Presenter

Mike C. Fletcher

Audience

Beginner/Intermediate Python programmers interested in programming for the Sugar/OLPC environment, knowledge of Python is assumed. Knowledge of Pygame or Sugar is not assumed.

Requirements

Laptops optional, participants will have the code being discussed available for download and reading along on their machines if they like. To run the code a Sugar environment would be required, which is probably too much to ask most attendees to provide on their machines. I will run the code on-screen for demonstration purposes. I'll try to have at least 5 or 6 XOs available to play the demonstrations in-hand as we go.

Virtual images are also optional. Participants with virtual images will want to run

yum install patch

to be able to "play" the tutorial's shell scripts to perform the editing automatically. If you can run regular Activities in your virtual image you can likely run the tutorial in there. You'll want to have working networking support, preferably such that you can have 2 instances running simultaneously (so you can see the networked behaviour), though you can also just connect to other participants.

Files

Handouts

Source code

Summary

You would love to sit down and start writing software for the OLPC-XO and the Sugar environment, but where do you start? In this tutorial we will walk you through a simple approach to writing activities for the Sugar environment that allows you get started making small, fun toys that can teach children about some aspect of the universe.

We'll have some XO's on hand for you to try out the code being discussed. By the end of the tutorial you should be able to sit down and write your own small, fun activities in a weekend.

Presenter Bio

Mike Fletcher is responsible for Developer Relations for the One Laptop Per Child project. He runs his own small consulting company as well as a number of Open Source projects, including the standard Python binding to OpenGL. Mike studied Design Epistemology at the University of Waterloo, focusing on applying design theory to the problem of educating designers. Along the way he picked up Virtual Reality as a minor and spent the bulk of the first Internet boom working on a desktop virtual reality environment. He's trying to make the world a better place.