Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs 2017 Budget

[Laura Vargas]

2017-03-01 22:38 GMT-05:00 Tony Anderson :

> Sorry Laura
>
>
The money is better kept in the bank until Sugar Labs has an objective and
> understands what kind of resources it needs.
>
>
Thanks for writing Tony!

First and for the sake of democracy, let's make it clear to all learners
here that there is a regular process for Budgetary decisions at Sugar Labs:
it is the Sugar Labs Oversight Board as a whole, who are responsible for
approving Budgetary decisions by a majority of votes over specific
proposals expressed on specific motions.

So far, the Open Badges initiative is still maturing in a wiki page thanks
to everybody's feedback.



> It is good that Sugar Labs is considering a budget for this year (a gross
> dereliction last year). However, an organization makes a budget to fund its
> planned projects for the year.
>


As humans, we should hurry to gain consciousness that money is a dynamic
resource that transfers trust and passion whenever invested in human
resources.

The ideal scenario would be to have a Budget planned ahead for every year.

I have never heard of one that starts out with 'we have this money, how can
> we spend it.'
>
>
So far because of our lack of financial planning, funds have remained
unused and unfortunately this financial paralysis has translated into
loosing more and more funds! According to Adam, Sugar Labs missed receiving
US$40,000 because of our collective inaction with the Trip Advisor grant
:(


Our goal for localization should be to enable our users to perform
> localization on their own laptops, i.e. view it as an opportunity for
> constructive learning.
>

+1

If you have any specific proposal for the 2017 SL Budget to consider please
do share.



> Naturally, the professionals can do it faster and more efficiently. That
> is always the problem when you are trying to develop the capabilities of
> learners, but that investment is the business we are in. Localization is
> interesting because the most important skill is knowledge of two languages
> such as English and Yoruba. This is precisely the skill that is readily
> available in a Sugar deployment in a Yoruba-speaking region (and not in a
> professional enclave in Boston).
> In Peru, it is incomprehensible that we don't have current localization in
> every local language since every Peruvian child has a laptop with Sugar.
>
>

I agree English learning must be part of the learners outcome when
contributing to localization. One thing important to clarify is that not
"every Peruvian child has a laptop with Sugar".

As for planning localization efforts, one thing important to understand
from local context is that languages Quechua and Aymara are shared with
other Andean countries. All other languages are Amazonian languages shared
with the other countries on the Amazon Basin, where there are more than 350
indigenous ethnic groups, who speak more than 300 languages.



> The major need for Sugar Labs is to create a process for releasing
> Sugarversions to be installed on current platforms: PCs, Raspberry Pi, and
> Windows 10. The resources capable of accomplishing that have professional
> skills and a day job. They need to be motivated to spend their own time.
> They need to be 'sung' heroes but will probably be 'unsung'.
>
>
Wishful thinking won't take us in any direction. We need to be assertive
and decide on how to better support our infrastructure and the work of
active contributors as they do deliver!

First, an active contributor contributes to meet a perceived need.
> Currently, we greet potential contributors with 'create a development
> environment and fix a random bug'. We ask our potential contributors to be
> familiar with git (although it isn't actually used). We don't ask these
> candidates to become familiar with Sugar or read 'Making your own Sugar
> activity'.
>
> We need to ask contributors to the build and distribute project what they
> know about uefi and grub2, livecd tools, making debian images for Raspberry
> Pi, and so on.
>


After many successfully delivered and deployed open source products, I have
learned you can not ask developers to do X or Y. They would do what they
like and they will use what they feel comfortable with. I guess that is why
we need to be creative and design innovative engaging strategies.



> This skill set is available at XSCE and I have never heard a discussion
> there about how those talented volunteers are to be compensated.
>
Several are at ScaleX at this moment, a location where it might be possible
> to recruit some of the technical skills Sugar Labs needs. Adam Holt is
> there, so at least one SLOB could be working in the interest of Sugar Labs.
>
We have approved an 'outreachy' intern but I have no idea what project the
> intern will be asked to undertake (generating an SOAS image from our github
> repository would be high on my list).
>


I think the Outreachy experience will be a nice learning case. I understand
sponsorship is meant 

Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs 2017 Budget

[Samson Goddy]

+1 Tony you deserved an Oscar. Am i the only thinking we just got a mission
and vision plan based on Tony explanation?

Samson

On 2 Mar 2017 3:44 am, "Tony Anderson"  wrote:

I hope I have made myself clear. The future of Sugar Labs, if it has any,
is to provide Sugar on all widely distributed platforms so that it becomes
a viable option for potential adopters. Sugar Labs needs to understand that
a parent or educator who is looking for an educational platform is not
going to build a development environment and demonstrate their knowledge of
PRs by fixing random bugs or install a Fedora desktop to generate an SOAS
stick.

