I liked Tom Hoffman's blog post (reposted here as "My Thoughts on Sugar") because he did attempt to integrate the technology features of OLPC with some of the desired educational advantages  (eg. collaborative writing, saving without a file system):<br> <div style="margin-left: 40px;">" In a sense, the whole OLPC project is designed to maximize the opportunity for kids to undertake collaborative Sugar activities. That's why you need a cheap laptop with great power consumption and mesh networking"<br> </div><br>I think the Human Interface Guidelines are great as general guidelines<br><a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines</a><br> - Tom's post connected some of those general principles to how would they would be applied in situ by a teacher in a classroom, or under a tree ;-)<br> <br>Perhaps evolution could also be a unifying theme?<br><br>Like everything else operating systems and  user interfaces evolve - Sugar is part of that ongoing evolution, eg. we need a community user interface to supplement the old desktop idea <br> <br>(Dan Ingalls has argued that we should do away with OS altogether --> "<i>An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one.")</i><br><br>The idea that learning theories evolve too - referring to Walter's arguments with Seymour (untangling constructionism thread) that MicroWorlds is too stand-alone and we need to add to that more communication and collaboration features:<br> <br><div style="margin-left: 40px;"> The one point that Seymour and I argued about quite a bit was the role of collaboration. Tools such as Microworlds tend to be solo activities--although there can be a culture of sharing around the activity. With Sugar, we strive to add additional affordances for communication and sharing so that it would, again, be more likely that children and their mentors would interact.<br> </div> <br>Piaget: constructivism (learners create their own internal connections and structures)<br>Papert: constructionism (that process is facilitated by meaningful tools for building such as logo, LEGO, ISDP etc)<br>Bender: (and also by meaningful tools for communication and collaboration such as OLPC and Sugar)<br> <br>Through necessity the OLPC had to initially focus on solving hardware and software problems - those issues are still very important but we have reached a stage now where the educational issues require more focus too (the need to build some sort of bridge between those who want to focus on the educational issues and  developers who want to focus on improving Sugar)<br><br>"its an education project"<br><br>Summary:<br><ul><li>Learning practice and theory needs to evolve as technology evolves</li><li>There needs to be a wide bridge built connecting developers to educators</li> <li>Sugar software development and understanding its educational importance is a current focus of those principles</li></ul><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 1:24 AM, Kevin Cole <<a href="mailto:kevin.cole@gallaudet.edu">kevin.cole@gallaudet.edu</a>> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d">On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Walter Bender <<a href="mailto:walter.bender@gmail.com">walter.bender@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br> > Help me craft the about statement. I think the discussion should be<br> >  about Sugar as a technology in support of learning. That certainly<br> >  includes discussion of epistemology and learning as they inform the<br> >  Sugar development. There is also a need, especially at this juncture,<br> >  to discuss some mechanics of getting a sustainable development<br> >  community model set up.<br> <br> </div>Depending upon who you want to attract, it might be nice to have an<br> opening sentence which summarizes, for the unwashed masses, what makes<br> Sugar "sweeter" than anything that's come before it.  At the risk of<br> excommunication, I became aware of Sugar only after becoming aware of<br> a little green and white box.  Software's kind of useless without<br> hardware to run it on, and while I'm a strong advocate of open source<br> in education (and everywhere else), what drew me in to all these<br> recent mailing lists was the idea of a low-cost, low-power box with a<br> mesh network and a built-in webcam that converges with my open source<br> zealotry.  That box doesn't necessarily need to be the XO, and I like<br> to think that the XO et al are just the baby steps in what can and<br> will evolve.<br> <br> Key to the "About" is explaining to "the unwashed masses" or even the<br> "washed masses".  Speaking as a member of the semi-washed, don't<br> assume people are already reading every mailing list out there and are<br> already up-to-speed with the history.  (Maybe a link to more in depth<br> coverage elsewhere to get them up to speed, but not lots and lots of<br> links to wade through.)<br> <div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">_______________________________________________<br> Its.an.education.project mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:Its.an.education.project@tema.lo-res.org">Its.an.education.project@tema.lo-res.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project" target="_blank">http://lists.lo-res.org/mailman/listinfo/its.an.education.project</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br><br>