User:Gardito

SLOB Platform Gerald Ardito

I believe Sugar Labs is an amazing enterprise. Miraculous, even.

It is a place where people from all over the world are working together to empower learning for children everywhere.

And the world of these people is outstanding. In just a few short years, they have developed an operating system and hundreds of applications/activities. And all of them are free and open source, and modifiable by their users.

Sugar Labs is also a community. And it is a community, I believe, that is also free and open source. A community of people who are also, in a manner of speaking, free and open source. I am thinking, especially, of the regional versions of Sugar Labs, where developers and others have come together to the serve the unique needs of a particular region.

And so, Sugar Labs, like any other enterprise, is a collection of conversations. I would very much like to be a part of this conversation as a SLOB member.

Here are my relevant qualifications. I have been managing a deployment of XO Laptops for the last 2 1/2 years in a New York middle school, working with 5th grade students and their teachers. This work formed the basis of my doctoral dissertation research, which I completed in May 2010. I have also consulted with other teachers and schools on the use of XO Laptops and Sugar with their teachers and students. In the Winter, I will be working with three Navajo elementary schools in New Mexico.

I sometimes feel that educators and students (at least in the United States) are underrepresented in the various discussions around Sugar. I believe my experience could help to close this gap.

I look forward to what comes next.