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Sorry, this didn't get copied to IAEP as I intended but only webt to
Sugar-Devel<br>
<br>
Tony<br>
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<td>Re: [Sugar-devel] [IAEP] 2017 Goals for Sugar Labs%</td>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">Date: </th>
<td>Mon, 10 Apr 2017 10:52:04 +0800</td>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">From: </th>
<td>Tony Anderson <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:tony_anderson@usa.net"><tony_anderson@usa.net></a></td>
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<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org">sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org</a></td>
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Hi, Walter<br>
<br>
Thanks for this. I feel at long last the community may actually
get involved in a serious discussion about what we are about and
what we need to do.<br>
<br>
Discussion about whether to support Trisquel or Raspberry Pi or
Windows is a distraction. The fundamental requirement is that
Sugar be available on mainstream platforms. The perception that
Sugar is software limited to the XO should be replaced by Sugar as
a effective learning platform available to anyone and usable on
their own computer, free and unencumbered by eulas. Naturally,
this requires that we make it so.<br>
<br>
If a credible Raspberry Pi image is easy to do, for God's sakes do
it! if it can be distributed as a part of NOOBs, do it! If
Trisquel is a viable Sugar distribution, then for God's sake
document where it can be obtained and how to install it.<br>
<br>
Aslam Kishwer told me, 'Make Sugar available on Windows.' It
doesn't matter if Windows is installed on 99% or 10%. Like it or
not, Microsoft has made learning 'Office' the sine qua non of
using computers in the classroom. It needs a Sugar image,
installable as a Windows application (a la wubi). <br>
<br>
A Sugar image needs to be a file that can be installed from a
local computer. In remote locations, the internet may not be
available. Even with available broadband access, downloading
software directly to each of 40 computers is not practical.<br>
<br>
A Sugar image needs to be supported by Sugar Labs and its
community. Currently, the XO provides 0.110 while SOAS and Ubuntu
16.04 provide earlier versions. So the a Sugar release needs to be
images for the supported platforms. Sugar activities need to work
on supported releases (which will involve significant community
effort to test in the release cycle). <br>
<br>
Our intended users are not software developers and so the
installation technique needs to be comfortable and not require
steps unfamiliar to the average computer user.There are simple gui
versions of dd which could be used. SOAS is installable by dd from
an image. This is not a conclusion you would reach from the Sugar
Labs site which starts with requiring the installation of Fedora!
<br>
<br>
In the context of 'making', I think we need to consider who are
the 'makers'. The makers are our Sugar users - primary school
children. Unfortunately, Sugar Labs seems to be moving to a closed
community of software developers and computer science students. As
a result our support environment is evolving to tools not
available to our users - translate.sugarlabs.org, github, and our
current mantra: 'build a development environment'. All of these
isolate our users from the 'making' of Sugar (esp. activities and
localization).<br>
<br>
Our focus in programming in visual languages. This is a great
start. However, it is what educators call scaffolding. We need to
use the tools we have and develop others to help our users program
in text languages - Python and Javascript (with HTML and CSS).
Currently our focus is 'View Source'. This is not a path to
encourage making and violates the constructionist principle to
start from what the user knows. More effective would be to focus
on 'Making Your Own Sugar Activity' and the supporting tools
(PyTute, HelloWorld, HelloWebWorld, Pippy). Programming today in
text languages is not more difficult than it was in Basic or
Pascal on the Apple II. <br>
<br>
One vehicle which supports the maker community is the Makerfaire.
Adam Holt and his team have effectively represented Sugar at some
of these. One requirement is to provide an opportunity for
visitors to use the available computers to do something with the
computer. There ia a Pi and More conference in Trier on June 24,
2017. I would love to be able to show Sugar on the Raspberry Pi
there. The essential requirement is a viable and supported image
that is available to the attendees. Ideally such an exhibit would
show a Raspberry Pi as a server with XSCE and others as Sugar
systems with monitors, keyboards, and mouses. <br>
<br>
Tony<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 04/10/2017 08:03 AM, Walter Bender
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CADf7C8uW-CUNFktd3uRm9Gh5+Jb4khr4BFKx6ZkyQ8dGyQvydQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 7:56 PM,
Dave Crossland <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:dave@lab6.com"
target="_blank"><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:dave@lab6.com">dave@lab6.com</a></a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="auto">Hi
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Thanks Walter. I'd like to better
understand some additional context before diving in
:)<br>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Does this mean Sameer you have
stopped the project planning process you started,
and we should not expect you to restart it again?</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>At the most recent SLOB meeting Samson brought up the
fact that we were still waiting and so I volunteered to
write something up to get the conversation going again.</div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Walter, are these the goals for this
year, or are they your proposal for the goals for
this year?</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Not sure I understand what you are asking. I wrote up
a draft of goals but they are not "the goals" until we
agree to them.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>regards.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-walter</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
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<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div>
<div class="h5">On Apr 9, 2017 3:31 PM, "Walter
Bender" <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:walter.bender@gmail.com"
target="_blank">walter.bender@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br type="attribution">
</div>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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<div class="h5">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>As per the discussion in the last Suagr
Labs Oversight Board Meeting, I had agreed
to write a draft statement of goals for
2017. The document below includes feedback
from Samson G. I hope this document can
serve to revitalize our discussion from
2016 that never reached resolution.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sugar Labs Plans, Goals, Aspirations</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>What is Sugar Labs?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sugar Labs creates, distributes, and
maintains learning software for children.
Our approach to learning is grounded in
Constructionism, a pedagogy developed by
Seymour Papert and his colleagues in the
1960s and 70s at MIT. Papert pioneered the
use of the computer by children to help
engage them in the “construction of
knowledge.” His long-time colleague
Cynthia Solomon expanded up his ideas by
introducing the concept of engaging
children in debugging as a pathway into
problem-solving. Their 1971 paper, “Twenty
things to do with a computer”, is arguably
the genesis of contemporary movements such
as the Maker Movement and Hour of Code.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>At the core of Constructionism is
“learning through doing.” If you want more
learning, you want more doing. At Sugar
Labs we provide tools to promote doing.
(We focus almost exclusively on tools, not
instructional materials.) However, we go
beyond “doing” by incorporating critical
dialog and reflection into the Sugar
learning environment, through mechanisms
for collaboration, journaling, and
portfolio.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sugar Labs is a spinoff of the One
Laptop per Child (OLPC) project and
consequently it has inherited many of its
goals from that project. The goal of OLPC
is to bring the ideas of Constructionism
to scale in order to reach more children.
A particular focus is on children in the
developing world. In order to meet that
goal, Sugar, which was originally
developed for OLPC, was by necessity a
small-footprint solution that required few
resources in terms of CPU, memory,
storage, or network connectivity. The
major change on focus from the OLPC
project is that Sugar Labs strives to make
the Sugar desktop available to multiple
platforms, not just the OLPC XO hardware.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Who develops Sugar?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sugar Labs is a 100% volunteer effort
(although we do occasionally raise money
for paid student internships). Sugar
development and maintenance is incumbent
upon volunteers and hence we strive to
provide as much control as possible to our
community members, including our
end-users. (In fact, one of our assertions
is that by enabling our users to
participate in the development of the
tools that they use will lead to deeper
engagement in their own learning.) Towards
these ends, we chose the GPL as our
primary license. It has been said of the
GPL that it “restricts my right [as a
developer] to restrict yours [as a user
and potential developer]”, which seems
ideal for a project that wants to engage a
broad and diverse set of learners. But at
Sugar Labs we go beyond the usual goals of
FOSS: a license to make changes to the
code is not enough to ensure that users
make changes. We also strive to provide
the means to make changes. Our success in
this goal is best reflected in the number
of patches we receive from our community.
(We achieve this goal through providing
access to source code and development
tools within Sugar itself. We also
actively participate in workshops and
internship programs such as Google Summer
of Code, Outreaching, and Google Code-In.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Who uses Sugar?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ultimately, our goal is to reach
learners (and educators) with powerful
tools and engage them in Constructionist
learning. Currently we reach them in many
ways: the majority of our users get the
Sugar desktop preinstalled on OLPC XO
hardware. We have a more modest set of
users who get Sugar packaged in Fedora,
Trisquel, Debian, Ubuntu, or other
GNU/Linux platforms. Some users get Sugar
on Live Media (i.e., Sugar on a Stick).
Recently Sugarizer, a repackaging of some
of the core Sugar ideas for the browser,
has been finding its way to some users.
There are also a number of Sugar
activities that are popular outside of the
context Sugar itself, for example, Turtle
Blocks, which has wide-spread use in
India. Harder to measure is the extent to
which Sugar has influenced other providers
of “educational” software. If the Sugar
pedagogy is incorporated by others, that
advances our goal.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Who supports Sugar?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>When we first created Sugar Labs, we
envisioned “Local Labs”—hence the name
“Sugar Labs”, plural—that would provide
local support in terms of local-language
support, training, curriculum development,
and customizations. This model has not
ever gained the scale and depth envisioned
(we can debate the reasons why), although
there are still some active local
communities (e.g., Educa Paraguay) that
continue to work closely with the broader
community. There are also individual
volunteers, such as Tony Anderson and T.K.
Kang, who help support individual schools
in Rwanda, Malaysia, et al. An open
question is how do we support our users
over the long term?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>What is next for Sugar?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We face several challenges at Sugar
Labs. With the ebb of OLPC, we have a
contracting user base and the number of
professional developers associated with
the project is greatly diminished. How can
we expand our user base? How can we
attract more experienced developers? Why
would they want to work on Sugar as
opposed to some other project? The meta
issue is how do we keep Sugar relevant in
a world of Apps and small, hand-held
devices? Can we meet the expectations of
learners living in a world of fast-paced,
colorful interfaces? How do we ensure that
it is fulfilling its potential as a
learning environment and that our users,
potential users, and imitators are
learning about and learning from Sugar.
Some of this is a matter of marketing;
some of this is a matter of staying
focused on our core pedagogy; some of this
a matter of finding strategic partners
with whom we can work.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We have several near-term opportunities
that we should leverage:</div>
<div>* Raspian: The Raspberry PI 3.0 is more
than adequate to run Sugar—the experience
rivals or exceeds that of the OLPC XO 4.0
hardware. While RPi is not the only
platform we should be targeting, it does
has broad penetration into the Maker
community, which shares a synergy with our
emphasis on “doing”. It is low-hanging
fruit. With a little polish we could have
an image available for download from the
RPi website.</div>
<div>* Trisquel: We have the potential for
better leveraging the Free Software
Foundation as a vehicle for promoting
Sugar. Their distro of choice is Trisquel
and the maintainer does a great job of
keep the Sugar packages up to date.</div>
<div>* Sugarizer: The advantage of Sugarizer
is that it has the potential of reaching
orders of magnitude more users since it is
web-based and runs in Android and iOS.
There is some work to be done to make the
experience palatable on small screens and
the current development environment is—at
least my opinion—not scalable or
maintainable. The former is a formidable
problem. The latter quite easy to address.</div>
<div>* Stand-alone projects such as Music
Blocks have merit as long as they maintain
both a degree of connection with Sugar and
promote the values of the community. It is
not certain that these projects will lead
users towards Sugar, but they do promote
FOSS and Constructionist principles. And
they have attracted new developers to the
Sugar community.</div>
<div>* School-server: The combination of the
School Server and Sugar desktop is a
technical solution to problems facing
small and remote communities. We should
continue to support and promote this
combination.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Specific actions: After last year’s
Libre Planet conference, several community
members discussed a marketing strategy for
Sugar. We thought that if we could reach
influencers, we might be able to greatly
amplify our efforts. There are several
prominent bloggers and pundits in the
education arena who are widely read and
who might be receptive to what we are
doing. One significant challenge is that
GNU/Linux remains on the far periphery of
the Ed Tech world. Although the “love
affair” with all things Apple seems to be
over, the new elephant in the
room—Chromebooks and Google Docs—is
equally difficult to co-exist with.
Personally, I see the most potential
synergy with the Maker movement, which is
building up momentum in extra-curricular
programs, where FOSS and GNU-Linux are
welcome (hence my earlier focus on RPi).
(There are even some schools that are
building their entire curriculum around
PBL.) We can and should develop and run
some workshops that can introduce Sugar
within the context of the Maker movement.
(Toward that end, I have been working with
some teachers on how to leverage, for
example, Turtle Blocks for 3D printing.)
It is very much a tool-oriented community
with little overall discussion of
architectural frameworks, so we have some
work to do. But there is lots of
low-hanging fruit there.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>regards.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>-walter</div>
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div
class="m_-4175201952617904324m_7371648061571581588gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><font><font>Walter Bender</font></font><br>
<font><font>Sugar Labs</font></font></div>
<div><font><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sugarlabs.org"
target="_blank"><font>http://www.sugarlabs.org</font></a></font><br>
<br>
</div>
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<br>
</div>
</div>
______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop
project!)<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org"
target="_blank">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/lis<wbr>tinfo/iaep</a><br>
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<br clear="all">
<div><br>
</div>
-- <br>
<div class="gmail_signature"
data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">
<div><font><font>Walter Bender</font></font><br>
<font><font>Sugar Labs</font></font></div>
<div><font><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank"><font>http://www.sugarlabs.org</font></a></font><br>
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