Sugar Labs needs to release 0.110 for easy installation on PCs, Raspberry
Pi, and Windows 10. It then needs to document  'Get Sugar' on the Sugar
Labs website for non-technical computer users. It needs to re-focus on the
goal to provide a constructionist learning environment for primary school
children. None of this requires an academic analysis suitable for an MBA
dissertation.

Naturally, Sugar Labs needs to continue to work with James Cameron to
provide viable software for the XO. We must thank Lionel Laske every day
for understanding this issue and developing Sugarizer to provide some of
Sugar's capabilities to the huge installed base of mobile devices which do
not support Python.

I think we need to remember the mission of OLPC/Sugar - to provide a better
learning opportunity to children on the wrong side of the digital gap. Our
hope should be that wide availability of Sugar on PCs and Raspberry Pis
will make it a viable alternative for installation in the deployments
served by Computers for Kids, Rachel, and others where there is no internet
availability, no prior computer experience for either teachers or students,
and no funds to purchase anything. These deployments depend on donated
equipment from organizations and individuals on the right side of the gap.

This, of course, is the fundamental problem of SOAS. It serves an
environment where a child has access to a computer at home and sometimes
one at school. SOAS makes it possible for the student to carry the learning
environment between the two worlds. However, on the wrong side of the gap,
there is no concept of a computer at school and a second at home. In many
cases the reality is that there is no electricity at home. In this
environment Sugar needs to be installed on the local storage of the
computer.

These millions of Android devices have a basic problem - they depend on
connection to a network. In additon, the UI is designed for consumption and
is not conducive to constructive learning. How many of its myriads of
education apps are available open-source, free and for offline use?
Sugarizer and GCompris show that it is possible to work around this design
and its hyper-commercialized face.

In the meantime, miraculously there may be a school with Sugar on XOs and,
hopefully, a schoolserver to stand in for the internet. Even more
hopefully, the school allows the children to take a computer home with
content to work on which was downloaded from the schoolserver (so far, a
dream generally unfulfilled).

OLPC is fading not just as an organization but as a concept. Even some of
our most robust OLPC deployments are moving to the computer lab model. The
Raspberry Pi in, for example, the Computer for Kids deployments, is in a
lab (the computer with keyboard, monitor and without a battery is not
portable). The only hope for constructive education is to find a way that
these labs can be made available to students after-hours or on weekends for
unprogrammed use. This critical issue seems invisible to the Sugar Labs
community.

One requirement that our current developers seem to have forgotten is that
in an environment without the internet, students need to download content
to the laptop so they can work with it away from the school server or other
network resource. How does a student read Alice in Wonderland online in a
classroom or computer lab? This implies a school server which serves the
content from the internet selectively to computers with very limited
storage capacity. Hand-waving at the internet like the Get Books activity
or web services is relevant in Boston or other location with 24/7 broadband
internet but not on the other side of the gap. Modifying Browse to replace
the Read and Jukebox activities without support for downloading the media
and playing it from the Journal is similarly misdirected.

Given that neither students or teachers in this environment have been
brought up in a 'computer culture', without help - nothing happens. It is
not economically feasible to provide counselors to work directly with the
teachers to stage, for example, a Turtle Art day (i.e. as a way to
introduce teachers and students to new capabilities available on the
computer). My current focus is on providing 'turtleart day-like'
documentation showing students how to perform tasks step-by-step to explore
new 

Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs 2017 Budget

[Tony Anderson]

Sorry Laura

The money is better kept in the bank until Sugar Labs has an objective 
and understands what kind of resources it needs.


It is good that Sugar Labs is considering a budget for this year (a 
gross dereliction last year). However, an organization makes a budget to 
fund its planned projects for the year. I have never heard of one that 
starts out with 'we have this money, how can we spend it.'


Our goal for localization should be to enable our users to perform 
localization on their own laptops, i.e. view it as an opportunity for 
constructive learning.
Naturally, the professionals can do it faster and more efficiently. That 
is always the problem when you are trying to develop the capabilities of 
learners, but that investment is the business we are in. Localization is 
interesting because the most important skill is knowledge of two 
languages such as English and Yoruba. This is precisely the skill that 
is readily available in a Sugar deployment in a Yoruba-speaking region 
(and not in a professional enclave in Boston).
In Peru, it is incomprehensible that we don't have current localization 
in every local language since every Peruvian child has a laptop with Sugar.


The major need for Sugar Labs is to create a process for releasing 
Sugarversions to be installed on current platforms: PCs, Raspberry Pi, 
and Windows 10. The resources capable of accomplishing that have 
professional skills and a day job. They need to be motivated to spend 
their own time. They need to be 'sung' heroes but will probably be 'unsung'.


First, an active contributor contributes to meet a perceived need. 
Currently, we greet potential contributors with 'create a development 
environment and fix a random bug'. We ask our potential contributors to 
be familiar with git (although it isn't actually used). We don't ask 
these candidates to become familiar with Sugar or read 'Making your own 
Sugar activity'.


We need to ask contributors to the build and distribute project what 
they know about uefi and grub2, livecd tools, making debian images for 
Raspberry Pi, and so on. This skill set is available at XSCE and I have 
never heard a discussion there about how those talented volunteers are 
to be compensated. Several are at ScaleX at this moment, a location 
where it might be possible to recruit some of the technical skills Sugar 
Labs needs. Adam Holt is there, so at least one SLOB could be working in 
the interest of Sugar Labs.


We have approved an 'outreachy' intern but I have no idea what project 
the intern will be asked to undertake (generating an SOAS image from our 
github repository would be high on my list). This seems to be our focus, 
recruiting resources without any idea of why these resources are needed.


Tony

On 03/02/2017 09:16 AM, Laura Vargas wrote:



2017-02-25 20:33 GMT-05:00 Tymon Radzik >:


Our funds deserve to be spent in more orgnization-beneficial way.


Hello Tymon,

Sorry it took me a while to reply.

This Budget discussion is an open door for proposals, please do share 
yours as this policy making is also an educational process and 
therefore an ideal arena for learning!



Open Badges are proposed as an award for historic achievements, there 
is no conflict of interest when you have numeric results that support 
your performance.


I think this discussion leads to the question of what would make a 
Sugar Labs member an *active contributo*r? and of course, would 
rewarding active contributors stimulate regular members to become 
active contributors?


Those are valid questions that should and can be easily tested with 
for example the implementation Open Badges.


I would say at least one of the following must happen for a given 
period of time for a regular member to be considered an active 
contributor:


1- The member contributed periodically to at least one of the Sugar 
Labs Teams.


2- The member has had active leaderships of at least one of the Sugar 
Labs Projects.


3- The member directly contributed with code and/or with Sugar 
Projects translations.



All this data is available from logs, wiki, mailing list, etc. I hope 
for the future of the community and it's users, the recognition of 
active contributors becomes soon an open strategy for Sugar Labs 
evolution.


:D

Regards,

--
Laura V.
*I SomosAZUCAR.Org*

“No paradox, no progress.”
~ Niels Bohr

Happy Learning!

Best,
Tymon






___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs 2017 Budget

[Tony Anderson]

I hope I have made myself clear. The future of Sugar Labs, if it has 
any, is to provide Sugar on all widely distributed platforms so that it 
becomes a viable option for potential adopters. Sugar Labs needs to 
understand that a parent or educator who is looking for an educational 
platform is not going to build a development environment and demonstrate 
their knowledge of PRs by fixing random bugs or install a Fedora desktop 
to generate an SOAS stick.


Sugar Labs needs to release 0.110 for easy installation on PCs, 
Raspberry Pi, and Windows 10. It then needs to document  'Get Sugar' on 
the Sugar Labs website for non-technical computer users. It needs to 
re-focus on the goal to provide a constructionist learning environment 
for primary school children. None of this requires an academic analysis 
suitable for an MBA dissertation.


Naturally, Sugar Labs needs to continue to work with James Cameron to 
provide viable software for the XO. We must thank Lionel Laske every day 
for understanding this issue and developing Sugarizer to provide some of 
Sugar's capabilities to the huge installed base of mobile devices which 
do not support Python.


I think we need to remember the mission of OLPC/Sugar - to provide a 
better learning opportunity to children on the wrong side of the digital 
gap. Our hope should be that wide availability of Sugar on PCs and 
Raspberry Pis will make it a viable alternative for installation in the 
deployments served by Computers for Kids, Rachel, and others where there 
is no internet availability, no prior computer experience for either 
teachers or students, and no funds to purchase anything. These 
deployments depend on donated equipment from organizations and 
individuals on the right side of the gap.


This, of course, is the fundamental problem of SOAS. It serves an 
environment where a child has access to a computer at home and sometimes 
one at school. SOAS makes it possible for the student to carry the 
learning environment between the two worlds. However, on the wrong side 
of the gap, there is no concept of a computer at school and a second at 
home. In many cases the reality is that there is no electricity at home. 
In this environment Sugar needs to be installed on the local storage of 
the computer.


These millions of Android devices have a basic problem - they depend on 
connection to a network. In additon, the UI is designed for consumption 
and is not conducive to constructive learning. How many of its myriads 
of education apps are available open-source, free and for offline use? 
Sugarizer and GCompris show that it is possible to work around this 
design and its hyper-commercialized face.


