[IAEP] constructionism and Linux, was Re: Sugar Labs Mission & The 6 lesson Schoolteacher

[D. Joe]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 01:03:09PM -0500, James Simmons wrote:

> I'd rather the children used Linux myself (that's all I use at home) but
> realistically I don't see it happening, unless the kids do it themselves.

This is what is so exciting about Sugarizer: One of the platforms it
targets, Android, is in many signifcant respects the most widely used Linux
distribution on the planet.  There's no need to sneak it into schools, or to
cajole it into the hands of children.  What's more, at least a couple of the
original goals for the OLPC XO--ubiquity through low cost and aggressive
power management--have been brought to fruition and continue to be pursued
by the Android market. We don't have to fight a strong current the entire
way, we may be able to row along with it, just enough to steer towards our
own goals,

That said, Android is heavily fractured and very consumer oriented, and
works pretty directly against the concept of general-purpose computing
embodied by form factors like traditionally-conceived desktops and laptops. 
The complexity of the development and production environment, and the
limitations from its heavy focus on centralized, network-based services is
fraught, at least as I see how they interact with goals like empowering
individual learners and supporting their autonomy.  Nor is it as free (as in
freedom) as I'd like.  Thus, I don't endorse the wholesale abandonment of
Sugar on other platforms.

Even so, it seems to offer a more tractable and more palatable path than do
some other, more proprietary consumer-orientated platforms that, at the very
least, elso encourage a centralizing, passivating dependence amongst their
customers.  These other OSes may offer benefits from being still in
widespread use, in part no doubt due to a certain level of regulatory
capture, but Android is where the growth is at.

My understanding is that Sugar, like the constructionist approach behind it,
is meant to support open-ended learning.  I see a dichotomy pushed in a few
of the discussions here, setting everyone else against developers.  This
flies in the face of the possibilities that at least some Sugar learners
will indeed *become* developers, that some *should* become developers, and
that the rise of future Sugar developers from the broader pool of Sugar
learners demonstrates constructionism at its best.  Not every learner should
have to become a developer, no, but those that do should be able to use
Sugar on their way.

If that is to happen, we should keep that path as clear as we can and in my
mind that includes Sugar running on general-purpose computing platforms that
can host some, if not all, development activities.  Maybe someday web+mobile
platforms will be self-hosting, and it will be routine to build systems from
the kernel on up in web browsers.

Until that happens, though, I'd like to think that a Sugar learner will not
be limited in their ability to move smoothly from introductory activities
all the way through to running Develop or Terminal (or, on the XOs, OFW) or
activities yet to be developed or incorporated into the broader Sugar
platform, from whence they have access to the entire computing stack,
without limit.

-- 
D. Joe