Planet Sugar

MS IT Poster Presentations

2012-05-16T22:11:09+00:00

Five graduate students in the MS IT program made poster presentations at the UNH Manchester Graduate Research Conference on April 25, 2012.

The posters featured projects in CIS 805 Web Application Development (instructor Mihaela Sabin), CIS 810 Object Oriented Software Development (instructor Michael Jonas), and CIS 825 Networking Technologies (instructor Don Cochrane) courses:

Network Modeling Software Use in Research and Education, by Alex Scripcenco and Casey Eyring
SpEAK: Speech Experiment Accessible Knowledge System for Capstone Speech Project, by Jackie Tims and Justin Thibeault
What Version Are you On? An Investigation into Software Configuration Management, by Jackie Tims
CivicCRM Framework to Manage Donors for Nonprofits: From Design to Deployment, by Imran Shahzad

From left to right: Alex, Casey, Jackie, Justin, and Imran.

Filed under: UNH Manchester

Scratch Day 2012: That Cat’s A Superhero!

2012-05-16T01:53:50+00:00

We’ve gotten RSVPs from friends old and new for this Saturday’s MIT Scratch Day in Arlington, VA. It’s going to be a fun event locally that’s part of an epic global day of celebration that will see our superhero orange cat dancing across thousands of computer screens. All of our event information is the same as previously announced, but here’s a recap and some new goodies:

Event:
Scratch Day 2012, Arlington, VA

Date/Time:
Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10am-2pm

Location:
Washington-Lee High School

Rooms 4207, 4209, and 4211
1301 N Stafford St
Arlington, VA 22201

Map: http://g.co/maps/7q2ru
Street View: http://g.co/maps/fjj52

Agenda:

10:00am – 10:15am – Welcome and introduction with Mike Lee
10:15am – 12noon – Scratch Learning Sessions in 2 or 3 classrooms with experts Paul Bui, Anthony Spanos and Richard Bullington-McGuire
12noon – 1:00pm – Lunch on your own; Yelp listing of restaurants nearby: http://j.mp/KucvN3
1:00pm – 1:45pm – Continue with the learning sessions
1:45pm – 2:00pm – Closing thoughts and prize raffle

And there are several interesting and related developments occurring this week:

MIT Media Lab Conversations Series Hosts Sugata Mitra – Wednesday May 16th 4:30-6:00pm (tomorrow!) Professor Sugata Mitra, champion of the concept of “minimally invasive education” (MIE), will discuss the question “Is Education Obsolete?” Mitra has most recently been collaborating with Nicholas Negroponte to test a deployment of 20 Android tablets in a remote village in Ethiopia. The talk will be webcast live and archived here: http://j.mp/JJ6fQr

5-day Preview of Scratch 2.0 – The Scratch team at the MIT Media Lab has been hard at work developing the next generation of Scratch, which will be completely web-based, requiring no installation of software. To commemorate Scratch Day and the 5th anniversary of the software, the team will open up the alpha version of the new site starting this Thursday May 17 through Monday May 21. The site is currently password protected, but check this link soon: http://alpha.scratch.mit.edu/ Here’s a preview video: http://vimeo.com/41683547

Get Your MaKey MaKey! – Two graduating members of the Scratch team, Eric Rosenbaum and Jay Silver, have revealed a new project on Kickstarter called MaKey MaKey. It’s an amazing little $35 circuit board that turns almost any real-word object into a computer keyboard or piano key input. It requires no assembly or additional software other than what you have already to create a piano out of bananas or a game controller made of Playdoh or buckets of water to name a few of the infinite possibilities. The project was fully funded last night after launching early on Monday. Hurry over to the site to learn more and place an order: http://makeymakey.com/

O’Reilly Books 50% Off 18 E-books This Weekend – It turns out this weekend is also when Maker Faire will be held in San Mateo, California. To celebrate, O’Reilly is discounting by 50% selected DRM-free ebooks on the topics of robots, sensors and science. Visit this link: http://j.mp/Klh5ys

Well thanks for sticking with this long message. I hope there’s something for everyone whether you can attend Scratch Day or not. See you soon!

Library Collections | EtoysIllinois | Illinois

2012-05-15T17:31:55+00:00

Library Collections | EtoysIllinois | Illinois.

Can’t remember if we have blogged this great site before or not, but probably one of the best Etoys repositories around.

Transforming Education: The Power of ICT Policies

2012-05-14T15:55:10+00:00

Looks like some necessary reading from UNESCO. Although interested in social justice, institutional transformation, and politics in general, I’ve noticed that I am not a good policy thinker. Maybe this doc will help reprogram me.

Sugar Digest 2012-05-11

2012-05-11T23:01:12+00:00

Sugar Digest

1. Danishka Navin pointed me to an article about Sugar in Sri Lanka. Even though they don’t mention Sugar, in fact, both Sugar and GNOME are being used on Hanthana Linux, a Fedora-based Linux, using LSTP. The program is modelled on the Hanthana School Labs. I wonder where else Sugar is being used that I am unaware?

