Re: [Sugar-devel] Activities with deprecated fields in activity.info
Gonzalo, I just got around to checking this and I find that View Slides, latest version 14, does not have the extra entry in activity.info. Get IA Books, latest version 7, no service_name. Sugar Commander, latest version 9, same thing. Read SD Comics, latest version 3, same thing. So I have nothing to update, from what I can see. James Simmons On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 6:29 AM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org wrote: In sugar 0.98 or newer, we not longer read the fields service_name and class in the activity.info file. These fields were deprecated on sugar 0.96 [1] and sugar-toolkit-gtk3 never used them. The following activities use these fields in the last versions available on ASLO: Activities with 'class =' ['About Me', 'JAMActivityFlash', 'EduKT', 'Sin diente', 'Java', 'Guido van Robot', 'Edit', 'Madagascar', 'ListenAndSpell', 'Hop-A-Round', 'Quinteti', 'BlockParty', 'Jam Game Boy Advance', 'JAMClock', 'EscribirEspacial', 'Ayuda', 'FreeFromMalaria', 'Juani Downloader', 'EatBoom', 'Super Chef', 'ElementsActivity', 'Ecomundo', 'Aide', 'FileShare', 'Domino', 'Wine', 'JAMediaImagenes', 'Sugar File Manager', 'gvSIG Batovi Map Viewer', 'ParticipAccion', 'NES', 'ConstellationsFlashCards', 'AguBrowser', 'Ajedrez', 'SocialCalcActivity', 'x2o', 'TeachTeacher', 'Mirage', 'Wordsearch', 'Sonata', 'XOlympics', 'SharedTextDemo', 'Plot'] Activities with 'service_name =' ['View Slides', 'FoodForceII', 'About Me', 'JAMActivityFlash', 'Math Quwy', 'falabracman', 'PyEyes', 'EduKT', 'Sin diente', 'Develop', 'BioDiv', 'Java', 'Totem', 'Guido van Robot', 'Madagascar', 'ListenAndSpell', 'Analyze', 'Lemonade', 'Quinteti', 'hMouse', 'idle', 'BlockParty', 'Jam Game Boy Advance', 'Tuxmath', 'GoGo', 'JAMClock', 'EscribirEspacial', 'Ayuda', 'FoodForce2', 'Watch Me', 'FreeFromMalaria', 'Blocku', 'Get IA Books', 'EatBoom', 'Super Chef', 'Micropolis', 'ElementsActivity', 'Ecomundo', 'Sugar Commander', 'Aide', 'FileShare', 'Domino', 'Wine', 'JAMediaImagenes', 'Sugar File Manager', 'Radio', 'ParticipAccion', 'Read SD Comics', 'ClubOthello', 'NES', 'Colors', 'ConstellationsFlashCards', 'Bubble Pop', 'AguBrowser', 'Story Builder', 'Puzzleton', 'Sort Game', 'MathGraph32', 'Ajedrez', 'SocialCalcActivity', 'x2o', 'TeachTeacher', 'Mirage', 'Wordsearch', 'Sonata', 'XOlympics', 'Arithmetic', 'SharedTextDemo', 'Gnumeric'] Please, developers update them. (Yes, I have some to update too) Gonzalo [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.96/Notes#API (For the courious, I used the attached script to check this, after download all the latest .xo files) ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Activities with deprecated fields in activity.info
Hmm, the latest link points to Get IA Books version 6 instead of to version 7 I will need check how download the latest version and do the check again. Thanks for testing. Gonzalo On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:44 AM, James Simmons nices...@gmail.com wrote: Gonzalo, I just got around to checking this and I find that View Slides, latest version 14, does not have the extra entry in activity.info. Get IA Books, latest version 7, no service_name. Sugar Commander, latest version 9, same thing. Read SD Comics, latest version 3, same thing. So I have nothing to update, from what I can see. James Simmons On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 6:29 AM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org wrote: In sugar 0.98 or newer, we not longer read the fields service_name and class in the activity.info file. These fields were deprecated on sugar 0.96 [1] and sugar-toolkit-gtk3 never used them. The following activities use these fields in the last versions available on ASLO: Activities with 'class =' ['About Me', 'JAMActivityFlash', 'EduKT', 'Sin diente', 'Java', 'Guido van Robot', 'Edit', 'Madagascar', 'ListenAndSpell', 'Hop-A-Round', 'Quinteti', 'BlockParty', 'Jam Game Boy Advance', 'JAMClock', 'EscribirEspacial', 'Ayuda', 'FreeFromMalaria', 'Juani Downloader', 'EatBoom', 'Super Chef', 'ElementsActivity', 'Ecomundo', 'Aide', 'FileShare', 'Domino', 'Wine', 'JAMediaImagenes', 'Sugar File Manager', 'gvSIG Batovi Map Viewer', 'ParticipAccion', 'NES', 'ConstellationsFlashCards', 'AguBrowser', 'Ajedrez', 'SocialCalcActivity', 'x2o', 'TeachTeacher', 'Mirage', 'Wordsearch', 'Sonata', 'XOlympics', 'SharedTextDemo', 'Plot'] Activities with 'service_name =' ['View Slides', 'FoodForceII', 'About Me', 'JAMActivityFlash', 'Math Quwy', 'falabracman', 'PyEyes', 'EduKT', 'Sin diente', 'Develop', 'BioDiv', 'Java', 'Totem', 'Guido van Robot', 'Madagascar', 'ListenAndSpell', 'Analyze', 'Lemonade', 'Quinteti', 'hMouse', 'idle', 'BlockParty', 'Jam Game Boy Advance', 'Tuxmath', 