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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">+1</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">OK Folks, let's take a look at this idea of "critical mass." There are 2 kinds of critical mass we need to be thinking about here. </p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Developers, as has been said , are a given. But, even more important is the critical mass of users... ie students and educators who are using Sugar in its various forms on all sorts of computers.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">It is like the chicken and egg. Which needs to come first? I maintain they are equally important and that perhaps we have been been neglecting the user at the expense of the developer. Are we putting all our chickens in the egg basket?</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">If you can get the users, the developers will follow. The reverse may not be true. We need the really simple to use version that can be put on either a usb drive or LiveCD by the average school tech person and used in the classroom by the computer-shy teacher.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">I appreciate all of the hints you folks have sent in response to my request for a stable LiveCD version to take to Argentina this month. But I will have to take a lot of time to figure it out and test it before I go. Time I have. I'm pretty tech-savvy but not very PC saavy... I'm a Mac/XO person). A PC I don't have. I guess that is a problem. I will have to go visit someone who has one to try it. If it works right away...great. If not, not great.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">What needs to happen to achieve that second part of the critical mass is the educators need to have a place on our website, or somewhere. It needs be very inviting, easy to understand, give links to the stable, easy to use version I refer to above. It needs links to resources with ideas for using the software, and to a place for them to share their ideas. This should be very easy to find from a very friendly first page of the wiki (maybe a little schoolhouse icon?).</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Strange how the more I write, the longer the paragraphs get! I gotta run to the AgNeeds store now to get some iron for my unhappy orange trees. BBL.</p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">Caryl/Carolina</p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica"><br></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica">P.S. A Sugar booth at SCaLE where we could really wow folks. If I could take the same sort of great, easy to use LiveCD version to show at my OSSIE track presentation on Feb 19 we would be reaching educators.</p>                                            </body>
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