2. In the spirit of procrastination, I wrote two new Sugar activities this week. The first is a simple activity around the concept of narrative. Claudia Urrea had come across a game in which nine picture are chosen at random (by throwing nine dice). The players then construct a narrative based on the pictures. Easy enough to implement Story in Sugar. I took advantage of a nice source for SVG artwork, The Noun Project. When shared — with up to eight other users — everyone sees the same pictures and hence can tell a story in a round-robin fashion. (One of these days, I will write the Exquisite Cadavar activity, based on the Dadaist storytelling technique that is a nature fit with Sugar collaboration. There is a variant that combines pictures and text: you draw a picture illustrating my text; the next person writes text describing your picture, and so on. Stay tuned.)

Meanwhile, on the flight to Korea last week, I got caught up on some reading. Even though is it not clear that “you can make yourself smarter” using these techniques, nonetheless, n-back games are fun. So I wrote Recall. There are three games, with six levels each. It is deceptively easy to get hooked. Enjoy.

In the community

3. EduJAM! is under way in Montevideo. Tune into the webcast and join the code sprint at on the 13th and 14th.

4. Next week is Squeakfest, also in Montevideo (May 17-19) and May 21-22 in Buenos Aires.

Sugar Labs

Visit our planet for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.

OLPC weekly update 11/05

2012-05-11T12:37:40+00:00

12.1.0 moved into bugfixes-only mode, and Sugar activities have been frozen.
Fixed some 12.1.0 odds-and-ends: RPM on XO-1, unclean rootfs handling on shutdown, re-enabled XO-1.75 serial console, got a couple of wakeup event tracking patches upstream.

OLPC weekly update 04/05

2012-05-07T22:21:34+00:00

A number of difficult problems this week, but some progress was made.

Helped diagnosis of an audio codec driver problem with our the XO-1.75 kernel upgrade.
Attempted diagnosis of a Fedora 17 ARM build problem with the llvm package, which was blocking a lot of things. We have a workaround now.
Investigated the challenges around getting Flash and Java working on a GTK+-3 WebKit.
Found a workaround to fix gcc crashyness on the XO-1.75, reported to Marvell.
Diagnosed a WebKit crash on ARM, related to the javascript engine.

We be crankin'

2012-05-05T19:00:39+00:00

Here are two observations:

If you've ever used the OLPC crank charger, you'll know that while it works as advertised, it takes a lot of cranking. The charger would work better if it could be attached to a wheel. Then, you could rotate it by fitting it on to a bicycle, a sewing machine, etc. To that end, I took apart the handle and saw that one could easily fit a small wheel on to the shaft.
On one of our usual visits to UCSF, I was walking by their clock, when it struck me (no pun intended) that the clock is a large wind-up mechanism that stores potential energy by pulling up large weights to a significant height, and then trickles it into the clock mechanism to power it. You may have seen something like this in a cuckoo clock. Alex and June Kleider have a similar mechanism at their place to roast a pig (community summit bbq party goers must have seen it).

Putting the two together seemed ideal. So, I discussed this with Joachim Pedersen, our OLPC SF repair guy, who also runs a course at SF State on desigining objects, gears, tricopters, and other such serious research (something to do with materials, evidently). We spoke with a student (Bret Cooke) who was interested, and after a few tries, and design changes, we got a 1:6 ratio gravity charger design going. This prototype was on display at the recent SF State University Science and Engineering showcase. His description of the project is:

The mechanism is a planetary gear (1:6 ratio) hub that has a outer gear wheel which takes a length of string. The string goes over a pulley and has a weight on the other end (a 1 gallon water jug). The mechanism itself can be attached on to the charger easily.

Proyecto Hexoquinasa Entrega V0.2

2012-05-03T15:48:30+00:00

Presentamos el Proyecto Hexoquinasa: Software + Metodología

Con ustedes la segunda entrega de los componentes de software que serán la base de Hexoquinasa, una nueva imagen actualizada del sistema operativo para las laptops XO y otras computadoras, cuya principal característica es el acceso a la Red-Azúcar, una red descentralizada P2P para el soporte, el acompañamiento y la distribución de contenidos.

Esta entrega incluye paquetes DEB para Ubuntu y RPM para Fedora. Próximamente tendremos imágenes instalables directamente en laptops XO. Esta es una entrega de desarrollo.

Las instrucciones de instalación del software pueden encontrarse en:

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution#Installation

Una vez instalado es necesario activar Sugar Network desde el panel de control “Mis Ajustes / Sugar Network”.

En conjunto con el Software les compartimos esta presentación que entrega algunos detalles sobre la metodología, los antecedentes que dieron origen a este proyecto y el plan de ejecución.

Para más información y referencias hacer click a continuación:

NOTAS SOBRE LA FASE DE PRUEBAS Y PROYECTO DE DESPLIEGUE EN TERRENO DE HEXOQUINASA

Saludos a todos,

Me animo a adelantarles algunos avances estratégicos del proyecto
Hexoquinasa y la Red Azúcar, como antesala a la entrega de Sebastian y
Aleksey que se avecina con la publicación de la versión 0.2.

01 Ajustes Proyecto Piloto *Hexoquinasa* [1]: Con el objetivo de continuar
avanzando con las actividades necesarias para el  desarrollo del Software y
de la Metodología Hexoquinasa, y basados en el interés demostrado por los
niveles de actividad de los diferentes miembros de la comunidad, el equipo
de SomosAZUCAR realizó un redimensionamiento de la escala de la Fase I del
Proyecto Piloto Hexoquinasa. Gracias a la privilegiada posición que ha
asumido Koke Contreras, desde la Gerencia de Desarrollo Humano y
Educaciónde la Municipalidad de Comas, se presenta la oportunidad de
realizar esta
fase (que incluye instalación, testeo, activación y documentación) en la
Zonal 12 de Collique, una de las ocho zonas mas vulnerables socialmente de
la DRE de Lima Metropolitana. Hemos iniciado la inmersión del equipo
durante los eventos programados en FLISOL 2012 y proximamente estaremos
realizando la formalización de la Intervención con la Municipalidad y la
programación del trabajo de campo. Vale la pena adelantarles (por si
alguien está interesado y en posibilidad de sumarse a este esfuerzo) que la
-desnutrición- es uno de los mayores problemas en esta comunidad.

02 Aproximación a OLPC: Durante el pasado seminario "Nuevos Caminos para
Aprender" tuvimos la oportunidad de compartir nuestra visión sobre
Hexoquinasa y la Red Azúcar con Sandra Barragán, actual Gerente para
Latinoamérica de la asociación OLPC, quien se mostró entusiamada, dado al
interes personal que tiene de apoyar la reformulación de la estrategia del
programa en Perú y debido a que la idea de tener una red dónde los usuarios
puedan compartir (de forma segura y libre) los objetos creados con las
actividades de Sugar, hace parte los objetivos estratégicos planteados por
OLPC en el 2012.

03 Aproximación al BID: Igualmente tuvimos oportunidad de compartir con
Julian Cristia nuestra visión sobre el aporte que puede realizar
Hexoquinasa y la Red Azúcar en cuanto a la simplificación y automatización
de la recolección de datos de uso de las computadoras.

Con el apoyo de Juan Camilo Lema, continuamos trabajando en las estrategias
de articulación de los recursos necesarios para continuar la ejecución del
Proyecto.

Quedamos muy atentos a sus inquietudes, ideas y sugerencias.

[1] http://pe.sugarlabs.org/go/Proyecto_Piloto_Hexoquinasa

Cordial Saludo,

laura v.

NOTAS DE RELEASE HARMONIC DISTRIBUTION 0.2 (UPSTREAM DE HEXOQUINASA)

Hi all!

== Preamble ==

This is the second development release of projects that form
Harmonic Distribution[1] effort. The Harmonic Distribution, in short[7],
is a software stack, services and procedures that are intended to support
Sugar Learning Platform for individual usage and/or deployments.

The Harmonic Distribution consists of two major parts:

(1) Sweets Distribution[4]
    native packages with base software

(2) Sugar Network[5]
    content delivering and social collaboration distributed platform

The downstream distribution, Hexoquinasa, 0.2 announcement notes
(in Spanish) that make more clear deployment part:

    http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/somosazucar/2012-May/001082.html

This project was started during the Sugar Camp in Lima in 2011-11-18 and
being in development stage starting from that time. The development work
is full time by 1-3 developers. The work is sponsored by developers
themselves and donations from community members. The plan[3] is creating
full cycle deployment platform during the 2012 year.

== Offtopic ==

The important thing that needs to be mentioned, is that this project
(alongside with other, not-only-software, projects like setting up Sugar
community in Peru or creating deployment oriented distribution,
Hexoquinasa[2], Harmonic Distribution based project) was initiated and
being proceeded as a community project:

* people were gathering to [start] solve particular problems
  (Sugar Camp in Lima) with lack on translation Sugar GUI to local
  languages;
* the obvious continuation of this work was decision to set up, also as
  a [Peruvian] community driven process, Sugar deployment, e.g.,
  Puno Escuelab official entity was created to proceed educational
  deployment in region of Puno;
* the work is being supported in crowdfunding manner by donations from
  community members.

Having these kinds of support from the community (not only Peruvian),
will make it possible to complete the Harmonic Distribution 1.0[3] plan
to have a proven solution to setup Sugar based educational deployment,
so any other communities might reuse this experience to setup new Sugar
deployment in their regions.

By the way, the crowdfunding way with targeted donations (to particular
projects, like it is happening in Peru) might be really useful to reproduce
on global Sugar Labs level. For example, people will know what kinds of
projects are in process/planing right now, and will have a chance to
speed up some of them.

== New in this release ==

(1) Sugar Network client application improvements
    * current GUI is localized to Spanish
      (see 0.3 TODO, the translation process should be setup on
      translation.sugarlabs.org site)
    * it is possible to create ideas, problems associated with Contexts
      (right now only Sugar Activities), browse them
    * usability and performance improvements

(2) Since this software is being planed to use in the field, the
    reliable work of collaboration code (that had some regressions from
    0.88) is needed; some part of this code was improved; the good way
    in testing how it is stable is comparing it with Sugar 0.88

(3) The Home view shows ~/Activities activities. The underlying code is
    integrated with the Sugar Network, e.g., if Sugar Network client
    will make some activity offline accessible (i.e., copy it to
    ~/Activities directory), it will appear in the Home view. Current
    implementation is in initial stage and will be improved in next
    releases

(4) Repositories with packages are available on recently released
    Ubuntu-12.04 (right now only Factory repository, the stable Sweets
    Distribution 0.94 depository will be available soon).

== How to get the release ==

Follow regular Sweets Distribution instructions to setup Factory
repository and start using it on supported platforms[6]:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution#Installation
    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution#Usage

Right after installation, Sugar Network integration will be disabled, to
enable it:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Sweets_Distribution/Factory/Features#Sugar_Network_integration

Within the Hexoquinasa project, there will be available XO images
for students and teacher (teachers servers) soon.

Note that activities that are being provided via the Sugar Network right
now, are for testing purposes and not intended to work properly. The XO
server images will contain limited number of activities that should
work. In any case, the QA related work is being planed to implemented on
Sugar Network level itself and initial implementation is targeted to
Harmonic Distribution 0.3 that should be released at the end of this
month.

== Credits ==

* Peruvian community that supports this work. Especially by exposing the real need
  in such kind projects and help with making deployment (of Harmonic Distribution
  based project[2]) possible.
* World wide community members who donated funds to make full time
  working possible.
* People from mailing lists and IRC channels who are helping in
  development process.

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution
[2] http://pe.sugarlabs.org/go/Proyecto_Piloto_Hexoquinasa
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/1.0/Roadmap
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sweets_Distribution
[5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Network
[6] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/Supported_platforms#Map
[7] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Glossary#Platform_Team

--
Aleksey

Sugar Digest 2012-04-30

2012-04-30T05:32:59+00:00

Sugar Digest

1. Simon Schampijer and the Sugar Development Team have announced the
preliminary release of Sugar 0.96. This development release is a major
milestone as it is the first Sugar release to incorporate the Gtk+ 3
toolkit and introspection, better aligning us with the GNOME
development community and enhancing our long-term positioning
vis-a-vis growth, stability, maintenance, and relevance.

There are some rough edges, as would be expected from such a major
effort. Please report bugs!

New features include a port of the Browse activity to webkit.

There are OLPC builds available for testing and Sugar 0.96 in the
Fedora 17 beta.

This extraordinary effort began at the Prague workshop organized
by Daniel Drake. It was sustained by Simon, Gonzalo, and Manuq, with
help from Benjamin, Tomeu, Gary, Raul, Marco, Bert, Martin, Chris, et
al. Congratulations and thank you.

2. Block that metaphor: I am in transit to Korea; my first visit in
more than six years. The occasion for this trip is a lecture at the
opening of iLab, a new “Media Lab” at Pohang University of Science and
Technology. So I am wearing my “former director of the MIT Media Lab”
hat rather than my “founder of Sugar Labs” hat. Not that I won’t try
to inject a little Sugar into my keynote speech.

It was in Korea, 10 years ago, that I “revealed” the ”Seven secrets of the Media Lab.”, based on the symbols of the seven days of the
week in the Chinese calendar: sun, moon, fire, water, wood, gold, and
earth. Today, I am recalling four lessons learned — both at MIT and
at Sugar Labs — based on the cardinal directions: the azimuth of the
southern sky* can be used to align goals — without common goals, we
drift apart; the setting sun can be used to align expectations –
mismatched expectations can lead to disappointment regardless of the
quality of the work; the rising sun is the source of new light (and
new ideas) — a reminder to invest in community; and the steady
northern light is a message to leadership to provide a safe place for
taking risks. Many of these lessons were reinforced by my experiences
at OLPC and Sugar Labs.

* Note that since Korea is in the northern hemisphere, the sun peaks
in the south.