'GoGo', 'JAMClock', 'EscribirEspacial', 'Ayuda', 'FoodForce2', 'Watch Me', 'FreeFromMalaria', 'Blocku', 'Get IA Books', 'EatBoom', 'Super Chef', 'Micropolis', 'ElementsActivity', 'Ecomundo', 'Sugar Commander', 'Aide', 'FileShare', 'Domino', 'Wine', 'JAMediaImagenes', 'Sugar File Manager', 'Radio', 'ParticipAccion', 'Read SD Comics', 'ClubOthello', 'NES', 'Colors', 'ConstellationsFlashCards', 'Bubble Pop', 'AguBrowser', 'Story Builder', 'Puzzleton', 'Sort Game', 'MathGraph32', 'Ajedrez', 'SocialCalcActivity', 'x2o', 'TeachTeacher', 'Mirage', 'Wordsearch', 'Sonata', 'XOlympics', 'Arithmetic', 'SharedTextDemo', 'Gnumeric'] Please, developers update them. (Yes, I have some to update too) Gonzalo [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.96/Notes#API (For the courious, I used the attached script to check this, after download all the latest .xo files) ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Fwd: Re: [Bug 4973] Browse 131 ( part of task-sugar) has missing toolbars but starts
Original Message Subject: Re: [Bug 4973] Browse 131 ( part of task-sugar) has missing toolbars but starts Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 07:20:08 -0700 From: satellit satelli...@gmail.com To: Manuel Hiebel bugzilla-dae...@mageia.org CC: walter.ben...@gmail.com, satelli...@gmail.com On 10/22/2013 03:10 AM, Manuel Hiebel wrote: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4973 --- Comment #6 from Manuel Hiebel manuel.mag...@hiebel.eu --- This message is a reminder that Mageia 2 is nearing its end of life. Approximately one month from now Mageia will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Mageia 2. At that time this bug will be closed as WONTFIX (EOL) if it remains open with a Mageia 'version' of '2'. Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' to a later Mageia version prior to Mageia 2's end of life. Bug Reporter: Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we may not be able to fix it before Mageia 2 is end of life. If you would still like to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version of Mageia, you are encouraged to click on Version and change it against that version of Mageia. Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a more recent Mageia release includes newer upstream software that fixes bugs or makes them obsolete. I am only able to test. I am not the package maintainer, and do not have the skills to change this. Cordially; Tom Gilliard satellit on freenode *here is the wiki page I maintain: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Mageia ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Fwd: Re: [opensuse-edu] Final spurt: openSUSE Education for 13.1
Original Message Subject:Re: [opensuse-edu] Final spurt: openSUSE Education for 13.1 Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 07:47:23 +0200 From: Lars Vogdt lr...@suse.de To: satellit satelli...@gmail.com Hi Tom satellit satelli...@gmail.com schrieb: I hope a new sugar-desktop will become available. I see that latest in build system was for : sugar 0.96.3: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/OpenSUSE#Sugar_12.1 Fedora 20 Beta is up to 0.99 Good point! I forgot to have a look at the sugar repo for a long time. I'm unsure about the original maintainers for that repo - are you willing/able to help packaging or testing? With kind regards, Lars ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2013-10-22
== Sugar Digest == Free software gives the license. Sugar provides the means. 1. I'm back from a week in Paraguay and Uruguay to celebrate Turtle Art Days in Caacupé and Montevideo. Turtle Art Day Caacupé exceeded my expectations. 275 students, their parents, and 77 teachers joined educators and Sugar developers from eight countries throughout the Americas and as far away as Australia (Tony Forster). Brian Silverman and Artemis Papert, the co-creators of Turtle Art, led workshops to a room full entralled children. Martin Abente, Andres Aguirre, and Alan Aguiar similarly led Butiá/Juky robots workshops, using TurtleBots. Claudia Urrea and I led workshops using Turtle Blocks, where the emphasis was on sensors and mutlimedia. Tony led a seminar with teachers on pedagogical framework for Turtle Art. We were assisted by Evolution children, youth leaders in Caacupé who attend school in the morning, teach in the afternoon, and on weekends supply technical support to school programs (I hope we are able to recruit many of them to participate in Google Code In, should Sugar Labs be chosen to participate again this year). While I have come to expect that children will deeply engage with Turtle Art, the fact that they maintained intense focus for three consecutive two-hour workshops, 70 to room, with only short breaks, was unexpected. Many thanks to Mary Gomez, Pacita Pena, Cecilia