Walter, It is great to see this summary. Thanks for putting it together. I remain interested and inspired by this work.
Best, Gerald On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 9:31 AM, Walter Bender <[email protected]> wrote: > As per the discussion in the last Suagr Labs Oversight Board Meeting, I > had agreed to write a draft statement of goals for 2017. The document below > includes feedback from Samson G. I hope this document can serve to > revitalize our discussion from 2016 that never reached resolution. > > Sugar Labs Plans, Goals, Aspirations > > What is Sugar Labs? > > Sugar Labs creates, distributes, and maintains learning software for > children. Our approach to learning is grounded in Constructionism, a > pedagogy developed by Seymour Papert and his colleagues in the 1960s and > 70s at MIT. Papert pioneered the use of the computer by children to help > engage them in the “construction of knowledge.” His long-time colleague > Cynthia Solomon expanded up his ideas by introducing the concept of > engaging children in debugging as a pathway into problem-solving. Their > 1971 paper, “Twenty things to do with a computer”, is arguably the genesis > of contemporary movements such as the Maker Movement and Hour of Code. > > At the core of Constructionism is “learning through doing.” If you want > more learning, you want more doing. At Sugar Labs we provide tools to > promote doing. (We focus almost exclusively on tools, not instructional > materials.) However, we go beyond “doing” by incorporating critical dialog > and reflection into the Sugar learning environment, through mechanisms for > collaboration, journaling, and portfolio. > > Sugar Labs is a spinoff of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project and > consequently it has inherited many of its goals from that project. The goal > of OLPC is to bring the ideas of Constructionism to scale in order to reach > more children. A particular focus is on children in the developing world. > In order to meet that goal, Sugar, which was originally developed for OLPC, > was by necessity a small-footprint solution that required few resources in > terms of CPU, memory, storage, or network connectivity. The major change on > focus from the OLPC project is that Sugar Labs strives to make the Sugar > desktop available to multiple platforms, not just the OLPC XO hardware. > > Who develops Sugar? > > Sugar Labs is a 100% volunteer effort (although we do occasionally raise > money for paid student internships). Sugar development and maintenance is > incumbent upon volunteers and hence we strive to provide as much control as > possible to our community members, including our end-users. (In fact, one > of our assertions is that by enabling our users to participate in the > development of the tools that they use will lead to deeper engagement in > their own learning.) Towards these ends, we chose the GPL as our primary > license. It has been said of the GPL that it “restricts my right [as a > developer] to restrict yours [as a user and potential developer]”, which > seems ideal for a project that wants to engage a broad and diverse set of > learners. But at Sugar Labs we go beyond the usual goals of FOSS: a license > to make changes to the code is not enough to ensure that users make > changes. We also strive to provide the means to make changes. Our success > in this goal is best reflected in the number of patches we receive from our > community. (We achieve this goal through providing access to source code > and development tools within Sugar itself. We also actively participate in > workshops and internship programs such as Google Summer of Code, > Outreaching, and Google Code-In.) > > Who uses Sugar? > > Ultimately, our goal is to reach learners (and educators) with powerful > tools and engage them in Constructionist learning. Currently we reach them > in many ways: the majority of our users get the Sugar desktop preinstalled > on OLPC XO hardware. We have a more modest set of users who get Sugar > packaged in Fedora, Trisquel, Debian, Ubuntu, or other GNU/Linux platforms. > Some users get Sugar on Live Media (i.e., Sugar on a Stick). Recently > Sugarizer, a repackaging of some of the core Sugar ideas for the browser, > has been finding its way to some users. There are also a number of Sugar > activities that are popular outside of the context Sugar itself, for > example, Turtle Blocks, which has wide-spread use in India. Harder to > measure is the extent to which Sugar has influenced other providers of > “educational” software. If the Sugar pedagogy is incorporated by others, > that advances our goal. > > Who supports Sugar? > > When we first created Sugar Labs, we envisioned “Local Labs”—hence the > name “Sugar Labs”, plural—that would provide local support in terms of > local-language support, training, curriculum development, and > customizations. This model has not ever gained the scale and depth > envisioned (we can debate the reasons why), although there are still some > active local communities (e.g., Educa Paraguay) that continue to work > closely with the broader community. There are also individual volunteers, > such as Tony Anderson and T.K. Kang, who help support individual schools in > Rwanda, Malaysia, et al. An open question is how do we support our users > over the long term? > > What is next for Sugar? > > We face several challenges at Sugar Labs. With the ebb of OLPC, we have a > contracting user base and the number of professional developers associated > with the project is greatly diminished. How can we expand our user base? > How can we attract more experienced developers? Why would they want to work > on Sugar as opposed to some other project? The meta issue is how do we keep > Sugar relevant in a world of Apps and small, hand-held devices? Can we meet > the expectations of learners living in a world of fast-paced, colorful > interfaces? How do we ensure that it is fulfilling its potential as a > learning environment and that our users, potential users, and imitators are > learning about and learning from Sugar. Some of this is a matter of > marketing; some of this is a matter of staying focused on our core > pedagogy; some of this a matter of finding strategic partners with whom we > can work. > > We have several near-term opportunities that we should leverage: > * Raspian: The Raspberry PI 3.0 is more than adequate to run Sugar—the > experience rivals or exceeds that of the OLPC XO 4.0 hardware. While RPi is > not the only platform we should be targeting, it does has broad penetration > into the Maker community, which shares a synergy with our emphasis on > “doing”. It is low-hanging fruit. With a little polish we could have an > image available for download from the RPi website. > * Trisquel: We have the potential for better leveraging the Free Software > Foundation as a vehicle for promoting Sugar. Their distro of choice is > Trisquel and the maintainer does a great job of keep the Sugar packages up > to date. > * Sugarizer: The advantage of Sugarizer is that it has the potential of > reaching orders of magnitude more users since it is web-based and runs in > Android and iOS. There is some work to be done to make the experience > palatable on small screens and the current development environment is—at > least my opinion—not scalable or maintainable. The former is a formidable > problem. The latter quite easy to address. > * Stand-alone projects such as Music Blocks have merit as long as they > maintain both a degree of connection with Sugar and promote the values of > the community. It is not certain that these projects will lead users > towards Sugar, but they do promote FOSS and Constructionist principles. And > they have attracted new developers to the Sugar community. > * School-server: The combination of the School Server and Sugar desktop is > a technical solution to problems facing small and remote communities. We > should continue to support and promote this combination. > > Specific actions: After last year’s Libre Planet conference, several > community members discussed a marketing strategy for Sugar. We thought that > if we could reach influencers, we might be able to greatly amplify our > efforts. There are several prominent bloggers and pundits in the education > arena who are widely read and who might be receptive to what we are doing. > One significant challenge is that GNU/Linux remains on the far periphery of > the Ed Tech world. Although the “love affair” with all things Apple seems > to be over, the new elephant in the room—Chromebooks and Google Docs—is > equally difficult to co-exist with. Personally, I see the most potential > synergy with the Maker movement, which is building up momentum in > extra-curricular programs, where FOSS and GNU-Linux are welcome (hence my > earlier focus on RPi). (There are even some schools that are building their > entire curriculum around PBL.) We can and should develop and run some > workshops that can introduce Sugar within the context of the Maker > movement. (Toward that end, I have been working with some teachers on how > to leverage, for example, Turtle Blocks for 3D printing.) It is very much a > tool-oriented community with little overall discussion of architectural > frameworks, so we have some work to do. But there is lots of low-hanging > fruit there. > > regards. > > -walter > > -- > Walter Bender > Sugar Labs > http://www.sugarlabs.org > <http://www.sugarlabs.org> > > _______________________________________________ > Lista olpc-Sur > [email protected] > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur > >
_______________________________________________ Lista olpc-Sur [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-sur
