[IAEP] What's the long term vision of Sugar Labs?

[Tony Anderson]

I became involved in this project because of its original mission: to 
provide an improved educational opportunity to primary school students 
on the wrong side of the digital divide. The responsible engineers at 
MIT (which formed OLPC) designed a remarkable computer. Even today I am 
aware of no computer on the market that offers the capabilities of the 
XO (just bigger, better, and faster).

Later OLPC split into two organizations: OLPC and SugarLabs. OLPC for 
the production and distribution of the XO laptop and SugarLabs for 
implementation and support of the software (Sugar). This split has had 
important historical consequences: SugarLabs views itself as only 
developing the software but not supporting it as a product - that task 
is left to OLPC (for the XO) and Linux distributions for other 
platforms. This creates a gap between Sugar Labs and its user community.

Two important principles governed the software: (1) it would be free, 
open source and (2) the design motivated by the concept of constructionism.

Today SugarLabs does face existential problems (not including Python3). 
These problems are rooted in your question - what is the future of Sugar?

One possible future for Sugar is that it is honorably retired along with 
the XO to computer history. Perhaps recorded as a forerunner of the 
Raspberry Pi.

Another future for Sugar is that it again asks 'How can the 
technological advances in computing be harnessed to bring the ideals of 
the Dynabook closer to reality?" What can we learn from the Raspberry Pi 
and the Maker community? Is the Dynabook to be a phone or virtual 
reality headgear or a game machine?

The critical requirement to avoid retirement is to make Sugar viable as 
an educational computing environment on the current generation of laptop 
computers. This encompasses far more than converting code from Python to 
Python3 or GTK2 to GTK3 to GTK4 to GTK99. One brilliant solution is 
Sugarizer which eliminates Python altogether. However, this comes at a 
high price and brings great opportunity - reconstruction of the vast 
library of Sugar activities. This is a chance to review the history of 
these activities and to see how they can be done more effectively based 
on that experience.

The current GSOC Write project shows that Python has many meaningful 
capabilities not yet available in Javascript. As usual, this has been 
interpreted as a problem in programming. Do we want a Javascript 
emulator of Word? What role does 'Write' plays in a constructionist 
Dynabook (preparing, editing, and publishing documents)? Such a question 
might lead to additional questions: Do we have to make the activity look 
like Word? Does a 'Dynabook' need a keyboard? Will we prepare documents 
in the future by verbal dictation? Will computer speech recognition and 
production eliminate the need for traditional literacy? What form will 
resulting document take: pdf? mp4?

Another interesting project is the 'Exerciser'. The Exerciser does 
provide for users to prepare meaningful activities but is likely to be 
primarily used for evaluation (tests and quizzes). The question for 
constructionism is the role of such 'evaluation' in education. Is it 
more appropriate to evaluate a learner's accomplishments by the results 
of his or her activities (portfolio) or by asking questions based on a 
fixed curriculum (quiz).

One of the original goals of this project - 'one laptop per child' is 
being lost essentially without a fight. Today, the 'computer lab' reigns 
supreme. The typical XO in Rwanda is shared among 5 or more learners. 
Learners are not permitted to take the laptops out of the classroom and, 
typically, have access to a laptop for only one hour per week. It is 
difficult to imagine effective learning by construction in such limited 
time. Even on the Curriculum subject of computing, the typical learner 
spends 80% of classroom time without a laptop (traditional textbook and 
lecture method).

Can we assume that in the future every child on the planet will have a 
capable personal computer? Can we assume that the interenet at 1MBs 
speed will be available and affordable to every child on the planet at 
home and at school 24/7? The current trend is the opposite - computers 
and reliable high-speed internet are available only to the privileged on 
the right side of the growing digital divide.

Above all, we need to renew spirit of the 'Give 1 Get 1' time, with 
contributors submitting Sugar activities and sponsors obtaining laptops 
to supply a school in the developing world, where the internet and 
computing have not yet taken root. This spirit has to be based on an 
expansion of the user-base on contemporary computers (e.g. Sugarizer, 
SOAS, 'sucre'). It also needs an appreciation of the expanding horizons 
available to computing - speech recognition, computer vision, massive 
data bases, machine learning, inexpensive sensors, robots, symbolic 
mathematics, ...). The critical attitude is to focus on 'what did you 
make?' and 'how did you make it?' and to avoid the temptation to do it 
for the user because you can do it better and more efficiently.