Alcala, and the Paraguay Educa team for all of the work they did behind the scenes (and in the classrooms) to make the day a success. Turtle Art Day Montevideo was teacher-focused rather than child-focused. Organized by José Miguel García, it attracted 70 teachers to ANEP for a series of workshops. Claudia and I began the day with a short lecture on pedagogy. The workshop themes included sensors (led by Guzman Trindad), robots (led by Andres and the Butiá team), advanced blocks, and turtle mathematics. During the robots workshop, we implemented inter-robot communication by taking advantage of some new collaboration blocks in Turtle Blocks (ported to TurtleBots): we mapped the accelerometer from one machine to the motors of another to make a remote-control steering wheel. In discussions the following day with Mariana Herrera, who works with children with severe physical disabilities, we came up with a simple adaptation that may enable her students to program Butiá using some buttons embedded in pillows. Sdenka Zobeida Salas Pilco and the children at an Aymara-speaking school organized a Turtle Art Day in Puno as well: Children and I organized quickly this event, they provided some ideas for celebrating, it was their idea to arrange the classroom and sticking balloons to the walls. Girls asked me to were the traditional local clothes. They helped me a lot. Also, they prepared a song, a poetry and riddles in Spanish and Aymara language. Finally, the little ones worked some codes, 4th graders were exploring the activity, and 6th graders organized the event. Other Turtle Art Days are following: in Costa Rica, Malaysia, and possibly Singapore. While the primary purpose of these Turtle Art Days is to promote children learning through programming, an important secondary goal was also achieved: programming is not just in service of geometry (what Papert called Mathland) but also in service of whatever passion drives the child. (Artemis refers to the work she and Brian do as Artland. Work with sensors, robots, multimedia, etc., offer many mountains to climb.) 2. Other activities in Paraguay and Uruguay this week included EduJam in Asuncion, a Sugar Hackfest, a meeting with Pablo Flores and the Python Jóven, a Butiá workshop, and a Ceibal event for educators in Montevideo. Leticia Romero organized the first EduJam to be held regionally, at the National University of Asuncion. (I handed out 100 copies of Sugar on a Stick to interested attendees thanks to the generosity of Nexcopy [1].) It was well attended by educators and engineers from Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, et al. The hackfest was also well attended. It included testing of Sugar 100 in a session orchestrated by Gonzalo Odiard (a number of bugs were discovered and fixed), an introduction to the new HTML5/Javascript by Manuel Quiñones, and a discussion of a proposal Brian to use an embedded Logo environment in the Arduino brains of the various robots programmed with TurtleBots. The Butiá workshop was an opportunity for me to observe how children use TurtleBots in programming their robots -- a few of my observations led to some fine-tuning of the UI in TurtleBlocks-192. And a chance to get direct feedback from teachers who use Turtle Blocks in a wide range of activities. Eye-opening. We discussed the ongoing challenge of providing both a low floor and a high ceiling. The Ceibal event was also an opportunity to observe how teachers use Sugar. There were perhaps 100 booths set up with teachers showing their projects. What was most impressive to me was that these projects were
Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2013-10-22
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: (c) We need to hold an election for four positions on the oversight board. Claudia, Daniel, and Gonzalo are continuing. The terms for Adam, Gerald, Chris and I are all expiring. Details to be posted shortly. Small Correction: my term is continuing and 3 positions are up for election. See the 4 results from Dec 28th 2013: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2012-December/015988.html http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_7fe0e83eba6b35ff http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/2012-2013-candidates -- Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ http://unleashkids.org ! ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release TurtleBots-22
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4434 Sugar Platform: 0.86 - 0.100 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/28802/turtlebots-22.xo Release notes: Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] [ASLO] Release TurtleBots-22
Activity Homepage: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/addon/4434 Sugar Platform: 0.86 - 0.100 Download Now: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/downloads/file/28803/turtlebots-22.xo Release notes: -uses PyUSB beta 1 -uses TurtleBlocks v192+ -Arduino plugin fixes -new translations Sugar Labs Activities http://activities.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] your help needed
We have less than one week to pull together our preliminary list of mentors and tasks for our Google Code In application. Please see [1] if you are interested in being a mentor (many tasks do not involve coding, so non-programmers most welcome too). Also, please add possible tasks to the table here [2] (or just add them in plain text after the table, if it is easier. we can edit later) thanks. -walter [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Google_Code_In_2013/Participate#Mentors [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Google_Code_In_2013#Tasks -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Activity Central's Sugar related priorities.
Hi! Took some time but finally set up my git account... 2 Journal This is probably the issue we have been most aware of. I've been thinking in the per activity datastore direction too and I think it's probably the best one. Though as you say that involves UI redesign and we would need to figure out compatibility with existing activities. (Please share the webkit code, I don't know if I'll have time to hack on it but I did think to write something like that at some point, it would be interesting to look at it if nothing else). I have put the ?latest? sources here: https://github.com/NoiseEHC/sugar-webkit-native It requires a yum install webkitgtk3-devel to be able to compile, unfortunately my XO-1.75 says that there are no more mirrors to try for mesa and libdrm dependencies so I could not try it under an ARM XO... (I did try it some time ago however it just stopped working.) You may also need to create a test2/bin directory as git does not include it... The code is full of static char buffers which should be fixed and it also crashes on an XO when you compile with webkit2gtk... We probably all agree that it would be awesome to have something that integrates well with Sugar and works transparently by reusing existing web technologies. I don't think that's easy to achieve though. It has been said in previous discussions that without the close integration between activities and system, Sugar would be just yet another suite of educational applications (and likely not the best of them). I very much agree and I think it's tricky to preserve that while moving to frameworks which are supposed to work everywhere. We could have started with something more web developer friendly and incrementally integrated it into the native Sugar platform, for example by redesigning the Journal in the way you described, and somehow adapting native activities to the new design. Instead we went for something targeted at the current Sugar developers with the idea of making it incrementally more web friendly. I have been on the fence on what was the best approach and I still am. Something to consider is that we barely have the resources to maintain the existing native code. I doubt, for example, that we would be able to ship a redesigned Journal. Consider also that the people most involved with this work has all a good knowledge of the Sugar platform but are not really web developers. I fail to see why would it be bad if Sugar would be just yet another suite of educational applications. Currently the close integration between activities and system consist only of 3 DBUS methods, 4 X properties, the Journal as a filesystem and the presence service (which is desugarized if I remember correctly, you have to use Telepathy directly?). In my opinion the single most important thing would be to allow developing sugar applications directly in the PC browser (like firefox or chrome). If that would work then you could just go to a web conference and after giving a presentation about sugar-web you could ask the attended crowd to help you in the workshop by converting just ONE/person python activity into a web one and you are done with the conversion in a day... Obviously it would not make converting Write/TurtleArt/Etoys/Scratch easy but at least the rest would be done. Now, if you go standard web, then you do not need the X properties, view-source is built into the browser (DBUS HandleViewSource) and DBUS SetActive can be done with webkitvisibilitychange event and timers. The only remaining thing would be handling the DBUS Invite. Collaboration would most likely need an OT library which should have a C implementation on the XO to have usable speed. The Journal simply can be implemented by the host application by providing either some standard file API implementation (like light-swift) or just providing a virtual page with links and POST. https://github.com/bancek/light-swift So if you already run a node.js server then probably it could host the activity's html files and could provide some virtual file GET/POST service in http://localhost/journal/directory.json - this is for file list http://localhost/journal/guidcomeshere - this is for GET/POST files My plan was to support http://localhost directly from sugar-webkit-native (instead using file:// to be able to OAuth) and query/update the journal from there too but it is simpler from node.js if you are running it anyways. You can also assume that web developers have node.js running on their dev machine or already know how to install it. If you forget for a while to have collaboration from web apps then the rest can be done in no time IMHO. So that was my $0.02. Obviously it can be too late to change plans but who knows. I have uploaded the source anyway so you can use it if you want. Regards, Andrew ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
Re: [Sugar-devel] Activity Central's Sugar related priorities.
So that was my $0.02. Obviously it can be too late to change plans but who knows. I have uploaded the source anyway so you can use it if you want. What I really don't understand is, if is all that easy why not be involved and help? The development of the web activities stuff was done in the open, mostly by two developers, manuq dnarvaez. Then everyone who wanted help, could do it. Say now how should be done, is useless at least. Talk is easy... as always, the devil is in the details. But you already know that, if not would not talk about unconstructive criticism Gonzalo ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Activity Central's Sugar related priorities.
I have put the ?latest? sources here: https://github.com/NoiseEHC/sugar-webkit-native It requires a yum install webkitgtk3-devel to be able to compile, unfortunately my XO-1.75 says that there are no more mirrors to try for mesa and libdrm dependencies so I could not try it under an ARM XO... (I did try it some time ago however it just stopped working.) You may also need to create a test2/bin directory as git does not include it... The code is full of static char buffers which should be fixed and it also crashes on an XO when you compile with webkit2gtk... Ehem, the source should be in a directory called test2 so it matches the name in the .info file... That is why it requires a test/bin subdir... ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Activity Central's Sugar related priorities.
On 22/10/2013 21:21, Gonzalo Odiard wrote: So that was my $0.02. Obviously it can be too late to change plans but who knows. I have uploaded the source anyway so you can use it if you want. What I really don't understand is, if is all that easy why not be involved and help? The development of the web activities stuff was done in the open, mostly by two developers, manuq dnarvaez. Then everyone who wanted help, could do it. Say now how should be done, is useless at least. Talk is easy... as always, the devil is in the details. But you already know that, if not would not talk about unconstructive criticism Gonzalo You are right. The problem is that my views are exactly the opposite of the decided path to take. I do not help developing because I totally oppose the current path, meaning that I do not believe that it can work. All the easy talk can be useful later *if* they decide to change paths. Or it will just remain an interesting viewpoint, but at least I tried. So while you are right about the Talk is easy part as well, I could only help developing by finishing the native webkit app (because I believe in it), which would be totally wasted (parallel) effort. Actually that was the plan but then I run out of time and realized that the official project went a different direction anyway. ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] your help needed
Sounds good! Count with me as a mentor :) On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 3:45 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: We have less than one week to pull together our preliminary list of mentors and tasks for our Google Code In application. Please see [1] if you are interested in being a mentor (many tasks do not involve coding, so non-programmers most welcome too). Also, please add possible tasks to the table here [2] (or just add them in plain text after the table, if it is easier. we can edit later) thanks. -walter [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Google_Code_In_2013/Participate#Mentors [2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Google_Code_In_2013#Tasks -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2013-10-22
