoaS?
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 9:16 AM, Caryl Bigenhocbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi... My neice is a TV producer for a local station in Florida. She is looking for interesting back-to-school articles they might be able to follow-up with. Anything out there that anyone knows about that talks about the XO or SoaS? Must be in the USA. I have been compiling a list of one-to-one computing projects in the US, including OLPC trials and deployments. Let's talk offline. Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Back to school with XOs or SoaS?
Caroline and I plan to expand th Gardner Pilot School Sugar on a Stick program this fall (this summer, we are piloting with two grade-levels). -walter On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Caryl Bigenhocbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi... My neice is a TV producer for a local station in Florida. She is looking for interesting back-to-school articles they might be able to follow-up with. Anything out there that anyone knows about that talks about the XO or SoaS? Must be in the USA. Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] community influence on development
2009/7/28 Philippe Clérié phili...@gcal.net: On Tuesday 28 July 2009 04:48:25 Tomeu Vizoso wrote: Yes, if deployers make very clear what is a priority for them and do so in a compelling way, I'm sure volunteer developers will make their plans accordingly. Perhaps the highest priority should be a Live CD/USB that is easily and reliably installable on the hard disk of a machine. I've now tried strawberry and Sugar on Fedora and neither is satisfactory; Sugar on Ubuntu does not work. The only thing that works is Sugar on a stick and that may not be a good solution. In fact, I think I'm on the verge of commiting a sin: take the path of least resistance and go with XP versions of the Mini 110. Yes, the SoaS team is working on this feature for their next release. Feel free to ask for details if you would like to help or do some early testing. More generally, I think that what is really missing in Sugar (and for that matter, OLPC) is a conversation between developers and educators. Last year I signed up for several lists on OLPC, including one for educators and one for research. There was no activity on either. I haven't tracked them so perhaps things have changed. I doubt it; there would be echoes on this list if they became more active. Well, you are writing to su...@lists.laptop.org, which used to be a list for sugar-specific subjects when OLPC developed Sugar. When the community took maintenance of Sugar, Sugar Labs was formed and new mailing lists were created at sugarlabs.org. su...@lists.laptop.org is now redirected to sugar-de...@sugarlabs.org, and this list is only for technical subjects specific to Sugar. Anything not so technical about Sugar should go to i...@sugarlabs.org, where will reach the bigger community. If you are interested in being involved in discussions with educators about Sugar and more, IAEP is the list to be. If you consult the archives, we have had very interesting discussions about learning with Sugar and its role in the classroom: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/ I'm sorry you got confused by this. Do you have any recommendation so we can make better known that OLPC isn't developing Sugar any more and that it's in Sugar Labs where Sugar is discussed? To all the participants in this thread: please move all discussions that are not strictly technical to IAEP. Otherwise we are excluding a very important part of our community and this is a critical subject. Thanks, Tomeu I am acutely aware of this absence because, as I've mentionned before, although I can handle the computer, I am totally out my depth in pedagogy. And the educators whom I'm working for want nothing to do with the computer. So there is a disconnect here and the issue is not being addressed. At any rate, despite my enthusiasm for OLPC and Sugar, it's not at all clear to me what the role of the computer is in a classroom. Which is why if I'm not told what to do I'm lost. Hope that helps. -- Philippe -- The trouble with common sense is that it is so uncommon. Anonymous ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] community influence on development
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 4:39 AM, Daniel Draked...@laptop.org wrote: quoting Tomeu from another thread (with no bad feelings at all): Sugar Labs has currently no resources to focus on anything, it depends on volunteers doing whatever they want. I chose to spend my time to make easier for more people to bring their knowledge and experience to Sugar and the community has no say on this. Perfectly reasonable answer and this kind of development model works well for open source projects, including this one. However, I feel like it could be better if the community (who I might even stretch to call customers) could have more influence. so..to create an open thread: What are the options for the community having more of an influence here? It depends on what you mean by influence. If you mean a producer - consumer relationship where Sugar Labs produces a produces a product and Deployments tell developers what they need? That is probably _not_ going to work. That model has never worked for open source projects. Open source does not mean free lunch. It is a development process which is particular effective when multiply parties are willing and able to work together to collaboratively create a product. What does work _very_ well is for consumers to shift their mindset from consumer to community participant. The two most clear cut examples of this are the kernel and Eclipse. A really funny example of this happened when Oracle wanted to get into the Linux business a few years ago. Oracle sent one of their lead developer to a major conference (I can't remember which) to present a laundry list of stuff the the kernel community should do for them. Their approach was 'We are smarted than you and richer than you, and more powerful than you. You should be overjoyed that we sent someone to tell you how much you suck.' That turned out not to bet the best approach. Over the past couple of years, Oracle has become one of the leading contributors to the kernel. Oracle on Linux is now the preferred platform. Influence