These are some of my thoughts in response to both Walter's New Year's message and Bryan's threads on supporting easier activity creation.   Before I started Education school my background was all technical and one of my "Ah Ha" moments in my first  semester was understanding that Educational Theory is not like scientific theory.  Scientists actually believe that each new model of the atom is fundamentally more correct then the previous ones.  I think this is not so with educational theories.  My analogy is that they are hills from which to survey the battle, each giving you a different perspective on what actions you might take to improve learning.   Sugar's pedagogical foundation is Constructionism.  Wikipedia states: "Constructionism holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are actively making things in the real world."   One of the huge values that computers bring to education is the ability to create more learning artifacts that are both better and more authentic. By authentic I mean that the many artifacts a student can create with a computer to show what they have learned about a topic are fundamentally similar to the work products many information workers create.  Computers let us keep and organize more work products per student more easily than folders of paper.  Our goal, that Walter and Evangeline  are currently working towards with the portfolio project, is that keeping and organizing these artifacts results in reflection and thus supports learning.   Computers in general, and Sugar in particular, also support collaboration. Vygotsky is a source of pedagogy that stresses the importance of social relationships and context in learning.  Notice how, though it might change what an activity would emphasize, this is = not contradictory to the importance of actively creating things.   Thus my goal for Sugar would be that it encourages:   1. Creating rich artifacts.  2. Sharing and learning in a social context  3. Reflection  So our goal for supporting activity designers is as they transfer their ideas from the Mimeograph world to Sugar that the process of "Sugarizing" the mimeograph content encourages movement towards what we consider important.   I like concrete user stories that help situate thinking.  So let's make up a story of the young teacher and the similarly aged aunt/uncle of one of the students who has recently graduated from a local technical computer skills program and has the desire to volunteer to spend hours with the young teacher helping to create a Sugarized activity that the students will use.  You can set this story in Nepal or Birmingham but take a minute to make a mental picture of these people working together; Situated Cognition theory says that you will learn better and remember more if you have rich imagery.   :)   So the teacher wants to help the students with a problem that they will be tested on using standardized testing. Perhaps it's using a grammatical structure that is present in the official formal language but not present or different in the local venacular,  e.g. "I ain't got no pencil" to "I don't have any pencils".  The teacher has a bunch of zeroxed sheets of exercises that have been used since the mimeograph ages and the school has always gotten very low standardized test scores in this area.   Yes we need to think about whether these people are using Python, eToys, JavaScript or Flash to convert these worksheets into a Sugarized activity, but we also need to think about how the process of Sugarizing can help them create a more effective learning experience for these students then the original mimeographed exercises.   If our documentation on sharing activities includes examples and information on why social learning is important perhaps this pair will decide to create an activity where students correct each other's work, or make challenges for each other to change from informal to formal grammar.  If our documentation about saving things to the journal includes information on how the students use the journal for reflection and how it improves learning the pair may get ideas on how to create an activity that allows the students to progress and see how their work has improved from one month or year to the next.   So as we discuss how we are going to make it easier for activity developers to use what they know, such as Flash, JavaScript etc. let's also keep our eye on the goal of helping them to create better learning experiences by sharing, in context and in an accessible manner, what the Sugar developers know about pedagogy and learning.  -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove Caroline@SolutionGrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax