[Its.an.education.project] Support of current deployments... Or: The core mission.

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Hey all,

amongst all the things that have been discussed on this list over the 
past days and weeks there's one issue that I feel hasn't received the 
attention it deserves:

How are we / the Sugar 2.0 people / the "learning² foundation" going to 
support and work with the current deployments in Peru, Nepal, Mongolia, 
Haiti, et al?

In my mind this core question directly relates to many other things that 
have been discussed such as feedback loops and collaboration between 
stakeholders such developers, teachers, deployment teams on the ground, 
local volunteer organizations, people with experience in sustainable 
development, large entities such as MoEs, UNESCO, NGOs, etc. (another 
core topic in my opinion)

At one point very early in the discussion - probably before many of you 
joined in - Ivan Krstic wrote the following:

"Bottom line, I think the idea of a single organization consulting on 
software/content/deployment is compelling: let OLPC turn into a laptop 
vendor as they appear determined to, but have *a place where countries 
can go to make the laptops actually serve an educational purpose, 
regardless of which laptops they're buying*."

We / the Sugar 2.0 people / the "learning² foundation" could (and in my 
opinion should) be that place. We can talk about constructivism, APIs, 
documentation, packages, etc. all day long but it won't make a 
difference unless actual deployments are effected by our efforts.

On a more personal level for me this core mission also answers the 
question that Antoine van Gelder asked over the weekend: "Education is a 
huge project, where do I see myself fitting in?"

My €0.02,
Christoph