Quadrants and figures in TurtleBlocks

TurtleBlocks

TurtleBlocks is a fun and easy to use activity. 
Turtle Blocks is an activity with a Logo-inspired graphical "turtle" that draws colorful art based on Scratch-like snap-together visual programming elements.
(https://launchpad.net/turtleart)

You can use the web version here :
http://walterbender.github.io/turtleblocksjs/ or
https://turtle.sugarlabs.org/

Let's get started now. (This tutorial will require basic maths).

Rectangle

First of all, we would draw an rectangle.

We all know that rectangle has four sides. First of all, you will need a "start" action and then also a "repeat" flow. Here, repeat must be an even number or it will be just two perpendicular lines. It should at least be set to 2. 

At first, for a start, you will need start and repeat as mentioned above. Then you will need to add a forward block, to move our turtle in forward direction (from where you put it). 

Then, you will need a left or right block (90, so it will turn 90 degrees) so that turtle can turn. Note that if you use left block then you will need to use another left block and if you use right block then you will need another right block, don't use one left and one right block.

Now again add a forward block so that the turtle can again move in forward direction, and similarly again add a left or right block.

Then play, it you will get a rectangle like in screenshot :

Square

Square has four sides with equal length. So here, unlike rectangle, length and breadth will be same, so we only need two blocks.

Here, we will set repeat to 4, as square has four sides and all the sides are equal.

At first, for a start, you will need start and repeat as mentioned. Then you will need to add a forward block, to move our turtle in forward direction (from where you put it). 

Then add a left or right block and set its value to 90 so it can turn 90 degrees. Then run it and you will get your square. 

Triangle

Here we will draw out an equilateral triangle. All of it's sides are equal and all the three corners have equal angle (60 degree) (I think you just guessed what to do now?)

At first, for a start, you will need start and repeat as mentioned. You will just need to repeat 3 times as triangle has only three sides.

Then you will need to add a forward block, to move our turtle in forward direction (from where you put it). 

Then you will need to add two left or right blocks (both should be same), having equal angles, that is 60 degress (as it is an equilateral triangle). Run it and you will get your triangle.

Pentagon

Pentagon has 5 sides and has a total angle of all sides 540 degrees. So, here each angle for a regular hexagon must be 108 degrees. Pentagon has five sides.

At first, for a start, you will need start and repeat as mentioned. You will just need to repeat 5 times as we have taken a regular hexagon to be drawn.

Add a forward block so our turtle can move forward. Then add four left or four right blocks with value 108 so turtle can move 108 degrees each time. Then just run it and you will get a pentagon.

I found TurtleBlocks to be simple to use once you learn it very well. You just need skills like basic math and a bit more of logic for how you can move your turtle. There is a lot more you can do in turtle, and is somewhat similar to Music blocks. They are different, but also a bit same. 

Turtle block's user interface is simple and is very easy to use. Above, I mentioned some examples about how to draw simple figures like triangle, rectangle, square, and hexagon. 

You might get some difficulties like you don't know what exact value should be set. Mostly, it can be solved by basic math. These figures can also be drawn in other ways, just think and do it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Sugar Lesson Plan

Sugar Lesson Plan

Age/Level : 14-17

This lesson plan is targeted for students between age 14 to 17, so they can understand physics very well. They all must know the basic of physics.

Skills : 

Here, we will help learn students about basic of physics. The main skills being taught are Newtons Laws of Motion (first, second, and third law). 

Newton's First Law :

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. This law is often called "the law of inertia".

Newton's Second Law :

Acceleration is produced when a force acts on a mass. The greater the mass (of the object being accelerated) the greater the amount of force needed (to accelerate the object). It can be mathematically written as

F = ma

where F is force acting on the particle, m is the mass of particle and a is acceleration of object (can be gravity too).

Newton's Third Law :

For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action. 

The conservation of momentum states that the combined mass times velocity or momentum of two objects should remain the same if not affected by outside forces. Therefore if one fast object hits another stationary object (neglect air resistance and other outside forces) then the other will gain momentum and the first will lose momentum but the combined momentum of the two objects will be the same as before they interacted. Therefore you get the equal reaction that newton talked about.

Note : 

What is Force :

A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the two objects no longer experience the force. Forces only exist as a result of an interaction.

Objectives : 

Here students will learn the basic concepts of physics with the help of physics activity as mentioned above. The teacher needs to explain only once to the students, then if a child has a doubt the teacher must help. We will create a few machines to clear the basic concepts of physics.

Summary : 

Firstly, you will need to know how to install Sugar on by virtualization it on their existing laptop or to create a Sugar on a stick.

You can read more here :

http://thesugaractivity.blogspot.com/2014/12/everything-about-sugar.html

Now, open Physics activity. 

By default, you will see tools on the toolbar like Draw tool, circle tool, triangle tool, box tool, grab, motor, pin, joint, chain...

The teacher should show students how to create objects like circle, box and using tools like polygon tool. The teacher can demonstrate students by separating them in groups, so they can discuss and learn in a more better way. Also teacher should show them how to save their activities.

Here, for example, the students will need to create three sample activities following Newton's three laws of motion. Students are free to discuss about the basic like how to create objects and else. The teacher should keep an eye on each student if they are performing well or have any doubts. 

As mentioned earlier, it would be good to form groups of students to explain them initially

In Physics activity, the value of gravity is taken as 9.0 ms^-2

Instructions :

We will make an example for each law.

At first, we will make an example based on Newton's First Law. See the video for example.

Then comes the second law, make something like this. Here when the object slides down, it gains acceleration until it comes to rest.

The third law, is about that every action has an opposite reaction. See the example video, after the ball collides with the block, the ball will slow down as it has given some energy to the block to move.

After all of the students have completed creating the following examples, the teacher must evaluate it. He/she must check that the student has got the concepts clear and the examples should work as they are stated by Newton's laws of motion. Now teacher should as questions based on this activity, to check whether they know everything or not.

Finally, the teacher should take a test, and ask them to make at least one machine based on each law. This way, students would learn better as competition always helps winning.

By the following examples, students will at least have basic idea about Newton's Laws of Motion and more.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Top 10 Sugar Activities

1.)  Physics

Physics activity is a great way to learn physics. You can create different types of machines, like some ball-firing machine etc. In physics activity, you can see inanimate objects live. Physics is 2D and not 3D. Many people think that it is one of the best activity because it is really fun to use, the UI is understandable, and is easy-to-use. 

(Images)

From Sugar Labs wiki (https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Physics_blender.png)

1.)  Browse

Browse is one of the most used activity on Sugar. Browse activity is a simple web browser activity, normally used on Sugar for research purposes or to get newer activities from web. Browse has the most basic features and UI and so it is very easy to use.

3.) Calculate

Calculate is yet another very simple to use activity. This activity is just a basic calculator with some advanced trigonometric function and also with inverse trigonometric functions and more. It is much used by people. 

4.) Memorize

Memorize is one of the most used activity. It is rated 5 stars. It can help improving your memory by making remembering you basic operation or you can also select based on letters and sounds. You can also select size, options like 4x4, 5x5 and 6x6 are available. 

5.) Jukebox

Jukebox is also most used activity. It is just a simple music player as it name suggests. You can select your media files and then can play it. It has the simplest music player UI and is very very easy to use.

6.) Write

Write is used by many users. It is just a basic noting pad in which you can type out text, in different formats. You can also increase or decrease font size. You can select font family, select text to be bold, italic or underlined, or can choose color. You can also add table.  How can also select heading sizes. See this image :

7.) Image Viewer

Image viewer is just a simple, basic and easy-to-use image viewer. It's functions are simple, and this activity is widely used. You can zoom in, zoom out images and also switch to full screen mode.

8.) Pippy

Pippy is an activity for writing code in python language. It is fun to use as python is pretty much an easy language. You can spend hours writing different type of codes for fun or for something important. Once the code is written, you can run it. See screenshot.

9.) Words

Searching for meaning of a word...or translation? Use Words activity. Type out any word, like "Human" and you will get translations to the selected language and also it's meaning. You can also click on that mouth button, and it will speak out the word you wrote.

10.) Record

It is a simple yet easy-to-use recording program. It UI is pretty simple and understandable. You can click on the record icon (radial icon), it will start recording and press to stop button to stop recording. Then, you will be able to see your recording in that panel at the bottom.

Suggestion for a new activity

We really need a 3D model viewer in Sugar. The activity should be capable to create 3D models, and also ability to save them and open/view them. 

Thanks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Browse Activity - Sugar.

Browse Activity

Browse is a simple activity which helps surfing the internet. In other way, it is just a simple but a good web browser. Browse sports some good amount of features.

How to start Browse?

Just open that globe like looking icon, and it will launch Browse. 

(See the attached image, it is marked with blue color).

How to use it?

Now, after you opened Browse activity, things are just simple. 

You can search it just by typing URL at the text box given at the top. (See the screenshot)

You can save your current activity to journal too, just by clicking on that globe icon on the top-left corner, and pressing the 'diary' like icon. 

The settings icon in the in the above screenshot is to inspect web elements. Clicking on it will open a small pane at bottom from which you can inspect elements. You can see different types of elements, network, resources of that page, console and more. You can edit elements too.

You can undo, redo, copy and paste by interacting with the scissor icon. 

By interacting with the 'eye' icon, you can see options like to Zoom In, Zoom Out, revert to actual size and even use fullscreen mode. There is also a 'star' icon which will launch a pane at bottom if you have any favorites saved.

You can go to the homepage by clicking on the home icon on the toolbar.

Similarly, there are also navigation buttons, you can go back and forward by using them. 

The star icon, is used to bookmark a webpage. Now, after you bookmark it, you can see the 'star' icon enabled in the place where you can use features like Zoom in, out, fullscreen...

Bugs

No bugs found during this test. It seems to be stable. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

GCI Experince 2016

Google Code-In Experience 

Hello everyone, 

This is my third year in Google Code-in competition. I am participating in Google code-in to know how an open-source community works. In these past years, I have been working with Sugar labs in GCI, and I have learned many things.

So, what is Google code-in?

 It is a pre-university contest, targeted for students ages 13 to 17. It offers a varieties of task.
 There are tasks for beginners also. There are 17 organization this time. There are 5 types  of tasks : Coding, Documentation / Training, Outreach / Research, Quality Assurance, and  User Interface. Participants also gets prizes like digital certificates, stickers, T-Shirts,  hoodies and even a trip to Google's HQ.

About Sugar Labs

Sugar labs is a learning community and also a software development company. It distributes these tools freely. It's software, Sugar, is a open-source and free desktop environment targeted to children for learning. 

Sugar is available as a Live CD and USB, installable through several Linux distros.

In these past 3 years, I have learned many things, like how to code better, problem solving, how to interact with communities, and how to fix some issues. I am willing to keep contributing to sugar labs even if I don't win. 

Sugar labs can help me, and of course younger minds in great ways. It helps students how to learn things.  

Thanks!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Google Code-in 2015

Google Code-in 2015

Why I am participating?

- Google code-in is a great way to identify myself. I am an app developer, I develop apps in C# and Java. Google code-in helps me to learn new ways of doing things, learning new languages like python, getting used to some new platforms and etc.

- Last time it helped me a lot to learn different things.

How many times did I participate in Google code-in?

- This is my second time. Last time I remember I participated 20 days late, still did a few tasks. 

 I learned many things last time and I am learning new things this time too.

- I would like to learn python and be more friendly with GitHub (I am but not too much).

Thanks!

Everything about Sugar

Everything About Sugar.

This blog has everything you want to know about Sugar. This blog shows how to install Sugar on a stick, install it on a virtual machine, what can you do in Sugar, what kind of projects you can do with it etc....

So, What is Sugar on a Stick (SOAS)?

Sugar is a free and open source desktop environment designed with the goal of being used by children for interactive learning. Developed as part of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project, it is the default interface on OLPC XO-1 family of laptop computers, but also runs on most computers' hardware. It is available as a Live CD, as Live USB, a package installable through several Linux distributions, or on Windows and Mac OS through virtualization.

->Sugar on a Stick is a Fedora Spin LiveUsb operating system featuring the award-winning Sugar Learning Platform and designed to fit on an ordinary USB thumbdrive ("stick").

It will run on any recent x86-based computer that can boot from a USB stick (check the BIOS settings if it doesn't work straight away). This includes most Windows and Linux PCs and x86 Macs.

If you want to try Sugar, then you can try it by demoing on a stick. You can install Sugar on a stick.

The most recent and stable version of Sugar is version 21, release on 9th of December. 

You can download them here :

for x86_64(64-bit) and i686 (32-bit)

So, you may have a question on your mind that how to install Sugar on a flash-drive.

If you want to install Sugar on a flash drive on a flash-drive from Windows, follow the steps:

1.  First of all, you need LiveUSB creator, you can get it from here

2. Then install it. Just follow the steps.

3. After intall run it and you will get a screen like this :

4. Even though the USB Fedora creation process is straight forward, here is a quick run down of all the steps involved:

Select Sugar on a Stick from the Download Fedora drop down Set the Target Device to point to your USB flash drive. Move the Persistent Storage slider to set the capacity to use for storing changes(It is important to set Persistent Memory so that your work is saved between sessions.) . Click create Live USB to begin the creation process

All Done! You got Sugar On a Stick!

Install Sugar on a Virtual Machine.

1. You first need a virtual machine software like Oracle's VMWare,  or any similar app.

2. In this tutorial I am using VMWare Player. 

3. Now create a new virtual machine.

4. Now select the Sugar file downloaded, ( .iso or...)

5. Now select the guest operating system as "Other" and also version as "Other", then       press "Next", name the Virtual Machine.

6. Now, just simply press Next or select some quota, then press next. Then again, a windows will come for specifications of virtual machine, simply press Next because they are automatically generated.

7. After that, a new item on Home Screen Will come, with the name you gave for your virtual machine.

8. Select that item (here : I have XYZ) then press Play Virtual Machine, on the right side.

9. All Done...

Note: If you've downloaded an .ova file, then you need to directly run it, don't follow the steps. 

If you want to install Sugar from a MAC OSX then follow this video.

Now let I show you some features...

You can do many things with Sugar like...(down)

The Main Screen :

The main screen is the circle of all apps in Sugar. There are many apps to use. It looks like :

The Abacus :

Sugar gives you an abacus, for maths calculations...

Write :

If you want to write a note, or a document or else, you can use this thing.

Visual Match :

Visual Match is just a game,in which we have to visually match two pictures. This game is for children. It looks like this screenshot :

Typing Turtle :

It a game, which enhances our power of writing by different methods. It looks like :

Turtle blocks :

It is also a game. In which we have to connect two blocks. Child has to watch out which block attaches which one.

Stopwatch :

Stopwatch is just like a simple stopwatch, but has many timers which you can run at a time. You have three buttons on each times, they are Start/Stop, Zero and Mark.

Speak :

If a child wants to pronounce a word better, he just has to write the word on the text box down there, and it pronounces.

Record :

Record lets you capture pictures, video and audio and incorporate these media into other projects, such as Write and FotoToon, and to share them with others. You just need to press the round button in centre.

Read :

If you want to read a book, you can use this app. You can choose anything to read from your journal like books e.g. Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Mythology etc..

Pippy :

Pippy is a tool for writing sources of different coding languages like Python etc..

Physics :

This is a very good app. It makes all your Physics difficulties simple. You can draw shapes of different sizes and let them freely move in a plane. It has many basic shapes like circle, rectangle, triangle etc... You can draw shapes with a pen like tool.

Paint :

Draw anything freely with a pen, or select an shape to draw. Colour it. There are many shapes like mentioned above in Physics.

Moon :

Now about 'Moon'. It gives you every detail about moon like phases, julian date, age,

Lunation, Surface visibility, next full moon, next new moon, next lunar and solar eclipse etc...

Games :

It has many games like memorize, maze etc...

Labyrinth :

If you want to create a labyrinth with different branches, you can use this app. It is amazing app.  

Jukebox :

Jukebox allows you to play music. It plays media files like .mp3 etc.  

InfoSlicer :

InfoSlicer gets articles from Wikipedia. Gets information from German, French, Polish, Simple English, and Spanish Wiikipedia.

Image Viewer :

It is a simple app which allows you view images. It also allows you to zoom image, rotate image etc...

IRC :

Allows you to connect with Sugar Labs IRC channel for help.

Help :

Shows how to use Sugar. It is very basic.

Get Books :

You can get books from this app. You can get books like stories, fairy-tales, folk-tales, 

mythology,science books, most popular etc... You can read this books as mentioned earlier through Reader.

Finance :

You can manage your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly budget with Finance. Shows you your balance etc...

Countries : 

Shows a simple globe of Earth. Help students to learn different name of countries. 

Clock :

It is a simple clock with different modes like Analog, Digital. It also shows us time in words. Also shows us date. A feature allows us to grab it hand so we can easily change time.

Chat :

Allows us to chat with friends. First, we should connect with out friends, the we can start chatting with them.

Calculator :

This is advanced and simple calculator. It shows us All euations. Has function of trigonometry like sin, cosm cot etc...

Browser :

It is a tabbed browser. It allows you to  surf internet. It is much similar to other browsers.

Bugs :

So far, I couldn't find any bugs in Fedora 21. 

Conclusion :

Sugar is the best operating system for a child who is new to PC. 

Sugar on a Stick is without no doubt a five star operating system, as it delivers a powerful learning platform (Sugar) based on one of the most stable and reliable Linux kernel-based operating systems (Fedora). It is an incredible creative, fun learning tool for children!

Image sources : Me

Text sources : Information about Sugar (Wikipedia and Sugar Labs) and App details, install steps - Me 

Everything about Sugar by Hrishi Patel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://thesugaractivity.blogspot.in/2014/12/everything-about-sugar.html.