Walter, This is very inspiring work. Thank you. Gerald On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.comwrote: == Sugar Digest == Free software gives the license. Sugar provides the means. 1. I'm back from a week in Paraguay and Uruguay to celebrate Turtle Art Days in Caacupé and Montevideo. Turtle Art Day Caacupé exceeded my expectations. 275 students, their parents, and 77 teachers joined educators and Sugar developers from eight countries throughout the Americas and as far away as Australia (Tony Forster). Brian Silverman and Artemis Papert, the co-creators of Turtle Art, led workshops to a room full entralled children. Martin Abente, Andres Aguirre, and Alan Aguiar similarly led Butiá/Juky robots workshops, using TurtleBots. Claudia Urrea and I led workshops using Turtle Blocks, where the emphasis was on sensors and mutlimedia. Tony led a seminar with teachers on pedagogical framework for Turtle Art. We were assisted by Evolution children, youth leaders in Caacupé who attend school in the morning, teach in the afternoon, and on weekends supply technical support to school programs (I hope we are able to recruit many of them to participate in Google Code In, should Sugar Labs be chosen to participate again this year). While I have come to expect that children will deeply engage with Turtle Art, the fact that they maintained intense focus for three consecutive two-hour workshops, 70 to room, with only short breaks, was unexpected. Many thanks to Mary Gomez, Pacita Pena, Cecilia Alcala, and the Paraguay Educa team for all of the work they did behind the scenes (and in the classrooms) to make the day a success. Turtle Art Day Montevideo was teacher-focused rather than child-focused. Organized by José Miguel García, it attracted 70 teachers to ANEP for a series of workshops. Claudia and I began the day with a short lecture on pedagogy. The workshop themes included sensors (led by Guzman Trindad), robots (led by Andres and the Butiá team), advanced blocks, and turtle mathematics. During the robots workshop, we implemented inter-robot communication by taking advantage of some new collaboration blocks in Turtle Blocks (ported to TurtleBots): we mapped the accelerometer from one machine to the motors of another to make a remote-control steering wheel. In discussions the following day with Mariana Herrera, who works with children with severe physical disabilities, we came up with a simple adaptation that may enable her students to program Butiá using some buttons embedded in pillows. Sdenka Zobeida Salas Pilco and the children at an Aymara-speaking school organized a Turtle Art Day in Puno as well: Children and I organized quickly this event, they provided some ideas for celebrating, it was their idea to arrange the classroom and sticking balloons to the walls. Girls asked me to were the traditional local clothes. They helped me a lot. Also, they prepared a song, a poetry and riddles in Spanish and Aymara language. Finally, the little ones worked some codes, 4th graders were exploring the activity, and 6th graders organized the event. Other Turtle Art Days are following: in Costa Rica, Malaysia, and possibly Singapore. While the primary purpose of these Turtle Art Days is to promote children learning through programming, an important secondary goal was also achieved: programming is not just in service of geometry (what Papert called Mathland) but also in service of whatever passion drives the child. (Artemis refers to the work she and Brian do as Artland. Work with sensors, robots, multimedia, etc., offer many mountains to climb.) 2. Other activities in Paraguay and Uruguay this week included EduJam in Asuncion, a Sugar Hackfest, a meeting with Pablo Flores and the Python Jóven, a Butiá workshop, and a Ceibal event for educators in Montevideo. Leticia Romero organized the first EduJam to be held regionally, at the National University of Asuncion. (I handed out 100 copies of Sugar on a Stick to interested attendees thanks to the generosity of Nexcopy [1].) It was well attended by educators and engineers from Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, et al. The hackfest was also well attended. It included testing of Sugar 100 in a session orchestrated by Gonzalo Odiard (a number of bugs were discovered and fixed), an introduction to the new HTML5/Javascript by Manuel Quiñones, and a discussion of a proposal Brian to use an embedded Logo environment in the Arduino brains of the various robots programmed with TurtleBots. The Butiá workshop was an opportunity for me to observe how children use TurtleBots in programming their robots -- a few of my observations led to some fine-tuning of the UI in TurtleBlocks-192. And a chance to get direct feedback from teachers who use Turtle Blocks in a wide range of activities. Eye-opening. We discussed the ongoing challenge of providing both a low floor and a high ceiling.
