Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] 2017 Goals for Sugar Labs

[Walter Bender]

On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 1:08 PM, Lionel Laské  wrote:

> Hi Walter,
>
> Thanks a lot for this long proposal. Great to hear you on that.
> I think that it's more a Sugar history than a goal/vision but it's good to
> read it from a guy that was the major contributor of the history.
>

I don't think it is wise to discuss goals without context. That said, while
you say my email is not about goals, the rest of your reply is in response
to the specific goals I outlined. Curious.

>
> BTW I'm not agree with your goals.
> My view is that it's not a good idea to limit Sugar/SugarLabs to makers.
> We can't target a so small market:
> - RaspberryPI ? RPI is a great tool. I personally used 2 RPI weekly for my
> personal usage. But it's a tool for geeks not for learners. It could be a
> good device as server (we're using it in classroom in France and in
> Madagascar and it's good for XSCE too) but it's a very poor tools for
> children: no screen, no keyboard, no mouse, not even a power adapter. It's
> just a board ! So I don't see the interest of Sugar on it.
>

I think you are failing to see the forest for the trees. I don't know the
extent to which you are spending time in education circles, but for
example, at EdFoo last weekend, the majority of the energy in the
unconference was all about making. The RPi is not a ends in itself but a
door into the energy that is current in EdTech. If we can get some pick up,
we have a great lever for amplifying and growing our community. That said,
the amount of effort required on our end is small -- a GSoC project at most
-- to take advantage of this.

- Trisquel ? Probably a nice Linux distribution but how many users ? Not at
> all a largely distributed distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu.  Why doing
> effort on it ?
>

I mention Trisquel not because it involves any work on our behalf -- Ruben
is doing that work already -- but rather to be able to point to that work
as an example of how the FSF and FOSS movement could rally around us.
Again, to whatever extent that they have synergy with us and help promote
us, this is a benefit.

>
> I can't understand you even mention Windows support in your goals: just
> 99,9% of the PC market ! So if you're a Windows user you can't be a target
> for SugarLabs ? Plus, regarding devices: we should be better on touch
> devices because tablets is the favorite learning tools in classroom today,
> not PC. It's why Android (80% of the tablet market) and iOS are so
> important in my mind. We should go where users - children/teachers - are !
>

I don't know where you are getting your data, but I don't believe for a
second that Windows controls 99.9% of the school market and even if it were
true, the Windows desktop market in schools is waning (not good news for us
either). Chromebooks are are the rise. And, to a lesser extent, Android
tablets. (Apple is losing market share). It is exactly for these reasons I
think we should be putting effort into Sugarizer. It has been discussed --
most recently since Samson's April 1 prank -- that a Windows port is
probably not worth the effort given our limited resources. Still open to
hearing arguments to the contrary.

>
> We can't target makers just because Sugar has synergy with them and
> because we hope they help us to spread the world tomorrow.
>

Why not?


> Our goals should be to deploy Sugar as a mainstream solution for everyone
> not a solution for a bunch of geeks. It's the only way to expand the Sugar
> community. You told about OLPC: the goal of One Laptop Per Child was to
> give a laptop to EVERY child, our goal should be to give Sugar to EVERY
> child too. The marketing effort should be in that way, no need to do
> marketing for makers, I'm sure they found us themselves.
>

I don't think there is only one path forward. And I see no reason to
abandon our GNU/Linux platform as long as we have developers willing to
maintain it and users who want to use it. Even if it is never mainstream,
it shows the way towards a great learning experience.


>
>  Lionel.
>
> P.S.: Regarding Sugarizer maintainability, it's just your opinion. Not
> sure it's the opinion for 20 others Sugarizer contributors. I don't think
> you could judge Sugarizer maintainability only because you've not
> successfully updated TurtleJS activity inside. I don't have success running
> TurtleJS on my side and had a very bad experience when trying to Sugarize
> it, it's not a reason for me to give a judgement about TurtleJS
> maintainability.
>

We can continue to disagree about this too. I think that I am not alone in
expressing the opinion that the way in which you have structured the git
repo for Sugarizer is unwieldy and that there are trivial ways to improve
it. It may be well suited for an individual maintainer (and side kick) but
it is not modeled after any community project I am aware of. As far as I
can tell, the 20 contributors built individual apps but have no easy way of
updating them. (It 

Re: [IAEP] [SLOBS] 2017 Goals for Sugar Labs

[Lionel Laské]

Hi Walter,

Thanks a lot for this long proposal. Great to hear you on that.
I think that it's more a Sugar history than a goal/vision but it's good to
read it from a guy that was the major contributor of the history.

BTW I'm not agree with your goals.
My view is that it's not a good idea to limit Sugar/SugarLabs to makers.
We can't target a so small market:
- RaspberryPI ? RPI is a great tool. I personally used 2 RPI weekly for my
personal usage. But it's a tool for geeks not for learners. It could be a
good device as server (we're using it in classroom in France and in
Madagascar and it's good for XSCE too) but it's a very poor tools for
children: no screen, no keyboard, no mouse, not even a power adapter. It's
just a board ! So I don't see the interest of Sugar on it.
- Trisquel ? Probably a nice Linux distribution but how many users ? Not at
all a largely distributed distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu.  Why doing
effort on it ?

I can't understand you even mention Windows support in your goals: just
99,9% of the PC market ! So if you're a Windows user you can't be a target
for SugarLabs ? Plus, regarding devices: we should be better on touch
devices because tablets is the favorite learning tools in classroom today,
not PC. It's why Android (80% of the tablet market) and iOS are so
important in my mind. We should go where users - children/teachers - are !

We can't target makers just because Sugar has synergy with them and because
we hope they help us to spread the world tomorrow.
Our goals should be to deploy Sugar as a mainstream solution for everyone
not a solution for a bunch of geeks. It's the only way to expand the Sugar
community. You told about OLPC: the goal of One Laptop Per Child was to
give a laptop to EVERY child, our goal should be to give Sugar to EVERY
child too. The marketing effort should be in that way, no need to do
marketing for makers, I'm sure they found us themselves.

 Lionel.

P.S.: Regarding Sugarizer maintainability, it's just your opinion. Not sure
it's the opinion for 20 others Sugarizer contributors. I don't think you
could judge Sugarizer maintainability only because you've not successfully
updated TurtleJS activity inside. I don't have success running TurtleJS on
my side and had a very bad experience when trying to Sugarize it, it's not
a reason for me to give a judgement about TurtleJS maintainability.




2017-04-09 15:31 GMT+02:00 Walter Bender :

> 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