[IAEP] Sugar Labs mission statement.

[Sameer Verma]

Edward Cherlin wrote:
> 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". 

I agree with Walter on this one. The scope of what Sugarlabs addresses
should lie within what the Sugar platform does. So, for instance, if we
want to run Sugar on an XO, or a Eee PC, the power saving mechanisms
shouldn't be something Sugarlabs should have to address. Those bits
should come from the underlying OS, be in Linux, BSD or even Windows.

Sameer

> 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
>>>>         
>
>