[Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2009-12-15

[Walter Bender]

=== Sugar Digest ===

1. Last Friday a team from Babson College presented a project report
on their strategy for Sugar deployments in US schools. Natalia
Grigoras, Wei Lin, and Anna Ivashko participated in a semester-long
study of Sugar as part of a Management Consulting Field Experience
course. Their mentor was George Lee.

The team undertook the tasks modeling the target audience, uncovering
barriers, studying impact, and developing a strategy and
recommendation for effectively implementing Sugar in US school
systems. I had been working with them throughout the fall; Bernie,
Dogi, Luke, Adam, and I attended their final presentation, which will
soon be posted in the wiki.

Their methodology included secondary research into existing systems,
funding models, etc. and primary research in the form of interviews
with teachers, superintendent, technology specialist, etc.

Their findings include an analysis of Sugar’s strengths (breadth,
flexibility, collaborative experience, focus on children) and
shortcomings (need for extensive up-front training, lack of centralize
support, reliability, and resistance to change). Their recommendation
include:
* more web-based support for educators and end-users;
* standardized guidelines and training programs for teachers during
their first exposure to Sugar; and
* targeted marketing approach to superintendents and technology coordinators.

2. Tomeu Vizoso has been in Uruguay both attending the Ceibel 09
conference and meeting with teachers and the LATU engineering team.
While we await his “trip report” (hint) an immediate consequence of
his visit is more of a presence of .uy on the #sugar channel in IRC.

3. Tony Forster has created a great [http://tonyforster.blogspot.com
series of blog posts] on creative uses of Turtle Art. He has couched
these presentations within the context of a discussion of interactive
multimedia and critical literacy in media.

4. The minutes of last week’s Sugar oversight-board meeting are
available in the Sugar Labs wiki. We tackled a number of issues,
including several motions in regard to the outstanding questions that
had been in front of the Sugar-on-a-stick decision panel. The
discussion will continue this Friday, 18 December, at 15UTC (10EST) in
#sugar-meeting on irc.freenode.net.

=== Tech Talk ===

5. Simon Schampijer’s work on systematizing th new feature process for
Sugar development has led to a number of great discussions on IRC.
Search for the tag [Feature] in the devel list.

=== Sugar Labs ===

6. Gary Martin has prepared a map of last week’s discussion on the
Sugar IAEP mailing list (Please see
http://wiki.sugarlabsorg/go/File:2009-Dec-5-11-som.jpg).

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org