[IAEP] [Sugar Labs PR-en] Sugar Labs, Educational Nonprofit Provider of Learning Software for Children, Celebrates Digital Learning Day with Two Google Code-In Grand Prize Winners

[Sugar Labs Public Relations]

Sugar Labs(R), Educational Nonprofit Provider of Learning Software for
Children, Celebrates Digital Learning Day with Two Google Code-In
Grand Prize Winners

CAMBRIDGE, Mass, February 5, 2013 - Sugar Labs(R), educational
nonprofit provider of free and open-source learning software for
children, is proud to celebrate Digital Learning Day February 6th [1]
with Google Code-In [2] grand prize winners Agustin Zubiaga Sanchez
and Aneesh Dogra, who participated brilliantly in Google's annual
program for middle and high school students aged 13 to 17. Over 50
participants from 14 countries, mentored by 22 Sugar Labs volunteers,
helped to improve Sugar. The winners will visit Google headquarters in
Mountain View, CA this spring. Google Code-In and its sister program
for university students, Google Summer of Code, invite open source
organizations to mentor students who work on real programming and
documentation tasks.

Agustin (Aguz to his friends) is 15, lives in a village in Uruguay and
is a recent graduate of Rafael Perazza Technical High School at
Universidad del Trabajo del Uruguay. After using Sugar for several
years, his computer club teacher encouraged him to learn the Python
programming language used in Sugar. One of his projects involved code
to add background images to Sugar's Home View. He says, "I started
programming thanks to Sugar and now I am very happy to be one of its
developers."

Aneesh, also a winner at last year's Google Code-In, is 17 and lives
in Punjab, India. He worked on updating a large number of Sugar “Apps”
for children and contributed to the "Make Your Own Sugar Activities!"
ebook [3]. Having won previous honors, including runner-up in last
year's Raspberry Pi Summer Coding Contest [4], he is interested in
audiovisual applications and computer security. More information about
Aneesh is available on his blog [5].

"We had a hard time choosing our winners," commented Chris Leonard,
Sugar Labs liaison for Google Code-In. "Fully a third of our
participants completed multiple tasks. Aneesh was prolific, completing
over 40 tasks, and Aguz made fundamental improvements to the Sugar
platform itself. All of our participants learned over these past three
months. Notably, one participant, Daniel Francis of Uruguay, had to
take his name out the running because he was elected to the Sugar Labs
Oversight Board during the contest at the ripe old age of 14."

"Six years after Sugar first appeared in classrooms, its first
generation of learners are becoming tomorrow's engineers, writers, and
teachers," said Walter Bender, founder of Sugar Labs. "Aguz and Daniel
grew up with Sugar in Uruguay where Sugar is used in every school and
Google Code-In had its first ever participant from Peru, where Sugar
is part of the nationwide curriculum as well. Sugar was designed to be
low floor, no ceiling and its Journal, Activities, built-in
collaboration and View Source features make Sugar ideal for the
classroom."

Sugar is used in developing countries worldwide through the One Laptop
Per Child program [6], but it also appeals to all children discovering
the digital 21st century. Dr. Gerald Ardito, a Sugar Labs board
member, as well as a middle school teacher and professor of Computer
Science in Westchester, NY, has used Sugar in a variety of educational
settings. "It is so powerful to watch students be able to take real
ownership of their learning when they are using Sugar", he said. "I
have seen them time and time again move from being consumers of
computer centered media to producers."

Sugar Labs wishes to thank Google and in particular Bradley Kuhn,
executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, parent
organization of Sugar Labs and 27 other free/libre software projects.

Photo: http://www.sugarlabs.org/press/SugarLabs_GCI_2012_Winners.jpg
Photo legend: Agustin Zubiaga Sanchez (L) and Aneesh Dogra (R)

[1] http://www.digitallearningday.org
[2] http://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/2012
[3] http://www.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities
[4] http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2544
[5] http://anee.me
[6] http://laptop.org


About Sugar Labs(R): Sugar Labs(R), a volunteer-driven, educational
nonprofit organization, is a member project of the Software Freedom
Conservancy. Originally part of the One Laptop Per Child project,
Sugar Labs coordinates volunteers around the world who are passionate
about providing educational opportunities to children through the
Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar Labs(R) is supported by donations and
is seeking funding to accelerate development. For more information,
please visit http://www.sugarlabs.org/press or contact
pr at sugarlabs.org.

Sugar Labs(R) is a registered trademark of the Software Freedom
Conservancy. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners.