This is certainly a vital topic for many of us.
I have been hands-on with a number of deployments. In the case of
Rwanda, a lot of money has been invested in an effort to provide a
laptop to every elementary school child in the country. I feel that
project needs any support we can give it to ensure that that investment
has a positive return. In other deployments, individuals or small groups
have donated funds to acquire a set of laptops for a specific school. I
feel that investment needs to be protected. In Nepal, OLE Nepal has done
remarkable things focused on making the OLPC laptops as valuable as
possible to the schools where they are deployed. That effort also needs
to get a maximum return.
In the computer field, it is obvious that a specific computer model has
a limited lifetime. Most models remain on the market for less than three
years (a shrinking time-scale as manufacturers want you to buy the next
big thing). in actual use, computers probably have a life more like 5-7
years. In educational use, they are used until they stop working since
the school has no way to get more.
With SOAS, SugarLabs recognized this and sought a way to make Sugar
viable on other hardware. Again, in the computer field, software has a
much longer lifetime than hardware. (Our firmware is written in Forth).
Will there be anything recognizable as Sugar running on computer
hardware in 2020?
A critical part of the OLPC experience has been the insistence on open
source and open educational resources. The intent is not only to enable
a volunteer community to contribute but also so that the recipients of
the laptops are not confronted with a bill for use of the software and
educational content.
What happens to this if the only viable software is WIndows, IOS, and
Android?
One thing that is certain is that by 2020 school children will have
computing devices. What will those devices due to help them to a better
education? Most probably, they will help them get better scores on
high-stake exams. This has been the uniform criteria used to measure the
success of OLPC deployments.
Personally, my hope is that this community will produce a viable
educational alternative for community schools (with limited access to
the internet) to the purchase of software and educational content from
the educational industry. An alternative in the sense that Linux
distributions offer a viable alternative to Windows, IOS, and Android.
There are some very favorable developments. One is the increasing focus
in the XSCE community on content and educational resources. The
contributions of Khan Academy (especially Lite), IIAB, Rachel, and OLE
Nepal are invaluable. The continued contributions of educators such as
Sora Edwards-Thro are also invaluable (I should name countless others,
but if I try I will do an injustice).
It is possible that new hardware such as the XO Infinity will breathe a
few more years of life into the project (particularly if it supports
Fedora/Sugar builds).
Anyway, one can try to keep the vision.
Yours,
Tony
On 02/24/2015 01:31 PM, iaep-requ...@lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
essage: 1
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2015 18:36:34 -0500
From: Samuel Greenfeld<sam...@greenfeld.org>
To: IAEP SugarLabs<iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org>
Subject: [IAEP] Planning for the future
Message-ID:
<CA+cAqjM7=hqou47mhmr9aqtnbzkrmjdb00nxbzennbo+1wk...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Disclaimer: The following are my views, and not the views of my current or
past employers.
About a year ago, I privately expressed concern that Sugar needed to ensure
it had long-term sponsorship and a long-term user base.
Since then, both the historical US-based OLPC organization and Sugar Labs
have not publicly said much about their long-term plans, with OLPC also
being rather closemouthed about the present.
Meanwhile contributors silently leave. It is hard to justify volunteering
when you don't know who will benefit besides mysterious "customers."
Everyone seems happy to cite their past successes. No one corrects the
press when they report stale information in their favor.
There is no shame in being a smaller project. But we need to ask the hard
questions. With Sugar, getting users and developers for a niche platform
is a problem. With OLPC, everyone seems to love repeating the 2 or 2.5
million number for laptops historically shipped. Rarely is it asked how
many XOs been shipped in the past year or are in active use & where.
Sugar & OLPC need to come up with long-term strategies. While there is
nothing public I have seen stopping One Education's XO Infinity from
running Sugar, I haven't seen anything stopping it from running anything
else. It is also unclear how much One Education is willing to engage with
the historical Sugar & OLPC communities (or how much they can tell us at
this time).
Historically there have been many philosophical questions like "Does there
need to be a physical machine?" and "Have we succeeded if every child has a
computer, but from someone else?"
I do not believe Sugar or OLPC is down for the count. But in order to
engage One Education, governments, and other educational groups, both Sugar
and the historical OLPC structure need to have plans to transition to the
future. Otherwise these plans will be written for us.
I suspect I know how things will end; but I wish it was not happening
though silence.
---
SJG
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