[IAEP] Sugar Labs mission statement.

[Edward Cherlin]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 5:47 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> The way I had been using platform is somewhere in between: not
> OS-specific, but not all aspects of the ecosystem, which would even
> include low-power, alternative energy, etc. These are important, but
> outside of the scope of Sugar Labs, IMHO.

Well, then, whose scope is it in? Earth Treasury takes a much more
inclusive view of the overall mission, as in "whatever it takes"
rather than "the bits I would prefer to work on". Thus, textbooks,
curricula, electricity, Internet connectivity, microfinance, linking
schools, teaching children business...

We are accepting volunteers, resources, and ideas. Anyone care to help
us with a Web site?

> ---
>
> The Sugar learning platform reinvents how computers can be used for
> education: it promotes sharing, collaborative learning, and
> reflection. Through Sugar's clarity of design, children and their
> teachers have the opportunity to use computation on their own terms;
> they are free to reshape, reinvent, and reapply both software and
> content into powerful learning activities. Sugar is a community
> project; it is available under the open-source GNU General Public
> License (GPL) to anyone who wants to extend it.
>
> Sugar Labs is a non-profit foundation whose mission is to produce,
> distribute, and support the use of the Sugar learning platform; it
> serves as a support base and gathering place for the community of
> educators and software developers who want to extend the platform and
> who have been creating Sugar-compatible applications.
>
> ---
>
> The details can be found on http://sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs.
>
> -walter
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 2:52 AM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>> David Farning wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 22:25 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Arjun Sarwal <arjun at laptop.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> IMHO the mission statement should also  include a mention of how
>>>>> educators  are an integral part of defining and structuring the
>>>>> ecosystem.
>>>>>
>>>> I hope that the mission and the ecology include bringing teachers,
>>>> students, and parents together on creating the new curriculum and a
>>>> new kind of Free textbook incorporating Sugar software capabilities.
>>>
>>> I am reluctant to start enumerating specific groups in the community.  I
>>> welcome anyone who shares the goals of 'building an educational platform
>>> based on the principles of collaboration, reflection, discovery.'

Inclusion is the issue, not enumeration.

>> How would you define "platform". Is it specific as in OS, or generic as
>> in "ecosystem"?
>>
>> Sameer
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>> San Francisco State University
>> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
>>
>>
>>>>  I
>>>> am concerned that we are putting so much effort into software and
>>>> essentially nothing into new textbooks. (FLOSS Manuals and some
>>>> developers are doing a great job on documentation, but that is a
>>>> separate issue.)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Sugar Labs is a community project;)  If anyone is not happy with the
>>> community direction 'patches are welcome.'

What does that mean in practice? I'm willing to work on these issues,
and have proposed several such projects in the past. But now I am told
again that my ideas are "out of scope".

>>> thanks
>>> dfarning

-- 
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And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place,
And Truth my destination.