Each Participants will receive their own Sugar on a Stick (SoaS), a Live USB version of Sugar, which will run on (almost) any computer, bringing new life to old equipment.

The workshop will continue with hands on exploration of some of the many Activities available including browsing, word processing, rich media creation, presentation, programming, and other learning activities suitable for elementary and middle school students. We will also explore the journal and portfolio components, which allow teachers and parents to monitor student work.

We will explore the three experiences that characterize the Sugar Learning Platform:

1.Sharing: Collaboration is a first-order experience. Participants will learn how to use Sugar's collaboration features to share ideas and work as they explore some of the creative Sugar Activities.

2.Reflecting: A “Journal” records each learner's activity. It serves

as a place for reflection and assessment of progress—the basis of a

portfolio. Participants will learn how to help students take advantage of this valuable feature and how to utilize it in tracking student progress.

3.Discovering: Sugar accommodates a wide variety of users with

different levels of skill in terms of reading and language and

different levels of experience with computing. Sugar is easy to

approach, yet it does not put an upper bound on personal expression.

The learner is able to peel away layers and go deeper and deeper, with

no restrictions. This allows the direct appropriation of ideas in

whatever realm the learner is exploring: music, browsing, reading,

writing, programming, or graphics.

Under the guidance of the workshop leader, participants will have ample time to explore and create with Sugar Activities during the workshop.

At the end of the workshop:

* Participants will leave with their own USB copies of Sugar On a Stick.  It all contain Sugar and of the work they did in the workshop.  It can later be inserted and run on almost any other computer.  

* Participants will know how to create (and update) as many copies of Sugar On A Stick as they need for their own classes. 

* Participants will understand how the Journal Activity works and how to help their students make use of it.

* Participants will have experience using several popular Sugar Activities, including Memorize, Write, and Turtle Art and know how to find and download new activities from the Sugar Activities Portal.

Using creative, collaborative, software such as Sugar increases the likelihood that computation will be used as a tool for critical thinking in the context of open-ended exploration and discovery, going beyond the use of the computer as a tool of instruction. Participants will leave ready to use this wonderful tool with their students.

Note: Sugar is free and open-source software, freely available to anyone who wants to use it. The Sugar Learning Platform is free software that is being bundled with all major GNU/Linux distributions. It can also be downloaded free from:

www.sugarlabs.org