is directly correlated to contribution. One would be to somehow get sugarlabs to hire people, and somehow process customer feedback and assign technical tasks to payroll developers. Are there others? I have attempted to contact several people at OLPC for information regarding contacts at deployments to set up something like that. The responses were either 'Our deployments are none of your business' or silence. When organizations like Red Hat, Fedora and Solution Grove have bent over backward to help Sugar Labs, does it come as a surprise that more progress has been made on SoaS than projects which are more interesting to OLPC. Having now visited 3 large deployments I feel frustrated that most of the features and changes entering sugar are not increasing deployability or increasing the educational impact of the platform. General technical and usability improvements are always needed (and are always of value) but I feel that the balance is wrong and I feel that I have not been very successful in getting community members to understand the needs of deployments. If you are interested in 'Community Members' focusing on XO deployments, I would suggest identifying and engaging participants who have direct interest in solving those problems to participate directly in the Sugar development process... Thus becoming 'Community Members.' FWIW, over the next six months I would like to expand Sugar Lab's to focus to supporting and working with deployments. But, I will continue to encourage the two principles of: 1. Implementation over theory. 2. Contribution over consumption. david Daniel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-07-28
===Sugar Digest=== 1. Greg Morris from Nexcopy, the company that donated one of their USB Duplicator to Sugar Labs, has been busy with another generous effort. Check out http://recycleusb.com, a website dedicated on turning used flash drives into portable learning devices for children, schools and education institutions. They are featuring Sugar On A Stick and offer to load Sugar onto recycled USB flash drives and sending them to Sugar Labs for global deployment. So, don't throw away those old flash drives: donate them! 2. It was great to hear from Bill Kerr, who has some of his students trialling Sugar on a Stick. Check out Bill's blog [http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/] (which also appears in our Planet) and read up on his students impressions of Sugar, which are linked from the sidebar. 3. I forget how exhausting teaching can be, even part time. I've been teaching five Sugar classes per week this summer: two for second graders, one for third graders, and one for middle-school youth. The reports from the Gardner School [[Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Class_notes]] describe much of what I have been doing. The demands of the children being what they are, I keep biting off more and more as the summer has progressed. (One of the dangers of putting developers and teachers in the same room.) Lately, I have been exploring how the children might use Turtle Art to create some geography games similar to Conozco Uruguay. Without too much effort, I managed to create a simple framework that I used to sketch out a few games (See http://www.dailymotion.com/user/sugarlabs/video/x9yrxj_continent-game_tech and http://www.dailymotion.com/user/sugarlabs/video/x9xz9o_stategame_tech.) This morning, I made http://www.dailymotion.com/user/sugarlabs/video/x9zy4v_where-is-the-gardner-schooly_tech, a game specific to the Gardner School, leveraging the work they had been doing with maps and pictures of their neighborhood. We played all the games as a group—the kids were animated and engaged. Then I shared the Gardner Game with their Sugar neighborhood and asked them to launch it. Here is where the trouble began. First of all, the version of Turtle Art I used to build the game is newer than the version they had installed on their machines. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but I had used a block that they didn't have, so the sharing halted part way through. The good news is that Sebastian Dziallias pushed a change for Sugar on a Stick to contain all activities packaged as XO files, meaning that all activities can update. (Presently, it is non-trivial to update activities that had been distributed as RPM.) The bad news is, Turtle Art, being part of Fructose, had been distributed as RPM on the Gardner School sticks. So I will have to update them by hand. But had sharing worked, I still would have run into some problems, since once, shared, always shared. I discussed the problem with Ben Schwartz in IRC: :walterbender bemasc: here is my use scenario: the current sharing mechanism with its automatic resume doesn't work... :walterbender I designed a game template for the kids to use in Turtle Art. :walterbender I then shared my construction with them. :walterbender So far so good. :walterbender (of course, I had a version mismatch that caused the sharing to fail part way through, which I have subsequently fixed.) :walterbender but the problem is, once shared, always shared. :walterbender I want the kids to each modify the template their own way, not as a group. :walterbender and then share their individual results with the group at check points. So the feature is that sharing is punctuated. But also involves explicit forking. the merge is perhaps the least important. :walterbender but the current model is always merging all the time... :walterbender (I suppose I could make TA share in only one direction, using the current model). :walterbender but then how would a kid share her cool innovation? :bemasc walterbender: hmm. Why not use object transfer? :bemasc walterbender: as I've suggested with my mockups, we could have a system in which every time a user launches a previously shared activity, they have the option to work privately. :bemasc I haven't implemented this, mostly because I'm not much a GUI programmer, but it's a possibility. :walterbender bemasc: Does object transfer work for objects other than text? :bemasc walterbender: I mean the Journal-based object transfer. You can send any journal item to anyone in 0.84. :bemasc The problem in 0.84 is that this is push only, so you have to click N times to send it to N people. :walterbender bemasc: I hadn't tried it lately, but I wasn't able to get to work for TA objects. :bemasc Also, I think you have to make them all friends first. :bemasc walterbender: well, that's certainly mysterious. :walterbender bemasc: I'll try again. :walterbender bemasc: but I still like the idea of doing this through the collaboration model so that they results and be shared/merged more directly... :bemasc
Re: [IAEP] SoaS feedback
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:03 PM, David Farning dfarn...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: My second semester year 10 control tech class is trialling SoaS. My blog is http://xo-whs2009.blogspot.com/ describes some of the lesson plans and issues arising. Student blogs (first impressions) are linked on the sidebar Bill, Would you please ping bernie about adding your blog to planet.sugarlabs.org? Those are some great observations. done Secondly, would you be interested in working with Anurag, Greg, and Caroline to develop processes to insure that the feedback from deployments such as yours gets 'converted' into something the developers can used to improve Sugar. yes, I can do that, point me to the best place to do this I don't know if Sugar Labs has a best place yet. Greg Smith has offered to see how he can develop processes to scale up his work as 'bug herder' at GPA to work with other deployments. Please prepare yourself for some delay related frustrations. As the first SoaS-Strawberry deployments, my guess is that you, Caroline, Walter, and Greg are going to find a _huge_ number issues which will need to be converted into bug report, fixed, and pushed back down stream. It is going to take a lot of work by community participants to make that happen. david To stretch an analogy past its breaking point Sugar is only useful in the hands of students. Deployment feedback is only useful in the hands of developers. david One big issue at this stage is that a Physics screen does not appear to save, this will severely limit what we can do with it. Physics is by far the most popular activity in free exploration provided for the first few lessons -- Bill Kerr ___ 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] [Sugar-devel] community influence on development
Apologies for jumping back to the beginning of the thread. Daniel makes some good point here on a theme that have been raised repeatedly over the lifetimes of both the Sugar project and OLPC. On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 5:39 AM, Daniel Draked...@laptop.org wrote: quoting Tomeu from another thread (with no bad feelings at all): Sugar Labs has currently no resources to focus on anything, it depends on volunteers doing whatever they want. I chose to spend my time to make easier for more people to bring their knowledge and experience to Sugar and the community has no say on this. Perfectly reasonable answer and this kind of development model works well for open source projects, including this one. However, I feel like it could be better if the community (who I might even stretch to call customers) could have more influence. so..to create an open thread: What are the options for the community having more of an influence here? One would be to somehow get sugarlabs to hire people, and somehow process customer feedback and assign technical tasks to payroll developers. Are there others? Short term, it seems we should be amplifying what does work: we have a vibrant developer community in IRC that is extremely responsive. Is there some way to get more deployment feedback directly into that channel? Mid term, we had had some discussions about how to organize small teams of teachers (deployers) a while back, where we designated a role for liaison. Getting these liaisons to participate in the mailing lists (sur and iaep) would be a start. Long term, having a more formal mechanism may be useful. A person designated to the role of liaison to deployments. But I would hope we could come up with a more distributed model, which has no single point of failure. Local Labs should be part of the solution as well. In the meanwhile, following Caroline and Greg's lead re Sugar on a Stick, those of you who don't feel you are being heard, please make pages in the wiki (and file tickets in trac.). Give us a head ups re your concerns on iaep or sur. Join the community. Maybe someone more deployment oriented should run for the Oversight Board to ensure we have better representation there (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Governance/Oversight_Board/2009-2010-candidates). Having now visited 3 large deployments I feel frustrated that most of the features and changes entering sugar are not increasing deployability or increasing the educational impact of the platform. General technical and usability improvements are always needed (and are always of value) but I feel that the balance is wrong and I feel that I have not been very successful in getting community members to understand the needs of deployments. Daniel, could you start the ball rolling by being more explicit about some specific unmet needs of deployments that might be actionable? thanks. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] SoaS feedback
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 28 Jul 2009, at 03:18, Edward Cherlin wrote: On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 7:12 PM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Edward, On 28 Jul 2009, at 02:52, Edward Cherlin wrote: On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 6:43 PM, Gary C Marting...@garycmartin.com wrote: Hi Edward, On 28 Jul 2009, at 02:02, Edward Cherlin wrote: It saves on mine, in Strawberry. Which version of SoaS are you using? Just to confirm: Physics-2 has no save support, v2 is the currently released/distributed version. I'm running v2, and I'm looking at a saved session in Journal. Screen shots attached. Have you tried resuming one? Yes. Several times. Well apologies, but please expect any existing Physics Journal entries you've created to stop working when we release the official version Physics-3. No problem. I was just trying out Physics, not doing work I will need later. You've managed to get a work in progress development version installed sometime over the last few of weeks. Somebody in Sugar on a Stick got it, apparently. Sincerely, --Gary -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Back to school with XOs or SoaS?