3. I get a lot of coding done on airplanes. What I have been
experimenting with lately are: (1) some work related to the Gtk-3 port
– lots of little tweaks; (2) some enhancements regarding touch — in
Turtle Art, Abacus, and Dimensions (AKA Visual Match); and (3)
different approaches to help — specifically, I’ve revamped the
introductory animation in Dimensions. Please try the latter and
let me know if you find it useful.
In the community

4. Details for eduJAM! the week of May 7-12 in Montevideo are
available. eduJAM will be followed by a code on the 13th and 14th.

5. The week following eduJAM! will be a Squeakfest, also in Montevideo
(May 17-19) and May 21-22 in Buenos Aires.
Sugar Labs

Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few weeks of discussion
on the IAEP mailing list:

2012 Apr 21st-27th 20 emails)
2012 Apr 14th-20th (15 emails)
2012 Apr 7th-13th (13 emails)
2012 Mar 31st-Apr 6th (14 emails)

Visit our planet for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.

Browse fails to start : FIXED | Sugar 0.96 released

2012-04-25T16:12:13+00:00

Latest Browse (based on gtk3) failed to start on fedora 16 and Manuel has a fix. It's a matter of two commit reverts. Find steps and more info at the ticket[1]

Sugar 0.96 is released. Release notes can be found here [2]

[1] http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/3513
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/0.96/Notes

A cabochon for your viewing pleasure

2012-04-20T16:28:09+00:00

From Wikipedia a cabochon is:

A cabochon, from the Middle French caboche (head), is a gemstone which has been shaped and polished as opposed to faceted. The resulting form is usually a convex top with a flat bottom. Cutting en cabochon is usually applied to opaque gems, while faceting is usually applied to transparent stones. Hardness is also taken into account as softer gemstones with a hardness lower than 7 on the Mohs hardness scale are easily scratched, mainly by silicon dioxide in dust and grit. This would quickly make translucent gems unattractive—instead they are polished as cabochons, making the scratches less evident.

A big 'Thank you!" to Bill Tuk for that tip. I've looked at and used cabochons for a while now but I didn't know what these were called. But Bill deserves a bigger "Thank you!" for bringing a bag full of plastic (acrylic?) cabochons to a meeting a while ago. Place the hemispherical cabochon on the XO camera and hold it in place with tape and you have a nice convex magnifier! Of course, Bill tells me (and Mike Lee) that a drop of water works well too. Saliva isn't very clear, so stick with water

Here are some photos from Bill. I am thrilled his tips have made it to the OLPC Learning Club and OLPC Australia!

Reunión Sugarlabs Argentina - Marzo 2012

2012-04-17T03:56:25+00:00

Sin duda una de las mejores reuniones de los últimos tiempos, organizada por Hector y con la ayuda de un buen asado :)

Contamos con una buena participación, Valentin Basel y sus robots (de Córdoba), Manuel (manuq) Quiñones (de Santa Fé), Manuel (humitos) Kaufmann de Entre Rios, y los locales Hector (karucha) Sanchez, Alejandro (alecu) Cura, Hugo (pilas)Ruscitti y yo. Luego de comer y charlar bastante, malabarismos y demas divertimentos, hicimos planes para este año.

Unos cuantos vamos a participar en el PyCamp, en Verónica del 6 al 9 de Julio. Va a ser una buena oportunidad para difundir Sugar en la comunidad python y encarar algun proyecto en conjunto.

Tambien queremos ir al eduJam, encuientro de desarrolladores a realizarse el 11 y 12 de mayo en Montevideo.

Por último, durante la PyCon 2012, a realizarse del 12 al 17 de noviembre en Quilmes, Buenos Aires, nos han propuesto destinar un día completo de la semana para Sugar, por lo que hay que organizarlo. Para difundir esto, hemos decidido participar de los distintos PyDay que se realizan en diferentes ciudades, probablemente con una lighting talk, que prepararemos en la lista de correo.

Asi que va a ser un año con buena actividad, y lo bueno es que lo podemos preparar con tiempo.

Wikipedia (3)

2012-04-17T03:22:34+00:00

En este post, por ahora el último acerca de las actividades wikipedia, les comento cual es el estado actual.
Las actividades wikipedia en ingles y español que ya existían fueron actualizadas. Han crecido un poco de tamaño por lo que tengo que hacer una nueva seleccion de artículos.
Ademas, se han agregado versiones en polaco, frances, quechua y kinyarwanda, y una actividad basada en la Simple English wikipedia, con artículos más reducidos.
Armar nuevas actividades en otros idiomas es muy sencillo. si alguien está interesado en participar en el proceso, estoy disponible para ayudarlo a comenzar, no es necesario programar.

--------------

In this post, for now the last about the wikipedia activities, I want comment what is the current state.
Wikipedia activities in English and Spanish than already existed were updated. Have grown slightly in size so I have to make a new selection of items.
We have added versions in Polish, French, Quechua and Kinyarwanda, and an activity based on the Simple English Wikipedia, with smaller articles.
Assemble new activities in other languages is easy. if anyone is interested in participating in the process, I am available to help you start, no programming is required.

Proyecto Hexoquinasa (en ejecución) Entrega v0.1

2012-04-16T15:05:10+00:00

Estimada Comunidad,

Sugar Network es una red descentralizada de soporte y distribución de
contenido.

Mejorar el Sistema es la interfase de usuario para interactuar con la comunidad de aprendizaje.

Como miembros del equipo de investigación y desarrollo Somos
Azúcar, miembros de la comunidad Sugar Labs y de su equipo
de plataforma, estamos orgullosos de presentar el avance funcional (hasta la fecha)
de nuestro trabajo en los proyectos Sugar Network y Distribución Harmónica.

Este proyecto es la base de la plataforma Hexoquinasa,
la cual está programada para ser piloteada en terreno en Perú
a partir de Junio de 2012.

Esperamos que la comunidad comparta nuestro entusiasmo en
probar estas herramientas que estamos desarrollando y desde ya
contamos con su retroalimentación para mejorarlas.

Sin más, he traducido las notas de entrega de Aleksey Lim,
quien es el desarrollador del back-end. La interfase de
usuario está siendo desarrollada por su servidor, con el diseño
conceptual de Laura Vargas y algunos comentarios de otros
miembros de la comunidad.

Quedamos atentos a su experiencia probando la v0.1.
Porfavor tengan en cuenta que se trata todavía de un primer
prototipo funcional, cuya interfase de usuario cambiará
bastante todavía.

Atenciosamente,
Sebastian Silva

/* Sigue mensaje de Alsroot traducido con algunas aclaraciones */

Notas de Entrega

Hola a todos!

Esta es la primera entrega, al menos compuesta de esta manera, del
desarrollo público de los proyectos que están siendo desarrollados
dentro del marco del esfuerzo Distribución Harmónica, iniciado para
dar soporte al Proyecto Piloto Hexoquinasa (Peru) [6]. Esta entrega
debería ser considerada como un adelanto de algunas de las ideas
detrás de Distribución Harmónica y sus componentes.

Es posible encontrar más información sobre Distribución Harmónica
en la Wiki [1]. En pocas palabras, se trata de una aproximación
sistémica para proveer las bases de brindar soporte a las actividades
de los participantes de la Plataforma de Aprendizaje Sugar/Azúcar.
Consiste de dos partes principales:

Software Básico

Accesible desde repositorios de paquetes para todas las plataformas
con soporte de Distribución Sweets. Habrá dos meta-componentes:

Entorno Sweets

Ambiente de propósito general de Sucrosa (Sugar) e instrumentos
para su integración con el resto del sistema

Servidor Sweets

Servidor para escuelas de propósito general que consiste en los
componentes de Server Kit (puede ser usado independientemente)

Este Software existe bajo la forma de soporte de corto-plazo
(principalmente para uso individal) y largo-plazo (principalmente para
despliegues).

Servicios Básicos

Estos servicios serán proporcionados mediante Sugar Network:

Compartir el sofware de la comunidad, es decir, el resto del software además del básico (Actividades, etc)
Compartir diferentes tipos de contenidos, por ejemplo artefactos creados mediante Actividades de Sugar, libros, etc.
Realizar trabajo colaborativo entre los participantes de Sugar Network para “mejorar el sistema” – Software, Contenidos y proceso de aprendizaje en general.

Sugar Network será gestionada desde el servidor central [master] y una
cantidad arbitraria de nodos distribuídos en servidores (para los casos
de no-conectividad). Por ejemplo, para el piloto Hexoquinasa, se usarán
laptops XO-1.5 para este propósito.

En esta entrega

Esta entrega se trata de:

El repositorio SweetsDistribution:Factory con Glucose-0.94 y el navegador de Sugar Network (“Mejorar el Sistema”) que será usado en el pilotaje de Hexoquinasa.
Servidor de Sugar Network (http://18.85.44.120:8000) que contiene un espejo de las actividades de la biblioteca de Actividades de Sugar

Para instalar el repositorio Factory en todas las plataformas soportadas,
copiar en la terminal:

 wget http://download.sugarlabs.org/packages/sweets-distribution.sh

 sudo sh sweets-distribution.sh select Factory

Estos comandos añaden el repositorio de Sweets Distribution (Factory) al
sistema (es posible hacer lo mismo manualmente añadiendo los repositorios
directamente). Luego instalar el paquete “sweets-desktop” usando el sistema
de paquetes nativo de su distribucion (“apt-get install sweets-desktop” o “yum
install sweets-desktop”).

