[IAEP] Sugar Labs - Directions of Growth

[David Farning]

These are precisely the types of discussions that will be extremely
beneficial to Sugar Labs and the Sugar project over the next several
months to a year.

The questions are about:
What do we _need_ to make our deployment work?
How do we prioritize those _needs_?
How do we work with the larger Sugar community to meet those _needs_?

david




On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Walter Bender<walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Caroline Meeks<solutiongrove at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'd like to build on this from the 100 ft level and Sugar on a Stick.
>>
>> I've been with kids this summer and when Sugar is working on the computer in
>> front of them the experience is great. Lots of learning, great engagement,
>> kids are willing to take on challenges.
>>
>> This fall I'd like to see lots of other people working with Sugar and small
>> groups of students.
>>
>> Based on my experiences this summer there are some technical/logistical
>> barriers I'd like to break down before I recruit teachers/parents/day care
>> workers to try Sugar on a Stick in group settings.
>>
>> Here are what I think the barriers are:
>>
>> Very hard to customize your spin and then copy it for a hundred kids.
>
> Can you break this down further? Are you suggesting it is hard to
> create a customized key? to replicate the key for 100s of children? or
> there is a need to customize keys per child? (a wholly new requirement
> AFAIK for which it would be useful to here a use case).
>
>> Sticks are dieing a lot! Like 1 or 2 every class.
>
> It would be helpful to see real data here. I certainly haven't seen
> these sorts of failure rates.
>
>> Backup and recovery
>> What is a reasonable expectation for the role of the XS in Sugar on a Stick
>> deployments in the next 6 months?
>
> If possible, we need a simple backup strategy independent of XS since
> the population of XSs will lag behind...
>
>> Collaboration is unreliable and thus frustrating.  Its working fairly well
>> in the wired network at the GPA lab, but no other use case seems to work
>> reliably.
>
> In fact, once we had properly configured the customization process not
> to mangle the public keys, collaboration at GPA seems to be quite
> reliable and not at all frustrating. There are some issues with
> workflow around sharing that is part of a separate discussion thread.
>
> Regarding wireless collaboration, we do need to better diagnose the
> various failure modes we have been seeing. But this has not been part
> of the SoaS pilot experience at GPA or LGF.
>
>> Using a CD helper take a lot of prep time before and after class. A floppy
>> helper would reduce it.  A VM solution might also reduce it.
>
> Some of this can be handled with better workflow. The CD can be
> rejected once the USB is booted, so it doesn't have to include a
> power-on / reject / power off cycle at the end of the class.
>
>> I'll try to expand on these in the next week and come up with a plan of
>> action for each.
>>
>> What are the other critical things we need to do in the next month or two
>> that will allow teachers/parents/daycare workers to try Sugar on a Sick?
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 6:17 PM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about how to grow Sugar
>>> Labs.
>>>
>>> Without looking at specific solutions, I would like to think about
>>> framing Sugar Labs growth in three directions:
>>> 1. Improve and stabilize the learning platform.
>>> 2. Grow towards the student.
>>> 3. Increase reach and impact.
>>>
>>> Growing in these directions will help Sugar Labs accomplish its
>>> mission.  But, hand in hand with growth we must think about how our
>>> structure as a community based projects affects that growth.
>>>
>>> The two most important factors driving growth in a community project are:
>>> 1.  A _product_ that is valuable enough for others to test, use, and
>>> improve.
>>> 2.  A _project_ that encourages users to test, use, improve, and
>>> participate in the project by sharing their improvements with the
>>> project.
>>>
>>> 'Users' is a wide term.  In the case of Sugar Labs, it can range from
>>> individuals, to companies, to national governments.  Anyone who takes
>>> a Sugar deliverable and builds on it to help someone learn is a user.
>>>
>>> To take a step back, we can think of adding value to Sugar Labs.  But,
>>> what is value? There are many definitions of value in a project such
>>> as Sugar Labs:
>>> Quality of code.
>>> Number of users.
>>> Number of headlines.
>>> Compliance to specific teaching pedagogies.
>>> ....
>>>
>>> The notion of  value that I tend to looks at, from a 50,000 feet, is
>>> 'How does Sugar Labs create a large pool of users -- who benefit
>>> enough from using Sugar -- that they, and others, are willing to
>>> invest in improving Sugar'?
>>>
>>> As a rough model we can think of value as Educational Excellence(X),
>>> Technical Excellence(Y) and Reach and Impact(Z).
>>>
>>> Growth towards educational excellence represents extending the core
>>> product towards the learner.  Possible steps include:
>>>
>>> Stable learning platform.
>>> Easy distribution mechanism -- the shift from ./configure; make; make
>>> to [rpm|apt-get] install .... was huge.
>>> Easy deployment process.
>>> Creation of base learning activities/content.
>>> Creation of specific learning curriculum to meet specific teaching needs.
>>>
>>> Going down this list, the groups involved involved tend to shift from
>>> developers to practicing educators.  We need to think of growing to
>>> include educators rather than crowding out developers.  As we move
>>> towards the right along the x-asis, each prior stage grows and
>>> improves along the y-axis
>>>
>>> In the larger context of adding value to the project, we can
>>> think of project visibility and desirability along the z-axis .  As
>>> the product grows towards the user and the quality of the product
>>> increases, the
>>> marketing team is able to increase the visibility and desirability
>>> (z-axis) of the product and project to more and more people.
>>>
>>> Another way to look at this, is to examine how a tree grows:)
>>>
>>> Tree growth is most easily measured in how much taller or wider the
>>> tree become as a result of linear grow of the trunk or branches. In
>>> addition to growing in length, new branches grow off of the trunk or
>>> existing branches.  As the length and number of the branches increase,
>>> the trunk and branches increase in width to provide both physical
>>> support and enough pores to transport water from the root to the
>>> leaves and transport energy from the leave to the roots.
>>>
>>> In this analogy, the length of the branches can represent market
>>> penetration.  Sugar must become useful enough to penetrate deeply into
>>> the learning occurring at individual schools.  As Sugar penetrates in
>>> to individual schools, those efforts can be "branched" to migrate
>>> sugar into additional schools.
>>>
>>> Finally, the education, deployment, development, and support teams
>>> must grow proportionally to support the deployments while pulling the
>>> ideas and
>>> improvements from the schools back up stream.
>>>
>>> david
>>> --
>>> David Farning
>>> Sugar Labs
>>> www.sugarlabs.org
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Caroline Meeks
>> Solution Grove
>> Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>>
>> 617-500-3488 - Office
>> 505-213-3268 - Fax
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>
> -walter
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>