In the meantime, miraculously there may be a school with Sugar on XOs 
and, hopefully, a schoolserver to stand in for the internet. Even more 
hopefully, the school allows the children to take a computer home with 
content to work on which was downloaded from the schoolserver (so far, a 
dream generally unfulfilled).


OLPC is fading not just as an organization but as a concept. Even some 
of our most robust OLPC deployments are moving to the computer lab 
model. The Raspberry Pi in, for example, the Computer for Kids 
deployments, is in a lab (the computer with keyboard, monitor and 
without a battery is not portable). The only hope for constructive 
education is to find a way that these labs can be made available to 
students after-hours or on weekends for unprogrammed use. This critical 
issue seems invisible to the Sugar Labs community.


One requirement that our current developers seem to have forgotten is 
that in an environment without the internet, students need to download 
content to the laptop so they can work with it away from the school 
server or other network resource. How does a student read Alice in 
Wonderland online in a classroom or computer lab? This implies a school 
server which serves the content from the internet selectively to 
computers with very limited storage capacity. Hand-waving at the 
internet like the Get Books activity or web services is relevant in 
Boston or other location with 24/7 broadband internet but not on the 
other side of the gap. Modifying Browse to replace the Read and Jukebox 
activities without support for downloading the media and playing it from 
the Journal is similarly misdirected.


Given that neither students or teachers in this environment have been 
brought up in a 'computer culture', without help - nothing happens. It 
is not economically feasible to provide counselors to work directly with 
the teachers to stage, for example, a Turtle Art day (i.e. as a way to 
introduce teachers and students to new capabilities available on the 
computer). My current focus is on providing 'turtleart day-like' 
documentation showing students how to perform tasks step-by-step to 
explore new capabilities. In Rwanda, this led to teacher training on how 
to access and use the documentation - with the documentation available 

Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs 2017 Budget

[Laura Vargas]

2017-02-25 20:33 GMT-05:00 Tymon Radzik :
>
> Our funds deserve to be spent in more orgnization-beneficial way.
>
>
Hello Tymon,

Sorry it took me a while to reply.

This Budget discussion is an open door for proposals, please do share yours
as this policy making is also an educational process and therefore an ideal
arena for learning!


Open Badges are proposed as an award for historic achievements, there is no
conflict of interest when you have numeric results that support your
performance.

I think this discussion leads to the question of what would make a Sugar
Labs member an *active contributo*r? and of course, would rewarding active
contributors stimulate regular members to become active contributors?

Those are valid questions that should and can be easily tested with for
example the implementation Open Badges.

I would say at least one of the following must happen for a given period of
time for a regular member to be considered an active contributor:

1- The member contributed periodically to at least one of the Sugar Labs
Teams.

2- The member has had active leaderships of at least one of the Sugar Labs
Projects.

3- The member directly contributed with code and/or with Sugar Projects
translations.


All this data is available from logs, wiki, mailing list, etc. I hope for
the future of the community and it's users, the recognition of active
contributors becomes soon an open strategy for Sugar Labs evolution.

:D

Regards,

-- 
Laura V.
* I SomosAZUCAR.Org*

“No paradox, no progress.”
~ Niels Bohr

Happy Learning!


> Best,
> Tymon
>
>
>
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs 2017 Budget

[Dave Crossland]

Thanks for clarifying :)

The question remains then: Is Sugar Labs to direct attention entirely to a
few hundreds of very-to-somewhat old XO laptops maintained by experts like
Tony and those in Caacupe, or to the millions of children who have
computers/tablets capable of accessing/installing Sugarizer, or to some mix
of the two; and if the latter, what mix is appropriate in 2017 and 2018?

On 1 March 2017 at 05:26, Tony Anderson  wrote:

> All models are obviously xo-1, xo-1.5, xo-1.75 and xo-4. Sugarizer is not
> relevant since the XOs deploy Sugar. The Sugarizer activities are mostly
> also available as Sugar web activities. We are using the Python Turtle
> blocks.
>
> Tony
>
>
> On 02/28/2017 02:29 PM, Dave Crossland wrote:
>
>
>
> On Feb 27, 2017 11:34 PM, "Tony Anderson"  wrote:
>
> For what it's worth, Sugar 0.110 (OLPC OS 13.2.8) has been installed on
> hundreds of XO laptops, all models in Rwanda. The codebase is reaching
> these classrooms.
>
>
> That is great to know!!! :)
>
> What xo models are those?
>
> Does anyone know of any other classrooms using the latest release?
>
> I am not sure what you mean by the js codebase, but if you mean the sugar
> web activities. Yes they are available for optional installment (along with
> the other activities in ASLO)
>
>
> Sugarizer
>
>
>


-- 
Cheers
Dave
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep