<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
I hope I have made myself clear. The future of Sugar Labs, if it has
any, is to provide Sugar on all widely distributed platforms so that
it becomes a viable option for potential adopters. Sugar Labs needs
to understand that a parent or educator who is looking for an
educational platform is not going to build a development environment
and demonstrate their knowledge of PRs by fixing random bugs or
install a Fedora desktop to generate an SOAS stick.<br>
<br>
Sugar Labs needs to release 0.110 for easy installation on PCs,
Raspberry Pi, and Windows 10. It then needs to document 'Get Sugar'
on the Sugar Labs website for non-technical computer users. It needs
to re-focus on the goal to provide a constructionist learning
environment for primary school children. None of this requires an
academic analysis suitable for an MBA dissertation.<br>
<br>
Naturally, Sugar Labs needs to continue to work with James Cameron
to provide viable software for the XO. We must thank Lionel Laske
every day for understanding this issue and developing Sugarizer to
provide some of Sugar's capabilities to the huge installed base of
mobile devices which do not support Python. <br>
<br>
I think we need to remember the mission of OLPC/Sugar - to provide a
better learning opportunity to children on the wrong side of the
digital gap. Our hope should be that wide availability of Sugar on
PCs and Raspberry Pis will make it a viable alternative for
installation in the deployments served by Computers for Kids,
Rachel, and others where there is no internet availability, no prior
computer experience for either teachers or students, and no funds to
purchase anything. These deployments depend on donated equipment
from organizations and individuals on the right side of the gap. <br>
<br>
This, of course, is the fundamental problem of SOAS. It serves an
environment where a child has access to a computer at home and
sometimes one at school. SOAS makes it possible for the student to
carry the learning environment between the two worlds. However, on
the wrong side of the gap, there is no concept of a computer at
school and a second at home. In many cases the reality is that there
is no electricity at home. In this environment Sugar needs to be
installed on the local storage of the computer.<br>
<br>
These millions of Android devices have a basic problem - they depend
on connection to a network. In additon, the UI is designed for
consumption and is not conducive to constructive learning. How many
of its myriads of education apps are available open-source, free and
for offline use? Sugarizer and GCompris show that it is possible to
work around this design and its hyper-commercialized face.<br>
<br>
In the meantime, miraculously there may be a school with Sugar on
XOs and, hopefully, a schoolserver to stand in for the internet.
Even more hopefully, the school allows the children to take a
computer home with content to work on which was downloaded from the
schoolserver (so far, a dream generally unfulfilled). <br>
<br>
OLPC is fading not just as an organization but as a concept. Even
some of our most robust OLPC deployments are moving to the computer
lab model. The Raspberry Pi in, for example, the Computer for Kids
deployments, is in a lab (the computer with keyboard, monitor and
without a battery is not portable). The only hope for constructive
education is to find a way that these labs can be made available to
students after-hours or on weekends for unprogrammed use. This
critical issue seems invisible to the Sugar Labs community.<br>
<br>
One requirement that our current developers seem to have forgotten
is that in an environment without the internet, students need to
download content to the laptop so they can work with it away from
the school server or other network resource. How does a student read
Alice in Wonderland online in a classroom or computer lab? This
implies a school server which serves the content from the internet
selectively to computers with very limited storage capacity.
Hand-waving at the internet like the Get Books activity or web
services is relevant in Boston or other location with 24/7 broadband
internet but not on the other side of the gap. Modifying Browse to
replace the Read and Jukebox activities without support for
downloading the media and playing it from the Journal is similarly
misdirected.<br>
<br>
Given that neither students or teachers in this environment have
been brought up in a 'computer culture', without help - nothing
happens. It is not economically feasible to provide counselors to
work directly with the teachers to stage, for example, a Turtle Art
day (i.e. as a way to introduce teachers and students to new
capabilities available on the computer). My current focus is on
providing 'turtleart day-like' documentation showing students how to
perform tasks step-by-step to explore new capabilities. In Rwanda,
this led to teacher training on how to access and use the
documentation - with the documentation available through the school
year. Since there was no funding for a schoolserver, this led to a
roomserver - serving the documentation and other content from an SD
card using SimpleHTTPServer.py and the adhoc networks.<br>
<br>
The new science curriculum in Rwanda, thanks to the efforts of Eric
Kemenyi at Rwanda Education Board, calls for school-age children to
learn programming in Scratch, Etoys or Turtle Art. Amazingly, Sugar
supports all three plus learning to program in Python and in web
technology (static: html/css and animated: javascript). This is not
to mention the essential tool for Linux users, bash scripting. <br>
<br>
Imagine the excitement of a primary school student who discovers
that it is possible to write a program in python (e.g. hello world)
and have this program appear on the Home View (with the help of
Pippy). Imagine the motivation to learn to make a custom icon for
the program in svg. Imagine the motivation to make the program
available to classmates by collaboration or via a schoolserver. This
is the way constructive education should work - get a learner
started at a simple level and show the path to increasing
capability. <br>
<br>
The educational potential of Sugar is amazing and amazingly
neglected. Consider that we have deployments in Uruguay and Peru
which have resulted in every person in both countries under the age
of 20 being familiar with Sugar. The Sugar Labs community appears to
be totally oblivious to this experience with remarks like - are
there any computers with 13.2.8 installed? As most of you know, a
pet peeve of mine is that localization is viewed by Sugar Labs as a
professional enterprise, not a learning opportunity for our users. <br>
<br>
Arguably, Sugar Labs has more experience with promoting constructive
1-1 learning supported by computers than anyone on the planet. What
advantage are we taking of this experience? Why don't we know how
many laptops are deployed within a factor of 10? Why don't we know
what version of Sugar is installed. (It is easy for developers to
update Sugar hourly but it is another story to take Sugar on a
three-day hike in the Andes to reflash the XOs). Most importantly,
why don't we know what are the successes and failures of these
deployments? Try to name a feature of Sugar introduced based on the
experience of one of our deployments.<br>
<br>
None of this has to do with the age of the XO. It is still the only
alternative for deployments envisioned by the OLPC concept. Its
design brilliantly met this requirement. Unlike brake pads,
electronics don't wear out. There are components such as the battery
that do. The solid-state store apparently does also. <br>
<br>
So naturally, it would be helpful to have in serial production a
$200 laptop with the capabilities of the XO for new or expanding
deployments. I have been looking for the past five years but have
not found anything even close to a viable alternative.<br>
<br>
Keeping the XOs running needs some product development. First, we
need a replacement battery whose design avoids current transport
restrictions on lithium batteries. The solid-state problem is much
simpler: On the XO-1, go to the sd card image. On the later models,
replace the micro-sd chip. In deployments, the major problem with
the XO is not performance, it is storage capacity.<br>
<br>
Tony<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 03/01/2017 06:04 PM, Dave Crossland
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAEozd0yzJTEJGQ1=-QP+wn4+PNprgZQ2qTaOK_1mCk2yQP7A3Q@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Thanks for clarifying :) <br>
<br>
The question remains then: Is Sugar Labs to direct attention
entirely to a few hundreds of very-to-somewhat old XO laptops
maintained by experts like Tony and those in Caacupe, or to the
millions of children who have computers/tablets capable of
accessing/installing Sugarizer, or to some mix of the two; and
if the latter, what mix is appropriate in 2017 and 2018?</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 1 March 2017 at 05:26, Tony Anderson
<span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:tony_anderson@usa.net" target="_blank">tony_anderson@usa.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> All models are
obviously xo-1, xo-1.5, xo-1.75 and xo-4. Sugarizer is not
relevant since the XOs deploy Sugar. The Sugarizer
activities are mostly also available as Sugar web
activities. We are using the Python Turtle blocks.<span
class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
Tony</font></span>
<div>
<div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<div class="m_-5378354507941109827moz-cite-prefix">On
02/28/2017 02:29 PM, Dave Crossland wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="auto">
<div><br>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 27, 2017 11:34
PM, "Tony Anderson" <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:tony_anderson@usa.net"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tony_anderson@usa.net">tony_anderson@usa.net</a></a>>
wrote:<br type="attribution">
<blockquote
class="m_-5378354507941109827quote"
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px
#ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">For what it's
worth, Sugar 0.110 (OLPC OS 13.2.8) has
been installed on hundreds of XO laptops,
all models in Rwanda. The codebase is
reaching these classrooms.</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">That is great to know!!! :) </div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">What xo models are those?</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Does anyone know of any other
classrooms using the latest release?</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote
class="m_-5378354507941109827quote"
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px
#ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> I am not
sure what you mean by the js codebase, but
if you mean the sugar web activities. Yes
they are available for optional
installment (along with the other
activities in ASLO)</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Sugarizer</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Cheers<br>
Dave</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</body>
</html>