[SoaS] Adventurous Teachcer for Sugar on a Stick Pilot Classroom

[Mel Chua]

On 06/03/2010 07:45 PM, Vanessa Ewbank wrote:
> Hi Mel,
> I cam across your post for "adventurous teachers" to test Sugar on a
> Stick. I believe I fit the bill and would be very interested in joining
> this endeavor with my 4th graders as a pilot classroom. Please lmk what
> I need to do to get started. Thanks so much, have a fabulous day.
> Vanessa Ewbank

Hello, Vanessa! My apologies for taking so long to reply - I've been on 
the road and behind on email lately.

What I'd suggest is subscribing to the Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) mailing 
list (http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas, cc'd in this email) and 
introducing yourself there - we try to have our conversations in public 
spaces whenever possible, so that all the people who know and can help 
with various things can see the different projects and deployments they 
can help with.

I should warn you that we're still in the early frontier days of SoaS 
development - a lot of things are experimental, and stuff may break. If 
you're looking for a stable platform for classroom deployment (i.e. rely 
on doing schoolwork and saving assignments on the stick, and so forth), 
I personally don't think we're there yet. (We also don't officially 
offer support - we're a collection of individual volunteers, but 
sometimes individuals step up and offer to provide support to specific 
deployments, so maybe someone near you would be interested in doing that.)

However, if your 4th graders want to dive into the (fun, yet sometimes 
confusing) chaos of an open source project and see how communities of 
makers band together on the internet to create things - and get involved 
behind-the-scenes as testers - it would be great to have them.

If you're still interested in checking this out as an option, a few 
questions for you (off the top of my head) to start this conversation:

* What are you thinking about doing - what are your objectives for using 
Sugar in your classroom?

* Where are you located?

* Do you know - or can you find folks near you who know - about basic 
Linux system administration, and about Python programming? Sometimes 
it's easier to help out with things in person.

* Would you be willing to blog and/or to chat with us online perhaps 
every other week to help us keep up on how the pilot's going, so we can 
figure out how to use that feedback to make the project better?

Thanks for reaching out - I hope we'll be able to work with you this 
coming school year!

--Mel