very rough... help

[Walter Bender]

Wee bit of tweaking:


Teachers,

Imagine a classroom where instruction is complimented by learners
engaged in self-discovery; where collaboration, expression, and
reflection are integrated directly into the learning experience.

Through the award-winning Sugar Learning Platform, students
appropriate knowledge by engaging in activities that are authentic to
them. With Sugar, students at all skill levels can explore any
curriculum goal more deeply. Your students will learn and they will
learn to learn.

Your students will enjoy learning more and they will improve in regard
to traditional metrics such as reading comprehension. And you will
enjoy mentoring them and learning along side them.

Features:

Sugar is easy to learn: teachers and students discover how to use
Sugar through exploration and  collaboration—together, you learn by
doing.

Sugar can accommodate a wide variety of students, with different
levels of skill in terms of reading, language, and different levels of
experience with computing. It is easy to approach, yet it doesn't put
an upper bound on the student's personal expression.

The Sugar interface always shows the presence of other learners.
Students dialog with each other, support each other, critique each
other, and share ideas. Activities such as peer editing are just one
"mouse-click" away.

Sugar uses a "Journal" to record each student's activities: both what
they make and how they make it. The Journal serves as a place for
reflection and assessment of progress—a portfolio that can be shared
with teachers, parents, and the student as they progress through grade
levels.

Pedagogy:

Based upon 40+ years of educational research at Harvard and MIT, Sugar
promotes "studio thinking": demonstrations, projects, and critiques;
as well as "studio habits of mind": develop craft, engage and persist,
envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch and explore, and
understand the art world. In the context of Sugar, studio thinking is
applied not just to the arts, but to all disciplines.

Reflective practice involves students applying their own experiences
to practice while being mentored by domain experts. In the context of
Sugar, the expert could be a teacher, a parent, a community member, or
a fellow student.

While Sugar is designed for elementary school classrooms, it will hold
the interest of middle schoolers as well.

Getting started:

Sugar is a great way to augment your classroom: it is simple; it is
powerful; it is boundless; and it is free! Almost one-million children
and tens of thousands of teachers around the world are using Sugar. To
learn more about Sugar and how you can be part of the Sugar
revolution, see...


-walter