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

[Walter Bender]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 7:49 AM Sumit Srivastava <sumitsrisumit at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Insightful inputs, Tony. I want to discuss all of the stuff being talked
> about here, but not now.
>
> Please keep the emails coming, we need more of them from the community,
> especially people who've been with SL for a long time.
>
>
> On Fri, 29 Mar 2019, 11:31 am Tony Anderson, <tony_anderson at usa.net>
> wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
> 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.
>>
>
I respectfully disagree with Tony on this point. A consequence of the split
is the Sugar Labs does not have the same access to deployments that it did
when there was just one organization. But whenever we have been given the
opportunity to directly work with a deployment, we have been responsive.
The gap does exist, but only when we are left out of the discussion.

>
>> [snip]
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
In fact, the Sugar experience on RPi is pretty terrific. Some of us have
been pushing hard to get more pickup in the communities that embrace RPi.

>
>> 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?
>>
>
While I think the maker movement is great stuff (and one of the
education-ideas-du-jour) I don't think it is always as focused on
Contructonism as construction. I think we have some features, such as the
journal and portfolio activity, that could help focus the learning
potential of that movement.

>
>> 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.
>>
>
We put a lot of effort into making Sugar be accessible to its users at both
the level of user and developer and I continue to believe that is a central
aspect of our value-add. While I am largely platform agnostic, I don't see
the current efforts in JavaScript as being focus on this. I had begun a
somewhat facetious project years back: turtles all the way down, where we
would write every Sugar activity in Turtle Blocks. This is more in the
spirit of the Dynabook and Smalltalk (or Etoys). If we want to be more than
a collection of apps, we need to thing bigger.

>
>> 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?
>>
>
 Writing is more about editing than transcription (whether through voice or
a keyboard).

>
>> 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).
>>
>
Lip-service to the worst aspects of education.

>
>> 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).
>>
>
Not sure what Sugar Labs can do about that except to try to subvert it by
ensuring that the tools that the children use in the classroom lead then to
discover a bit about the tools themselves along the way.


>
>> 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.
>>
>
Another dormant project. I recall the kids in the very first school in
Abuja writing their own spelling dictionary in Igbo. These are the real
Sugar opportunities.

>
>> Tony
>>
>> On 3/29/19 10:43 AM, iaep-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
>> > Send IAEP mailing list submissions to
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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
>> > -------------- next part --------------
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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
>> > -------------- next part --------------
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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
>> @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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>> > _______________________________________________
>> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> > IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
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>> _______________________________________________
>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
<http://www.sugarlabs.org>
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