Para iniciar el nuevo entorno Sugar instalado, hacer click en el ítem “Sugar”
ubicado en el menu “Educación” o para verlo en pantalla completa se puede
invocar desde la terminal:

 sweets-sugar-emulator -f

Los paquetes instalados, en su mayor parte, no debieran interferir con el
sistema. Por ejemplo, será posible ejecutar desde una XO (que use Fedora-14)
incluso desde Sugar nativo.

Para activar la integración de los servicios de Sugar Network en el
entorno Sugar,

acceda al componente “Sweets” del panel de control “Mis Ajustes”
active la opción “Integrate Sweets Distribution features”
reinicie el entorno

Luego de reiniciar,

La vista hogar estará vacía – el proceso interno de la integración con Sugar Network está en un estado intermedio
use F8 o el marco para acceder al navegador de Sugar Network (ícono con tres puntos y un círculo).

En la vista F8,

navegue por las actividades del servidor
búsqueda avanzada de texto
inicio (descarga e instalación) de actividades (solo aquellas que sean hechas en Python puro y sin dependencias externas)
en la vista detallada de cada actividad, hay una implementación inicial de un formulario para la creación de nuevos recursos de soporte (preguntas, ideas y problemas)
los recursos de soporte pueden ser explorados en la vista detallada
es posible navegar por los recursos de soporte de todo el sistema y también los usuarios

Plan para v0.2 (planeada para el 30 de Abril)

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Platform_Team/Harmonic_Distribution/1.0/Todo#0.2

continuar trabajando en la aplicación de navegación de Sugar Network
soporte básico para procedimientos que necesitan ser implementados para el piloto de Hexoquinasa.

Aleksey Lim

E-Pustakalaya Installation at Moti Community Library, Phalebas, Parbat

2012-04-11T04:46:39+00:00

OLE Nepal’s team met Mr. Bhola Nath Sharma during a visit to install E-Pustakalaya at Moti Community Library in Phalebas, Parbat district, and were immediately impressed by his dedication to help uplift his community. People of Phalebas have great respect for Mr. Sharma and for his contributions towards community development. Moti Community Library, Radio Parbat, Helping Hands Health Clinic and Bhawani Bidyapith H.S. School are some of the institutions he currently heads. He is in his seventies, but that has not stopped him from working day and night on community development. During our two days’ stay at Phalebas, we found him to be busy with meetings and events all day long. We often found him suggesting villagers the different ways to make Moti Community Library a self sustainable one.

Moti Community Library Building

Mr. Bhola Nath Sharma discussing library issues with community

This time, Bhola Jee has initiated to establish a digital library within Moti Community Library Building. Nepal Library Foundation helped in provisioning server, desktop computers and network equipments while OLE Nepal provided the E-Pustakalaya (digital library system) replete with thousands of books, educational videos, learning software, and reference materials such as the wikipedia and dictionary. OLE Nepal’s technical team of Mr. Ram Singh and Mr. Basanta Shrestha installed the digital library and gave orientation to local teachers and users on how to use this repository.

The team reached Phalebas after a ten-hour bus ride from Kathmandu. Moti Community Library is housed in a three-storeyed, well furnished building that stood just a few meters away from a small village house which used to be old Moti Community Library. Radio Parbat, the Health Clinic and Bhawani Bidyapith School were all within 150 meters area of the Library. The Library rents out few rooms for commercial purpose to help cover the operational costs of the Library. The building also has a Bal Bikas Room for early childhood development purposes. This room has a huge collection of toys and books, and it gives a glimpse of an expensive “montessori based” schools of Kathmandu. Books and materials in the library and “Bal Bikas” were contributed by Read Nepal and Room to Read.

The Library does not have a lot of books. But it is big, spacious and very well organized. The team installed the E-Pustakalaya server in the adjoining smaller office room. But before installing the software in the newly purchased computers, the team had to assemble tables that were still in the boxes that were shipped from Kathmandu. Assembling table was something the team was not prepared for, and it took quite a bit of effort, but we had fun doing it.

E-Pustakalaya being accessed from Linux workstations. Server and WiFi routers are also seen in the picture.

Mr. Basanta Shrestha showing educational videos during orientation

After completing the installation of the digital library, the team conducted an orientation program to local people. Nearly 20 people gathered in the E-Pustakalaya room for the event. Participants included librarians, school teachers and students. One distinguished participant was a famous village boy with a voracious reading habit who was known for reading 610 books from the Library in one month. The orientation briefed about the E-Pustakalaya System, followed by detailed demonstration of several sections of E-Pustakalaya. Participants were also given brief introduction of Ubuntu/Linux System and its basic operation. E-Pustakalaya server and all the workstations were installed with Linux System. Linux System are free, stable and very less prone to computer viruses.

Mr. Ram Singh posing with the famous village boy who read 610 books from the Library in one month.

One of the teachers from a nearby village got really impressed by variety of contents of E-Pustakalaya and asked how much would it cost if he wanted to do the whole setup at his school. Later, Bhola Jee pointed out the benifits of digital library to the participants. He further asked us to share the success stories of digital library in other program districts. We then gave example of Pancha School in Kapilvastu about how they are taking maximum benefit of E-Pustakalaya not only to educate students but also to promote literacy amongst mothers of the children and the whole community.

Announcing the Indy Python Workshop – please spread the word

2012-04-08T19:03:07+00:00

Shameless plug time. Catherine Devlin, myself, IndyPy, the Boston Python Workshop folks, Indiana LinuxFest, and a few others are getting together next month to host the Indianapolis Python Workshop for women and their friends: A hands-on, genuine beginners’ introduction to computer programming.

It’s from April 13-14 and is a no-cost event. Go to https://openhatch.org/wiki/Indianapolis_Python_Workshop for the full details and to RSVP.

Catherine said it best:

Our goal is to widen and diversify the computer programming community with outreach events that overcome the technical and social barriers that hold too many people back from learning to program. Basic programming skills are so empowering and useful that we think everyone should have them, whether those skills lead to a career, a new hobby, an occasional handy trick, or just a deeper understanding of the computers that surround us. We’ll borrow the curriculum – and some of the teachers! – from the famously successful Boston Python Workshop, which has already brought programming skills to dozens of women and their friends.

Some people have asked what “women and their friends” means. It’s simple; all women are welcome, and men are welcome as guests of women who are attending (you can calculate the gender ratio; see this talk by Jessica and Asheesh for the rationale). If you already know Python, we’d love to have you come and help teach; we’re located right in the middle of Indiana LinuxFest in downtown Indianapolis

I believe past workshops have included librarians, teachers, and non-engineering members of software and technical companies who wondered what their co-workers were doing all day; we’re also hoping some local high school students will join us. Please spread the word to people in the area you think would like to know about this event; we’d particularly love to reach groups of women who might be curious about programming but may not have had opportunities to play with it in the past. It should be a blast!

XO-AU OS 12.0 Release Candidate 2 released

2012-03-30T11:18:17+00:00

Release Candidate 2 of the 2012 OLPC Australia operating system, XO-AU OS 12, has been released. We hope to make a final release in two weeks, in time for the start of term 2 of school in Queensland and Northern Territory.

To get started, visit our release notes page.

Installing the Release Candidate is no different from installing the XO-AU USB 3 stable release: extract the zip file to a USB stick and you’re ready to go.

The “What’s New” section outlines the changes in this release.

To provide feedback, please join our technical mailing list.

Following this, you can send your comments or ask questions on the list. The OLPC Australia Engineering team are active participants on this list, and we will reply. Remember, the better you can help us with quality information, the better we can make the product for you

Storytelling Workshop, Haiti

2012-03-26T03:07:51+00:00

This week, OLPC school École Shalom was part of a multi-school workshop by Dr. Terri Bucci to improve schools' education methods and introduce new interactive lesson plans. One of their main focuses was storytelling. By reading out loud and giving the students individual copies to review, the teachers could spark discussions in their class. There were two interactive activities with each book: putting the pages back in order, and matching the text to the illustrations.

We met at this church:

During the read-aloud of one story about a mole and a hedgehog, one of the researchers asked if the teachers knew about the animals. They hadn't. A few explanations later, we were back on the tracks. It's a good reminder that some elements of a story might not translate the way we'd like ( another example: Khan Academy's math lessons with avocados ). But does a story need to be rewritten every time it crosses national borders? There was a superb point from another researcher that stories can be a tool for us find out about other places and their cultures. Hmmm.

I also met Dr. Kranch and a student who are developing a lesson-builder for the teachers and the schools' tech people ( like Junior and Lorinord here ). They took interest in the Fedora Linux / XS school server / HTML+JS stack we were using to deliver lessons and quizzes to our students. The HTML+JS side makes it compatible with computers they are introducing in a few other schools. I need to send them a write-up of how we run it, and what parts need the most streamlining.

Today I biked south to the point where the river disappears between two mountains, something I'd only seen in the distance in my last trip. Google Maps Link Heading that way, you reach sheer cliffs and a dam where the river is diverted into irrigation canals. Here and there you see people shoveling rocks into piles. Eventually I reached a point where I could go no further without walking in the river. Soon after I took the picture above, a mining truck appeared, driving down the middle of the river. No safe passage for bikes.

Climbing Higher

2012-03-22T22:03:24+00:00

After four months away, I am making a brief return to École Shalom in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti. This is my new backyard:

See larger photo

My project this week is to assist Dr. Terri Bucci, who visited our laptop class in November, and her team researching a math curriculum that could be loaded onto the XO laptops.

It's my first time returning to a deployment, and I am slowly but surely recalling my Kreyòl Ayisyen words and phrases. A few students actually recognized me! Photos and details to come.