Pick us!!! :) We have cute diverse kids doing cool things and photo releases already done! On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: Caroline and I plan to expand th Gardner Pilot School Sugar on a Stick program this fall (this summer, we are piloting with two grade-levels). -walter On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:16 PM, Caryl Bigenhocbige...@hotmail.com wrote: Hi... My neice is a TV producer for a local station in Florida. She is looking for interesting back-to-school articles they might be able to follow-up with. Anything out there that anyone knows about that talks about the XO or SoaS? Must be in the USA. Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] Board elections (was Re: Sugar Digest 2009-07-22)
* Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com [090725 03:14]: On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 6:44 PM, Luke Faraonel...@faraone.cc wrote: On Jul 24, 2009, at 17:51, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: Well, there is making sure that the membership list is up to date; there was some concern that Selectricity had some flaws and security holes; not too much else. Could we ask Software in the Public Interest, the group behind Debian and other FLOSS projects, to hold the election as a neutral 3rd party? They have held the Wikimedia elections in the past, and would probably be happy to help. -lf Sounds good. Does anyone know whom to contact? -walter I asked Bdale from SPI, he is also here in Spain at debconf9. He said, it should be no problem to help you. So please send an email to spi-bo...@spi-inc.org Regards/AmicaLinuxement/Saludos/Viele Gruesse! Kurt Gramlich Projektleitung skolelinux.de -- k...@skolelinux.de GnuPG Key ID 0xE263FCD4 http://www.skolelinux.de ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Edu-sig] Feedback sought on blog post: Where do all the geek girls go?
On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Jeff Elknerj...@elkner.net wrote: I've just written a blog post reflecting on what a learned in teaching Summer enrichment classes about girls and programming: http://proyectojuanchacon.blogspot.com/2009/07/where-to-all-geek-girls-go.html Thoughts and/or feedback would be much appreciated! Thanks! jeff elkner Appreciate it jeff, doing a reply-to-all expecting a lot of rejection notices, as some of these look like lists I'm not signed up for. But that's easier than culling. I read through your posting with interest, looks like you're on the right track. I'll end with some URLs to my stash, as this has likewise been a focus of my writings and teaching career, starting with two years right out of college in an exclusive Catholic academy for young women, me one of maybe just five male faculty, the rest of us nuns, lay women. Put another way: I've been trained by some of the best in this business, plus this was Jersey City, so all American and multi-cultural to boot (add in the fact that I went to high school in the Philippines following a wild boyhood in Rome, and you see where I might have some exotic perspectives, want to bring those to the table for whatever they're worth). To make a long story short: I think we're solving it in Portland, Oregon, OS Bridge a case in point (recent conference, at the convention center). Once you minus the Californian spin (lots at OSCON), add in more Canada, then amp up around local FOSS bosses, you get scheduled talks hammering directly on this topic, and hosted by well qualified women (as was OS Bridge itself, with all XX top leadership I'm happy to report). My new friend Josh from Chicago wasn't used to it, got his back up a bit, to see Gabrielle in alpha geek mode, clearly 2nd to none, a FOSS witch talking about her FOSS coven, where men are invited, but have to sit in the back. I'm just as bad, talking about this nebulous Coffee Shops Network (CSN), branch Cult of Athena, where we have this glass ceiling most men never see, let alone rise through. So that's Portlandia for ya, bad to the bone (lots of out-of-the-closet pirates), and XX-centric (she's a she, Portlandia is). Multiply that by Christian Science Monitor's saying we're a FOSS world capital, and you here's your new poster child (think Pythonista): http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2008/11/wild-america.html (note CS RR in the background) I'm also proud of these two, some of the best pro-XO PR on the block, consistent with the message of G1G1: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/01/saving-children.html Anyway, that's enough off the top. Here're the promised pointers. Gabrielle and Selena had some words of advice: stick to world domination as our shared goal of our geek subculture, and we'll all get along just fine: http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/3639256600/in/set-72157619963850814/ Kirby Urner in Portland Related blog posts: http://coffeeshopsnet.blogspot.com/2009/06/os-bridge-conference.html (re a marketing campaign) http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=6769590tstart=0 (re Portland as hotbed) http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2006/09/yar.html (out of the closet) ___ Edu-sig mailing list edu-...@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig -- ндсжег воss ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] FW: OLPC Projects/VideoEditing and Video Edit
