Re: [IAEP] [Systems] Feedback on Launchpad
On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 04:17, Bastien bastiengue...@googlemail.com wrote: Cause its close. Really what I think I'm asking for is a comment and vote functionality on Blueprints. I will forward this request to him and let you know. I asked around on IRC, and came across this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/blueprint/+bug/49698 From what I can tell, work is underway on such support. -- 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
[IAEP] svg animations, no?
Sugar does not support SVG animations? I just tried to replace the XO icon with an SVG animation as an extension of the http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/8_4/ModifyingSugar exercise - the icon replaced but was not animated. I'm seeking confirmation that this is correct and would be interested in the reason too ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] svg animations, no?
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:43, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: Sugar does not support SVG animations? I just tried to replace the XO icon with an SVG animation as an extension of the http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/8_4/ModifyingSugar exercise - the icon replaced but was not animated. I'm seeking confirmation that this is correct and would be interested in the reason too Sugar uses librsvg to render all SVGs, I'm not sure which are the capabilities of this library regarding animations. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] svg animations, no?
I've tried animations as well (with JavaScript) and indeed they don't work. However, I'm not sure they really are a good idea for icons. They may get confusing or annoying. 2009/8/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:43, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: Sugar does not support SVG animations? I just tried to replace the XO icon with an SVG animation as an extension of the http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/8_4/ModifyingSugar exercise - the icon replaced but was not animated. I'm seeking confirmation that this is correct and would be interested in the reason too Sugar uses librsvg to render all SVGs, I'm not sure which are the capabilities of this library regarding animations. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ 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
[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-08-27
=== Sugar Digest === You are very right that if a person doesn't have firmly in mind just what science is really about, they can confuse a representation of ideas gotten by scientific means with science itself. – Alan Kay 1. The discussion about the merits and pitfalls of the use of simulation in science education continued this week (See [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-August/007722.html]). 2. María del Pilar Sáenz led a deployment meeting this week (See [http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting.log.20090819_1008.html]). We reviewed the status of Sugar deployments, discussed the most pressing needs from deployments, and alternative communication channels that might result in more feedback from the field. Another discussion on the IAEP list [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-August/007842.html] is an indication of just how passionate the community is about being responsive to the needs of deployments. 3. Bernie Innocenti and I spent a day in Barre VT with Paul Flint, Kevin Cole, Nicco Eneidi, Colin Applegate, et al. to discuss the role Sugar might play in various education initiatives in the region. Despite too much driving in pouring rain, it was a fun, productive session. (Bernie helped Colin get up to speed on packaging for Ubuntu (Colin has subsequently build Sugar 0.86 for Jaunty) and did some debugging of Turtle Art while engaging in discussion with some teachers. One provocative question that was raised: What is the advantage of a platform as opposed to a bunch of cool applications? There are many cool applications out there and commercial (e.g., kidzui, which caters to parents who want someone else to worry about what Internet content is appropriate for their children) and non-commercial (e.g., Curriki, a place where teachers can pick and chose applications and content that meet specific curricula demands) collections. What is the advantage of the Sugar approach? We can sing the praises of many aspects of the Sugar platform—the Journal, the collaboration model, integrated view source, etc.—but I think it ultimately comes down the way in which these features enhance the ability to bring multiple learners together around a collection of activities to engage in authentic investigations. This is a potential that is not yet fully realized, but having spent time this summer watching children move fluidly across multiple activities to, for example, build a memory game, is seeing Sugar at its best. 4. The recent FSF campaign condemning the use of Windows 7 in education (See http://windows7sins.org/) imputes OLPC in complicity with Microsoft. It is disappointing that the FSF is not making any constructive arguments in favor of free software alternatives to Windows such as Sugar on GNU/Linux, which is currently shipped on every machine distributed by OLPC. ===Help wanted/help received=== 5. Google Summer of Code 2009 has official come to a close. We were fortunate to have five intern/mentor pairs, each of whom had a productive two months. Congratulations to Lucian Branescu, Felipe López Toledo, Sacha Silbe, Ben Schwartz, Vamsi Krishna Davuluri, Bryan Berry, Andres Ambrois, and Assim Deodia. Special thanks to Jameson Quinn for organizing the program for Sugar Labs and to Google for their generosity. ===In the community=== 6. One result of Pilar's revitalization of the Deployment Team is that we are being more explicit in our targeting of feedback from deployments. Joshua Pritikin reports: :Our school [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India/Nashik] has some 200 students. Counter to OLPC best practices, we have 33 XO laptops using the computer lab model. We would like to move to child ownership, but we haven't found enough funding to do that. :This year we issued USB keys to the students. USB keys are not as easy to use as the integrated journal, but at least some kids are successful saving their work. :The teachers are mainly impressed by Moodle. To teachers who had never used a computer, being able to create an online quiz is something of a revelation. I would like to place more emphasis on Turtle Art and Etoys, but teachers don't see the point yet. Children are mostly left to explore the laptops on their own when they have free time. :I have no idea how much the students are learning with the laptops. At this point, everything is about appearances. For example, we convinced parents to pay double what they paid last year by withholding access to the laptops until they paid up. In many cases, the kids begged the parents to use the laptops. We managed to raise our fee to $100 per year. :Indian electrical wiring is notorious. I am particularly proud of our power distribution solution (see attached photos). Early on, there was talk of an http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/XOctoPlug. We made something similar. :The lack of child ownership has an upside. It is fairly easy to test new SoaS builds without worrying about backups or deleting a child's work. We are working
[IAEP] Sugar Digest addendum
I forgot to mention: We'll be holding the Oversight Board election in mid-September. If you are not already a member, please send email to memb...@suagrlabs.org by September 5 in order to be eligible to vote. regards. -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
[IAEP] Sugar/OLPC dinner in Boston: Friday Aug 27th 20:00 (tomorrow)
A bunch of us will be gathering for a dinner this Friday night at Wagamama, a Japanese restaurant in Harvard Square: http://wagamama.us/home/ Judging from the menu it should be $20-25 per person. My motivation is getting back in contact with all the old colleagues and friends, find out what happened during my leave, and chit chat like this. Maybe se could also make some action plans for the upcoming months: for example, Caroline is organizing weekly Sugar meetings in Boston, and this would be a good time to find a schedule that would work for most people. I'm not good at organizing things in general, so I'll leave it to Doodle: http://doodle.com/cgbykkm4bwbe3sr2 Looking forward to see everyone. Please, invite anyone else you think may be interested, but make them signup on Doodle within tomorrow at 5PM so I can make a reservation. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Metawriting (Long, but please read!)
Hello Fellow Booksprinters. Yesterday as I was mentally finishing my Uruguay story for the BookSprint, while pulling weeds, I got to thinking about the writing process. I would like to share my thoughts with you. As some of you know, in addition to being a retired teacher and high school counselor, I also worked part time as a columnist and reporter for the local Ventura County Star, a part of the Scripps Howard chain. I have also had several travel articles published in magazines and travel sections of Sunday newspapers and wrote one of the chapters in Move Ons' book, 50 Ways To Love Your Country. Basically, I used two distinct methods of writing (and still do). As a reporter, I would be on a tight deadline, interviewing people onsite, scribbling an outline of the story on scratch paper, then cranking out what, usually, was a fairly interesting story. I always made sure I included the 5 W's and the H and followed the AP Stylebook to a T. Usually, I saved the lead paragraph for the last. Carefully crafting it to draw the reader in to what might otherwise be a rather ordinary story on an ordinary subject. After a quick read through by my favorite resident editor (my husband Ed), I would transmit it electronlcally to the newsroom. From there on it was out of my hands. Writing feature stories or a weekly human interest story was an entirely different matter. I like to compare it to having a baby. From concept(ion) to delivery, the process goes something like this: You still have to gather information and check the facts, but after that there is a period I like to call incubation. During this time you are running over the story almost all your waking hours when you may be doing other things. You play with it in your mind. You look for slants and angles. You discard some ideas and expand on others. You play with words you might choose to use. At night, you fall asleep thinking about it. When you wake up, it is still there in your thoughts. When the story is ready, you sit down at your computer, and it writes itself. This may happen at any time, even in the middle of the night. It is best not to rush the process. When it is finished, let it rest for 24 hours, then be your own editor. Print it out and have your favorite in-house editor read it too. Put the final polish on it, and it is ready to go. From then on, like a good parent, you have to let it go. Editors may need to cut it to make room for something like a picture or an ad (in a newspaper). You don't want to have the editor pad it, so it is better to write a little long so it can be cut to fit. Sometimes what editors do to your story will make you want to cry, or at least cringe. I still can hear my Irish great-grandmother whirling in her grave when an editor changed my St. Paddy's Day feature to a St. Patty's Day story. Criminal! Hint to editors...check with your writers before you do anything drastic or your publication may lose some of its creditability! So why am I telling you all this now? It is just 9 days to the beginning of our Booksprint. There are lots of unclaimed feature story topics listed on our wiki without owners. You may have another compelling story you would like to tell that is not listed. (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Class_Acts/Table_of_contents) Don't wait until the BookSprint to get started! Claim your story, do your background research, get your concept, and start incubating! If the story is ready before September 6, so be it! Sit down and let it write itself. Oh, and if you happen to have an old copy of Strunk and White's little book, The Elements of Style, laying around give it a quick read through. Your readers will love you for it! Have fun incubating! Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2009-08-27
3. Bernie Innocenti and I spent a day in Barre VT with Paul Flint, Kevin Cole, Nicco Eneidi, Colin Applegate, et al. to discuss the role Sugar might play in various education initiatives in the region. Despite too much driving in pouring rain, it was a fun, productive session. (Bernie helped Colin get up to speed on packaging for Ubuntu (Colin has subsequently build Sugar 0.86 for Jaunty) and did some debugging of Turtle Art while engaging in discussion with some teachers. One provocative question that was raised: What is the advantage of a platform as opposed to a bunch of cool applications? There are many cool applications out there and commercial (e.g., kidzui, which caters to parents who want someone else to worry about what Internet content is appropriate for their children) and non-commercial (e.g., Curriki, a place where teachers can pick and chose applications and content that meet specific curricula demands) collections. What is the advantage of the Sugar approach? We can sing the praises of many aspects of the Sugar platform—the Journal, the collaboration model, integrated view source, etc.—but I think it ultimately comes down the way in which these features enhance the ability to bring multiple learners together around a collection of activities to engage in authentic investigations. This is a potential that is not yet fully realized, but having spent time this summer watching children move fluidly across multiple activities to, for example, build a memory game, is seeing Sugar at its best. I agree with this but I also think equal access and consistent experience at home, school and after-school programs is an important advantage. When we spoke with the 4th grade teachers at GPA this week they mentioned that they had previously used a web based program and that the kids who had access at home zoomed ahead and those that did not were left behind. Both OLPC and Sugar on a Stick have the potential to extend access to computing outside school walls and hours, and thus extend learning time. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] svg animations, no?
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.comwrote: I've tried animations as well (with JavaScript) and indeed they don't work. However, I'm not sure they really are a good idea for icons. They may get confusing or annoying. I agree that animated icons become annoying but I'm thinking of it from the POV of teaching SVG Kids make their own icons - they like that. Certainly they would be further engaged and learn more about SVGs if the opportunity to make animated icons was there It could be a good opportunity but you need the right tools - Opera browser is the best I know for displaying SVGs - it seems that librsvg (information from Tomeu) is not standards compliant at this time 2009/8/27 Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org: On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:43, Bill Kerrbillk...@gmail.com wrote: Sugar does not support SVG animations? I just tried to replace the XO icon with an SVG animation as an extension of the http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/8_4/ModifyingSugar exercise - the icon replaced but was not animated. I'm seeking confirmation that this is correct and would be interested in the reason too Sugar uses librsvg to render all SVGs, I'm not sure which are the capabilities of this library regarding animations. Regards, Tomeu ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- «Sugar Labs is anyone who participates in improving and using Sugar. What Sugar Labs does is determined by the participants.» - David Farning ___ 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