In a classroom, knowledge is available to translate program text in 
English into the native language of the learner. This is an opportunity 
for a learner to improve English vocabulary by deciding on the 
appropriate equivalence in the native language of English words and 
phrases in the program. This is a clear opportunity for contructionist 
learning.  However, this task is done very accurately and efficiently by 
a team of experts without learner participation.

Tony

On 3/29/19 10:43 AM, iaep-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>     1. What's the long term vision of Sugar Labs? (Sumit Srivastava)
>     2. Re: What's the long term vision of Sugar Labs? (Alex Perez)
>     3. Re: What's the long term vision of Sugar Labs? (Sumit Srivastava)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 05:30:55 +0530
> From: Sumit Srivastava <sumitsrisumit at gmail.com>
> To: IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> Cc: Sugar-dev Devel <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> Subject: [IAEP] What's the long term vision of Sugar Labs?
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAEzcGJxVDMDpujbLasKUGnrW5hXyeECk5nd48ZDa+jRFWq82Nw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Do we aim to be like Red Hat? Canonical? No match? Who are we closest to?
> Who do we aim to be?
>
> I understand that these are a lot of questions. You can also share relevant
> mail archive links if they're available.
>
> I also understand that we're a non profit and the organisations I mentioned
> might not be a close match.
>
> Essense of my question: If we could achieve anything, what would we want?
>
> Regards
> Sumit Srivastava
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2019 18:19:32 -0700
> From: Alex Perez <aperez at alexperez.com>
> To: IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org, Sugar-dev Devel
> 	<sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> Subject: Re: [IAEP] What's the long term vision of Sugar Labs?
> Message-ID: <63ae1aa0-7d88-2c1a-0d34-96c9f9e9d7ea at alexperez.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>
> Sumit,
>
> Great questions, and they're particularly relevant at this phase/age of
> the existence of Sugar Labs. They certainly can't be answered in a
> single e-mail, however I think this is a perfect conversation to have,
> particularly on our IAEP mailing list, which is our general purpose
> mailing list.
>
> Sumit Srivastava wrote on 3/28/19 5:00 PM:
>> Do we aim to be like Red Hat? Canonical? No match? Who are we closest
>> to? Who do we aim to be?
> Speaking as an Oversight Board member, I do not believe it is in the
> interest of Sugar Labs to attempt to emulate a company like Red Hat and
> Canonical. These companies have hundreds/thousands of paid employees,
> and their organizational structure is a product of the needs of their
> corporate customers.
>
> Right now, we have a few existential problems on the horizon, one of
> which is a long term problem, but which we now need to address in the
> short-term: Maintainability. Sugar has a lot of "technical debt", and
> unless we can complete our goal of 100% Python 3 compatibility of all
> core Sugar libraries and the toolkit, we risk the loss of being able to
> be run as a desktop environment on current versions of Linux, due to our
> reliance on Python 2. Since Python 2 has been on life support for many,
> many years, and is only nine months from being officially retired, it
> will no longer be maintained by the Python Foundation, nor included by
> default in the next versions of Fedora and Ubuntu. You can read further
> details about the sunsetting of Python 2 at https://pythonclock.org
> <https://pythonclock.org/>
>
> <https://pythonclock.org/>
>> I understand that these are a lot of questions. You can also share
>> relevant mail archive links if they're available.
>>
>> I also understand that we're a non profit and the organisations I
>> mentioned might not be a close match.
> I personally do not think the core entity of Sugar Labs should be a
> commercial entity, but non-profit organizations are completely entitled
> to be profitable, and many are quite  for the profitable. Personally, I
> would like to see the development of a federated model, where we have
> country/regionally-centered "chapters" of Sugar Labs, with Sugar Labs
> itself taking the in-the-field feedback from our distributed user base,
> and incorporating and triaging suggestions/feedback,
>> Essense of my question: If we could achieve anything, what would we want?
> I would love to see a world where Sugar was used extensively, worldwide,
> by children in the primary school age range, with a wide range of
> actively-maintained activities, relevant to the current curricula of a
> variety of countries, and of interest to elementary school teachers,
> across all socioeconomic groups. How we get there is the real question,
> assuming we want to, and have the organizational will to do so.
>
> As for what our "long term vision" is, I honestly don't think we have
> one at this point, and we should fix that, which is one of the reasons
> why I chose to run for the Sugar Labs Oversight Board. Our next meeting
> is next Friday, on 2019-04-05 at 20:00 UTC, on IRC, in the
> #sugar-meeting channel on FreeNode. Feel free to join us and observe, as
> well as ask questions before and after the official meeting commences.
>
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board
>> Regards
>> Sumit Srivastava
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 08:13:29 +0530
> From: Sumit Srivastava <sumitsrisumit at gmail.com>
> To: iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> Cc: Sugar-dev Devel <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> Subject: Re: [IAEP] What's the long term vision of Sugar Labs?
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAEzcGJxi42Ts0yQYocDKYToBJNQrmunjZzAGG5Z_qRd_qxkkiQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Great points, Alex.
>
> I would love to hear from all of you, especially the senior members of the
> SL community, before we discuss all the points one by one.
>
> Regards
> Sumit
>
> On Fri, 29 Mar 2019, 6:49 am Alex Perez, <aperez at alexperez.com> wrote:
>
>> Sumit,
>>
>> Great questions, and they're particularly relevant at this phase/age of
>> the existence of Sugar Labs. They certainly can't be answered in a single
>> e-mail, however I think this is a perfect conversation to have,
>> particularly on our IAEP mailing list, which is our general purpose mailing
>> list.
>>
>> Sumit Srivastava wrote on 3/28/19 5:00 PM:
>>
>> Do we aim to be like Red Hat? Canonical? No match? Who are we closest to?
>> Who do we aim to be?
>>
>>
>> Speaking as an Oversight Board member, I do not believe it is in the
>> interest of Sugar Labs to attempt to emulate a company like Red Hat and
>> Canonical. These companies have hundreds/thousands of paid employees, and
>> their organizational structure is a product of the needs of their corporate
>> customers.
>>
>> Right now, we have a few existential problems on the horizon, one of which
>> is a long term problem, but which we now need to address in the short-term:
>> Maintainability. Sugar has a lot of "technical debt", and unless we can
>> complete our goal of 100% Python 3 compatibility of all core Sugar
>> libraries and the toolkit, we risk the loss of being able to be run as a
>> desktop environment on current versions of Linux, due to our reliance on
>> Python 2. Since Python 2 has been on life support for many, many years, and
>> is only nine months from being officially retired, it will no longer be
>> maintained by the Python Foundation, nor included by default in the next
>> versions of Fedora and Ubuntu. You can read further details about the
>> sunsetting of Python 2 at https://pythonclock.org
>>
>> <https://pythonclock.org/>
>>
>>
>> I understand that these are a lot of questions. You can also share
>> relevant mail archive links if they're available.
>>
>> I also understand that we're a non profit and the organisations I
>> mentioned might not be a close match.
>>
>> I personally do not think the core entity of Sugar Labs should be a
>> commercial entity, but non-profit organizations are completely entitled to
>> be profitable, and many are quite  for the profitable. Personally, I would
>> like to see the development of a federated model, where we have
>> country/regionally-centered "chapters" of Sugar Labs, with Sugar Labs
>> itself taking the in-the-field feedback from our distributed user base, and
>> incorporating and triaging suggestions/feedback,
>>
>>
>> Essense of my question: If we could achieve anything, what would we want?
>>
>> I would love to see a world where Sugar was used extensively, worldwide,
>> by children in the primary school age range, with a wide range of
>> actively-maintained activities, relevant to the current curricula of a
>> variety of countries, and of interest to elementary school teachers, across
>> all socioeconomic groups. How we get there is the real question, assuming
>> we want to, and have the organizational will to do so.
>>
>> As for what our "long term vision" is, I honestly don't think we have one
>> at this point, and we should fix that, which is one of the reasons why I
>> chose to run for the Sugar Labs Oversight Board. Our next meeting is next
>> Friday, on 2019-04-05 at 20:00 UTC, on IRC, in the #sugar-meeting channel
>> on FreeNode. Feel free to join us and observe, as well as ask questions
>> before and after the official meeting commences.
>>
>> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board
>>
>>
>> Regards
>> Sumit Srivastava
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.orghttp://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
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