Caryl, Robert, et al, This seems to be a project worth supporting. I'm not sure that my skills are up to the task. But I'd like to explore further what is needed and whether there are others who would be willing to fill in the pieces which I am missing. I have programmed in various languages for 20 years, am retired. Have taught myself python, and been working on a samba-based network client for the XO. At this point I've learned how to use glade to do quick gtk layouts, and become familiar with sugarizing an activity. I ran into difficulty debugging c and c++ packages using gdb on an XO. I still have lots of things I don't know how to do to be efficient in debugging. I'd be interested If Robert could say a little more about what is needed. Is the code posted? Or could you package it and send it to me? I'm on vacation in California for the next two weeks, so may not respond immediately. I'll be back in NY and more available after Aug 4. George Hunt On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.comwrote: Hi All, Here is a great opportunity for someone to pick up where Robert left off and contribute something really useful, fun, educational, practical, and wanted for the XO and SoaS. Robert is willing to advise and help anyone who wants to pick up this project to get a Video Editing Activity into Sugar. See details in our correspondence below. Chao! Caryl -- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:43:20 -0400 Subject: Re: OLPC Projects/VideoEditing and Video Edit From: rm...@cornell.edu To: cbige...@hotmail.com Hello Caryl, My work on the project has stalled. When I left off last year, a gstreamer glitch was causing OGGs from the XO camera to freeze the system, which compounded with performance issues stalled the project. There's a good chance that that particular problem has been resolved, and I too would love to see a video editing activity on the XO. I'm not sure how much work I'll be able to do, but I am definitely available to advise and help out how I can. If a volunteer is interested, I would imagine a good deal could be done in porting an existing free video editor (pitivi is what I tried due to the similarities in its toolkit and that being used for sugar) to the XO interface. Keep in touch, Robert On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.comwrote: Hello, I am a member of the OLPC Support Gang and am mentoring a project that wants to use simple video editing on the XO as a part of their activities. I see that both of you were working on this last year, but that nothing has been posted on the wiki about it for several months. What is the current status of your projects? Is anyone working on them now? What was the state of the projects when you last worked on them? Is it something that one of our volunteer programmers could bring to completion? There is really a lot of interest in having a simple video editing Activity for the XO and Sugar. At this point, folks are just suggesting a lot of substitutes such as Turtle Art and Google Docs presentations. But, of course, what you folks were working on would be far better. Let me know what is happening! Thanks, Caryl Bigenho, OLPC Support Volunteer ___ support-gang mailing list support-g...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/support-gang ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar Labs Elections at SPI
Hi, Sugar Labs is a non-profit under the Software Freedom Conservancy which develops and maintains the Sugar Learning Platform, the GNU/Linux Graphical User Interface used on the OLPC XO-1 and elsewhere. The majority of the software we release is under the GPL (some under MIT/new-BSD). We also actively work to foster pilots of GNU/Linux-based learning systems in both the third and first world. We were planning to have our second annual board election, and were wondering if SPI would be willing to hold/host it as a neutral third party. We would be able to provide SPI with a list of member email addresses, as well as a list of candidates, and would ideally like a randomized ballot which was tallied under the Schulze_methodhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method. We are attempting to fill 7 seats on the board. We would have our 2010 membership list finalized towards the end of August, and, if convenient, would like to hold the election around that time. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Shaftsbury, VT Technology Camp
Thanks for hosting Nicco! I had a great time. Let me know if any of the kids report that their stick died. I'm on a crusade to improve stick durability and I want to know what the failure modes in the wild are. Thanks! Caroline On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Nicco Eneidi nbottice...@gmail.com wrote: Recently I just had a summer technology camp at an elementary school in Shaftsbury, Vermont. It was a week long camp consisting of fourteen children from surrounding schools (Shaftsbury, North Bennington, Bennington) in grades 4/5/6-into-7th. Students learned how to install and configure Ubuntu on their laptops early in the week along with going on a geocaching treasure hunting trip and learning how to solder and make contact mics and create experimental electronic instruments. The highlight of the week was when on Friday July 24th Caroline Meeks came up to do a workshop with the children on using SoaS. The students were given 2GB Patriot ruggedized usb drives to run Sugar on Nexlink rebranded Compal EL81 laptops (fairly new). A good chunk of the time on Sugar was on using Turtle Art which some of the kids were somewhat familiar with since I had shown them KTurtle last year. All of the children picked up Turtle Art though and really flew with it! It was really incredible to see so many children just completely engrossed on a computer operating system and it's software! I had children from a very wide demographic with varying interests. Some of the kids were you're typical techy-gamer types while most were not at all. One particular child was actually coming from a local private school and had been very nervous to be at this camp where she knew no one and had never done anything like this before in her life. She is a very shy individual, though highly intelligent and very advanced for her age (she can beat me in chess!) and is more likely to be found drawing or painting, gardening, or building a fairy home out in the woods. Before this camp she has never had much to do with computers and never had much of a reason to. Well on Friday July 24th she was really taking off with Sugar! After the camp had ended she immediately went home and figured out how to boot her parents laptop from the USB drive and spent the rest of the day playing with Turtle Art and making really neat designs. I want to thank the team at Sugar Labs for putting all of their time, effort, and energy into creating this wonderful platform for young children to use. It is so obvious to me that the traditional platforms that we currently use in our buildings are just completely un-child oriented and something needs to be changed. Thank you Caroline for coming up here and presenting this to the children of Southern Vermont, you have definitely made a few converts and the comments and things they wrote on the wiki later on were super positive about Sugar! -Nicco -- Niccolo Botticelli Eneidi ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Linux Against Poverty
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 5:01 AM, Tomeu Vizosoto...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Wouldn't be cool to have Sugar installed as well on these computers? http://linuxagainstpoverty.org/ Indeed. At some point we will be able to talk to installfests about creating school servers, too. I don't see anything on the page about what distribution they are installing, but perhaps Lynn Bender (copied on this message) can tell us. If it's one of the distros at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Supported_systems other than Ubuntu Jaunty, we can talk about how to do that with packages. Presumably somebody could fix the Sugar packages for Jaunty, too. A point that we need to make is that a $5-10 USB stick with Sugar on a Stick education software will make discarded computers without hard drives viable for elementary school education. Every installfest I have worked with has had a significant number of these left over at the end. It would make sense to have one at school and one at home for the littlest children, so they would only have to carry the stick on a lanyard back and forth. There should be a fair number of small-capacity sticks available at no cost to installfests. SoaS downloads run under 400 M. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. http://earthtreasury.org/worknet (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] SoaS in the classroom feedback
Hi Bill, I'm excited that you are doing pilot. How old are the kids? From the blog posts it looks like you have some XOs, are you using SoaS on other computers too? We don't have a system for feedback yet so until people complain about the volume lets talk here on the list. I think feedback falls into 4 categories. 1. Sugar bugs 2. Sugar on a Stick specific bugs and barriers to deployment 3. Activity specific feedback and bugs 4. Curriculum, pedagogy, lesson plans What seems to work best is to post about problems in general then after discussion post a bug in Trac. Sometimes I find that I just don't understand something or can't find the right button and its not actually a bug. I have decided that I really want more SoaS pilots so I'm going to focus for a few weeks on problems that are barriers to teachers using SoaS this fall (#2 above). I would like your input on this. My current working document is: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/TODO Greg Smith is gravitating towards documenting the lesson plans etc and creating, organizing and prioritizing tickets that will help in actual usage based on field experience (#3 above). So coordinate with him on getting your lesson plans on the wiki and your bugs filed, categorized etc. As you've already seen physics has an active following! I think your kids are older then the ones we are working with (7-9) but we will be working with slightly older kids (8-11) and science in the fall so I'll be interested in how we can fit it in with their curriculum. Thanks, Caroline -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] sounds in Speak
Hello everybody, This afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a Montessori teacher, about Speak. She asked me why Speak says a when a is pressed and not the *sound* of the letter a. Montessori teachers teach the shape and sound of letters first, and then the name of the alphabet. I did not have an answer for her, but I wondered if it would be possible to have an option in Speak to do so. I'd imagine that the sound of the letter would vary depending on language, right? cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Shaftsbury, VT Technology Camp
