Scratch Day 2011
Saturday May 21, 2011, 1-4pm
Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive
Arlington, VA 22204
Contact Page, Google Map, Aerial Photo, Bus Info

Our third annual Scratch Day will arrive this Saturday afternoon at the Arlington Career Center in Virginia. We’re reprising last year’s winning formula this year to run three concurrent hands-on workshops for teachers, parents and kids. The latest version of Scratch, the MIT Media Lab’s fabulous interactive authoring software, is installed in each of the computer labs. We also expect to be able to demonstrate Scratch 1.4 running on the OLPC XO-1 laptop with support for the built-in camera and the Journal file system.

Our special guest Michael Badger, author of Scratch 1.4: Beginner’s Guide, has graciously offered to return this year. Michael will help lead one of the workshops. His publisher, Packt Publishing, has generously sponsored our event again with copies of the book to raffle and book discount flyers. And we have a special raffle prize related to robotics!

Here is the event schedule:

The Scratch Team at MIT has produced some fun promotional videos.

Thanks again to Packt Publishing!

With speaking engagements and family travel for the rest of the Saturdays this month, I’ve decided not to have a formal user group meeting. Spring fever too! If anyone wants to have an informal meeting on a weeknight, I’m available the evening of Thursday, April 28th for a meet-up somewhere downtown. Wayan is pretty busy the rest of this month and then out of the country next, so we won’t be at the Looking Glass Lounge.

We will be meeting again next month on the afternoon of May 21 with the big bang of Scratch Day 2011 at the Arlington Career Center. There will be one or more blog posts and an email update coming before the event. We’re looking for volunteers to present workshops or projects as well as assist with setting up. Please contact Jeff Elkner jeff at elkner.net or Mike Lee curiouslee at gmail.com.

Illustration from the OLPC Tanzania wiki page.

A quick chat with Walter Bender last week reminded me we should do a meeting where we all share and discuss our favorite Sugar activities. There are so many hidden gems in the Sugar Activities web site and no end to tips and tricks for the universal favorites.

We’ll be back at the Arlington Career Center this Saturday afternoon:

Saturday, March 19, 2011, 1:30pm-4pm
Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive
Arlington, VA 22204
Contact Page, Google Map, Aerial Photo, Bus Info

Bring your XO laptops and hopefully, we’ll be able to use our new LCD projection capability to demonstrate right from an XO laptop.

Lastly, our friends at iLoveMyXo.com are still running their 10% discount special for our club on single and four-pack 10 watt solar panels (while supplies last). These are OLPC-certified flexible resin panels with exact match power plug for both XO-1 and XO-1.5. Use the discount code xoSOLAR when ordering. In tests in strong mid-day summer sun here in Washington, D.C., this panel will charge an XO from empty to full in 3.5 to 4.5 hours.

One of the highly touted benefits of the OLPC XO laptop is the ability for it to save on the cost and complexity of shipping paper books to children in remote places by loading it with electronic. This month, we’ll take a look at the activities on the XO that support reading ebooks and review James Simmons’ book on how to create ebooks for the XO and many other ereading devices. Where there is internet connectivity available, XO laptops can also access the Internet Archive’s Open Library books using a web-based book viewer, which has recently been updated to support touch screen devices. Also, a variety of ereader devices will be on display.

What: Family XO Meetup
When: Saturday, February 19th, 2011, 10 am to 1pm
Where: Gallaudet University [map, aerial photo], Student Academic Center
in computer lab SAC 1211, Washington, D.C. 20002

We will again have the USB flash drives for updating the XO-1 and XO-1.5 to the latest 10.1.3 operating system. Make sure your XO laptop is completely backed up and charged up, and bring the AC adapter.

Saturday, January 22, 2011, 1:30pm-4pm
Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive
Arlington, VA 22204
Contact Page, Google Map, Aerial Photo, Bus Info

This month tricked us by starting with a Saturday and giving us four more, so we’re meeting on the afternoon of the fourth Saturday instead of the third.

To celebrate three years of meetings, there will be XO cupcakes! Then:

• an update from Sugar Labs DC
• news on the XO-1.75 alpha machine shown last week at CES 2011 (hand crank charging is now possible!)
• a look at the just-released FINAL version of the the 10.1.3 system update with many exciting new features and fixes. If you would like help upgrading, back up your journal files and bring your XO-1 or XO-1.5 fully charged with AC adapter.
• a peek the late beta version of LEGO’s completely rewritten version of the WeDo robotics software for the XO-1 and XO-1.5, for which the Learning Club provided some consultation and testing.

Please also bring some thoughts on OLPC or Sugar Labs-related activities we might do during 2011.

Cupcake illustration designed by Mike and Cici on an iPod Touch using Maverick Software’s Cupcakes! App.

Thanks to Wayan and the very talented Andi Gros, whom I met at Archive.org and the OLPC SF Summit, this blog’s broken RSS feed is back along with some much needed backend upgrades.

So if you missed last month’s Mega Trip Report chock full of links to my month of OLPC-related travel in October, please have a look.

I’ll likely drop in on the rumored Ubuntu meet-up this Saturday evening at Taste of India and call it a month unless someone wants to do an informal meetup. So no regular meeting this month.

See you all in 2011 after a safe and happy holiday!

When: Saturday, November 20th, 2010, 10am to 1pm
Where: Gallaudet University [map, aerial photo], Student Academic Center, Room SAC 1211 [floorplan], Washington, D.C. 20002

At this meeting, I’ll recap a whirlwind month’s worth of OLPC-related events that I attended including the:

• MIT Media Laboratory 25th Anniversary Celebration, Cambridge, MA
• OLPC’s booth at the Boston Book Festival, Copley Square, Boston
• Books in Browsers 2010 Conference, San Francisco
• OLPC SF Community Summit 2010, San Francisco
• Wireless Ed Tech 2010, Washington, DC
• XoPhoto PhotoKids Nature Walk, Washington, DC

I will focus mostly on the grassroots organized OLPC SF Community Summit 2010 and the PhotoKids Nature Walk with quick highlights of the other events. The summit, the largest of its kind in OLPC history, gathered an amazing collection of volunteers and OLPC staffers from around the world to reaffirm the lowercase olpc movement. The PhotoKids nature walk culminated a few months of planning to equip kids from a public housing project with digital cameras, OLPC XOs and, XoPhoto, a new Sugar-based photo management activity to use outdoors during their field trip. The first walk went well and was promoted by Housing Opportunities Commission and Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, MD.

At the meeting, we will also be able to help anyone who needs to upgrade their XO-1 to the newest 852 software. Be sure to back up your files to a USB drive if you want us to do the upgrade. Bring your XO laptop and AC adapter.

Many diligent months in the making, Ubuntu Sugar Remix (USR), the special community-developed add-on to the commercially-sponsored Ubuntu open source operating system containing the Sugar Learning Platform, will be released by Sugar Labs DC.

Saturday, October 16, 2010, 1-4pm
Arlington Career Center
816 South Walter Reed Drive
Arlington, VA 22204
Contact Page, Google Map, Aerial Photo, Bus Info

Learn why Ubuntu Sugar Remix is family and kid-friendly, with the ability to meet entertainment, productivity and educational needs for all ages in one easy-to-use free operating system. A lab-full of computers will have the new release installed, and representatives from Sugar Labs DC and the Ubuntu Dc LoCo will be on hand to orient you to the features.

After the release party, a group will head over to the Lost Dog Cafe, 5876 Washington Blvd, Arlington, VA, for dinner.

…you should too!

 http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/