[IAEP] Child in charge of FOSS or Sugar

[Teemu Leinonen]

On 21.9.2010, at 20.48, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Teemu Leinonen <teemu.leinonen at aalto.fi 
> > wrote:
>> The issue is even more important when the project is claiming to
>> promote FLOSS culture, like in the case of Sugar. In my definition of
>
> That is _not_ the primary goal of Sugar. Sugar aims for lots of goals,
> first and foremost, is about children as users, and their learning.

About 30 lines before the part you are quoting I wrote:

"I think, it is extremely important to state openly that in the Sugar  
project one of the key approaches is the free software culture. I  
actually interpret it to be part of the "mission statement" or "sub- 
mission" that should guides the project and the software development."

I naturally understand that there are many goals in this kind of  
project, but the approach (free software culture) is pretty clearly,  
and as I said I highly appreciate it, expressed in the web site in here:

http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=page&page=education

> One of the key aspects of the FOSS culture that is very visible in
> Sugar is that it is something explorable, learnable, hackable (as
> opposed to a black-box).

Definitely and this is great. What I as an educator would find  
extremely fascinating is that FLOSS culture would be visible also in  
other aspects of the project: in the learning activities (I think it  
partly is) and in the whole design philosophy and practice of the  
platform. I think, this would require to give for the end-users  
(children and teachers) more freedom to be critical and constructive  
with the development. It could even mean facilitating and empowering  
them to do it.

> Other aspects of FOSS are less applicable to primary-school age
> children and their learning, so...


Really? I strongly disagree.

	- Teemu

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Teemu Leinonen
http://www.uiah.fi/~tleinone/
+358 50 351 6796
Media Lab
http://mlab.uiah.fi
Aalto University
School of Art and Design
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