I spoke to Willow today when I saw her at the local cafe and asked her if she's used SoaS since Friday and she said she got to use it once since then. Her computer time in general is fairly limited but she's having no problems so far. I am preparing a letter to be sent out tomorrow in the mail as a follow up to the camp in general but also with our camp wiki address so that kids can go back and write about their experiences and hopefully comment on other kids' work. The goal is to provide a place where they can provide their own support network. I tried this last year too when students built computers from scratch, installed Edubuntu, and then got to keep them at the end of the camp. This time students got to take home SoaS on their own stick so hopefully they'll be talking about how to use it on the wiki. Also, can you tell me about how much more different the image was that you put on our drives as compared to what is available on the sugarlabs.orgsite? If a student does have a drive that gets clobbered would they have reduced functionality if I were to just load up what is available from your site? Thank You! -Nicco On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.comwrote: Thanks for hosting Nicco! I had a great time. Let me know if any of the kids report that their stick died. I'm on a crusade to improve stick durability and I want to know what the failure modes in the wild are. Thanks! Caroline ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] sounds in Speak
I'd imagine that the sound of the letter would vary depending on language, right? There is a dictionary for each language (eg. en_dict for English) which is compiled from a rules file and a list file, you can find a description of the syntax for these files in the dictionary documentation http://espeak.sourceforge.net/dictionary.html from http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Modifying_Activities#Modifying_Speak Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-07-28
On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Walter Benderwalter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: ===Sugar Digest=== snip Here is where the trouble began. First of all, the version of Turtle Art I used to build the game is newer than the version they had installed on their machines. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but I had used a block that they didn't have, so the sharing halted part way through. The good news is that Sebastian Dziallias pushed a change for Sugar on a Stick to contain all activities packaged as XO files, meaning that all activities can update. (Presently, it is non-trivial to update activities that had been distributed as RPM.) The bad news is, Turtle Art, being part of Fructose, had been distributed as RPM on the Gardner School sticks. So I will have to update them by hand. But had sharing worked, I still would have run into some problems, since once, shared, always shared. I discussed the problem with Ben Schwartz in IRC: snip Hi Walter, Here is what we decided to do for AbiWord collaboration to our web service (http://abicollab.net) when faced with this problem. If a user does a save as the document is saved locally (rather than remotely) with a different name. If the user also drops out of the collaboration all the changes she makes will made to the local file. At this point the document is forked and as things currently stand cannot be automatically merged back into the original. Of course it can be manually merged via cut/paste etc. I'm not sure this is sufficient for what you need but I think it is sufficient for documents at least. Cheers Martin ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] GPA Notes 7-28
Tuesday: July 28, 2009 GPA Notes Walter: (Has the clock program on Turtle Art open as kids walk in) (Kids notice the second hand, which was not there last week and react with excitement.) Walter: 3rd graders have been coming up with ideas for games. Today we are going to work towards making our own games. Kids: Oh that’s easy, what kind of games? (Walter goes back to the clock and sets the alarm. Kids count down until the alarm starts - the turtle goes around the clock in different colors) Walter: Does anybody know where the continents are? (Walter opens continents game in Turtle Art.) Walter: Who knows where South America is? (Kid comes up and clicks on it. South America turns orange) Walter: Who knows what Eurasia is? (Walter explains what it is and then asks a student to find it on the program.) (The students completed the game as a class. At the end of the game, a star shows up on the map.) Here is a link to a screen capture of the continents game: http://www.dailymotion.com/user/sugarlabs/video/x9yrxj_continent-game_tech Walter: Do you guys know any states? (Kids play the states game by placing the turtle in different states. A smiley face comes up at the end of the game.) Here is a link to a screen capture of the states game: http://www.dailymotion.com/user/sugarlabs/video/x9xz9o_stategame_tech Next, Kids played “Find the Gardner School” (Kid comes up and places turtle at the school) (Kid comes up and places the turtle on the Charles River) (Kid comes up and places the turtle at the Harvard foot ball stadium) (Kid comes up and places the turtle at the Breakfast Club) (Kid comes up and places turtle at PETCO) Here is a link to a screen capture of the Gardner School game: http://www.dailymotion.com/user/sugarlabs/video/x9zy4v_where-is-the-gardner-schooly_tech Walter: Now you guys are going to create games using pictures from your trip and maps. (Kids go to their computers and boot Sugar then return back to rug) Walter shares his Turtle Activity with the rest of the students. Walter explains not to start Turtle Art from the home screen, rather the neighborhood view. Note: When opening Turtle Art from neighborhood view, not all the blocks showed up on the kids’ computers. Walter was running a different version of Turtle Art on his computer in which one of the blocks he used was not on the kids’ version of Turtle Art. On Thursday we will probably have to individually update Turtle Art on each of the student’s sticks. The kids spent the rest of the time opening and experimenting with different sample programs in Turtle Art. About half of the students actually tried modifying numbers and blocks in the sample programs. The kids were thrilled to open different sample programs and observe the different things one can accomplish with Turtle Art. There were two stick failures today: -Briana (Turtle Art remained on loading screen) -Natasha (would not go past Fedora screen) -- Anurag Goel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] GPA Notes 7-28
