[IAEP] [SLOBS] The Future of Sugar on a Stick

[Caroline Meeks]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 5:12 PM, Benjamin M. Schwartz <
bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

> Sebastian Dziallas wrote:
> > So my vision is that this SoaS is actually *the* way of distributing
> > Sugar, as a SL product. If Sugar Labs doesn't think so, I'd have
> > preferred to be informed much earlier.
>
> I don't think you're likely to find much support for that vision as
> phrased.  I think this may just be a wording problem.
>

SoaS has the potential to be a great way to provide access to
computing in many settings.  But its not the only
way nor does it always make sense.  For instance as Oscar Becerra,Chief
educational Technologies Officer, Ministry of Education of Peru points out
 "it is impossible to run 50 watt fragile high skill maintenance machines
like the netbooks in rural villages that are weeks away from any form of
civilization." http://www.undispatch.com/node/8859#comment-346

I also think its vital in the long term for SoaS to be compatible with LTSP
like solution for school computer labs, while still allowing children to
boot directly from their stick on a standalone, no internet computer at
home.  That is part of my vision for SoaS.

My dream is that Sugar is a platform that lets people around the world and
from various contexts work together on content, activities and pedagogy and
learn together how to use computers as effective, and cost effective,
learning tools.

I want SoaS to expand that learning community into places that have existing
computer hardware, I don't want  it to be a divider.  Yes, we need to
organize our technical work efficiently.  But when that is done lets be sure
that educators and volunteers and the press see Sugar as one thing that they
can contribute to and help children both near and far, in developing and
developed countries, to learn to learn.



> Some people here have distributed Sugar on hand-tuned hardware-specific
> customized disk images.  Some have distributed it using distro packages,
> to be installed directly on pre-existing Linux installations.  Some have
> built emulator images, installed, configured, and ready to run on any OS.
>  Some have configured Sugar to run on thick NFS clients, or thin LTSP
> clients.
>
> SoaS is a great way to distribute Sugar, but it will certainly never be
> "*the* way", as long as all these other people are around, working hard on
> other distribution mechanisms.
>
>
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>


-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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