[IAEP] [somos-azucar] Cursos Creados Por Mentores y Por Voluntarios

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Thanks Carlos
 
> The fact is that Sugar has many problems.  Most of the education software available through the large number of XOs distributed has been written by computer experts without any consultation or feedback from the educators that specialize in the 6-to-11-year-old students for whom the XOs were intended.  Those educators are the elementary school teachers who are active today teaching grades 1 trhu 6 in the schools in Uruguay.
>

There is a lot of software available, some good and some not so good. It is written by unpaid volunteers. Anything you can do to increase communication between predominantly Spanish speaking teachers and English speaking developers would be greatly appreciated. You are potentially important in this because you are fluent in both languages, enthusiastic and understand the issues. 


> All you have to do is to follow the local lists and read the messages.  Elementary school teachers and kids are wasting precious time and energy and risking frustration,  trying to fix or go around the challenges posed by Sugar.
> 
> As an example of the type of programming good students are forced to learn if they want to use their computers,  let me mention a message posted today by one of them,  pointing to this page
> 
> http://www.mediagala.com/rap/foro/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=752&p=3654#p3654

I viewed this link with Google Translate and it looks like it is getting round the locking of root by Ceibal. This is like the unavailability of the Gnome desktop discussed in the previous mail which is also a decision of Ceibal.

Many at Sugarlabs will be unhappy with these decisions of Ceibal to lock down the laptops. This is an issue which is best argued with Ceibal by Spanish speaking Uruguay teachers and citizens.

You need to convince Ceibal that unlocking the laptops is in the best interests of the children's education and worth the risk of increasing maintanance costs and reducing reliability. There are a lot of education researchers that argue that empowering children with technology increases its educational value, http://genyes.org/ is one.

Tony