There were two stick failures today: -Briana (Turtle Art remained on loading screen) -Natasha (would not go past Fedora screen) the login screen? Did it have liveuser filled in? Thanks! -- Anurag Goel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] GPA Notes 7-28
I tried typing in liveuser as the login but it still failed to go past the Fedora screen. On 7/28/09, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com wrote: There were two stick failures today: -Briana (Turtle Art remained on loading screen) -Natasha (would not go past Fedora screen) the login screen? Did it have liveuser filled in? Thanks! -- Anurag Goel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- Anurag Goel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] sounds in Speak
Sameer, This is very interesting, I think an educational website that I have seen do this properly is the Alphabet activity on www.starfall.com I've used this site quite a bit with my kindergarten and first grade students in the past and have even seen it in use with Adult Ed students at an adult literacy program locally. I believe Starfall uses a combination of calling the letter by name but also placing an emphasis on the sound that the letter makes in different words. -Nicco On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Sameer Verma sve...@sfsu.edu wrote: Hello everybody, This afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with a Montessori teacher, about Speak. She asked me why Speak says a when a is pressed and not the *sound* of the letter a. Montessori teachers teach the shape and sound of letters first, and then the name of the alphabet. I did not have an answer for her, but I wondered if it would be possible to have an option in Speak to do so. I'd imagine that the sound of the letter would vary depending on language, right? cheers, Sameer -- Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Information Systems San Francisco State University San Francisco CA 94132 USA http://verma.sfsu.edu/ http://opensource.sfsu.edu/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Niccolo Botticelli Eneidi ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] GPA Notes 7-28
The broken sticks are currently in a separate drawer at GPA. I will try using Briana's stick on my laptop tomorrow at GPA. On 7/28/09, Anurag Goel agoe...@gmail.com wrote: I tried typing in liveuser as the login but it still failed to go past the Fedora screen. On 7/28/09, Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com wrote: There were two stick failures today: -Briana (Turtle Art remained on loading screen) -Natasha (would not go past Fedora screen) the login screen? Did it have liveuser filled in? Thanks! -- Anurag Goel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax -- Anurag Goel -- Anurag Goel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] A Fine Tradition...
Carrying on a fine tradition of July-based Sugar reflections [1, 2], I'm going to offer some mostly unsolicited advice. (Sorry, Tomeu, but you asked me to write. :^) Dear Sugar Labs, In the past year, you succeeded in removing two important barriers to entry for new developers: you have created a distinctive brand and you freed Sugar from the XO. What's next? Here's a four-part RFC: 1. Could we embrace POSIX and the RESTful Web throughout our software [3]? POSIX and HTTP are the mother tongues of our ecosystem and developer base. By embracing them, we make our software much cheaper to explore and to modify. 2. Could we live more within our packaging? This way, our packaging gets tested more quickly, we become more expert /at/ packaging, we make friends in our distros, we get better packaging, and our releases become easier! 3. Could we make ourselves more interesting to be around, for example by saying maybe we could... or I have... (and you can too...!) more frequently than we say I can't.? Our strengths lie in our big, sexy, /powerful/ ideas. We can't shrink from these ideas; they sparked our desire to contribute and they will do so for others. (Otherwise, we will fade.) 4. We could do more to help one another to develop as may be necessary to advance those big, sexy ideas. (Anecdote: I don't think any of us here today started off understanding much about communities, UI design, networking, release management, quality assurance, or large-scale coding; I just see lots of people who looked for people who were smarter and more knowledgable than they were and who worked really hard to catch up. We should do more of that.) xoxoxo, Michael P.S. - In the spirit of walking the walk, I'll also share one of my own recent puny efforts in the direction outlined above: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Network2 Regards, Michael [1]: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007304.html [2]: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-July/007390.html [3]: (With suitable hacks under the covers of FUSE and DNS.) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
