86
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
draft
Sugar Labs Oversight Board Candidate Statement 2012-2013
Some people requested me to stand as candidate for election to the Sugar Labs Oversight Board. Their reasons were about that Sugar needs the viewpoint of somebody who is/was part of a classroom with OLPC/XO.
Some people might don't know me, so here is some information about me. I'm a student at Uruguay. I received an XO-1 when I was in form 5 of school, about ten years old. Two years ago, I joined the Uruguayan OLPC community (CeibalJAM) which has got a great mailing list where users and developers talk and work together. That's a good place to get really involved into a development process and do a transition between Sugar user and an activity developer. Some months ago I met some of the current Sugar maintainers and code contributors and having the possibility to solve problems I noted when developing activities, I started to contribute to Sugar itself. I'm also administrator at the OLPC-Sur mailing list which intends to be a Spanish version of IAEP.
My viewpoint about Sugar
1 The success and reason of Sugar
We all know Sugar can be an excellent learning platform that can be discovered by children providing an excellent experience and getting great results (when the laptops are used successfully). I consider the work on that is already done, but when new features are coming to Sugar thanks to Activity Central, OLPC and our volunteer contributors, Sugar needs the design team to look again at the current Sugar interface and conserve the big work done on the interface.
2 Deployment frustrations
The biggest frustration of OLPC in schools is the low success. A big percent of the laptops with Sugar isn't used in schools with educational objectives because of some reasons Sugar must face.
2.1 Identify the reasons
This is part of the learning team. Sugar Labs needs to know why don't some teachers like to teach with XOs, the biggest part of the reasons are related with the software and content. With those reasons Sugar Labs would be able to make action items and improve the software.
2.2 Time
Sugar doesn't intend to be a productivity environment, but this is the reason of why a very small percentage of highschool teachers in Uruguay are implementing technology in their classroom. They have 45 minutes per class and a long content to have taught at the end of the year, so the most comfortable and fast model, results to be the traditional class, with no opportunities or time to try and discover the environment like the children.
Here Sugar needs work in usability and accessibility, not only simplicity because it doesn't mean limitations. The work in classroom needs to be fast and easy trough improving the usability in activities like Browse, Write, Paint, Labyrinth, et al. but there are other activities such as TurtleBlocks or Scratch to spend time in longer classes or homework.
2.3 Training of teachers
The main problem of an interface made to be discovered is that it can't be used by people who don't want to discover it. This is the case of a big part of the teachers, so their only tool to learn how to use Sugar and the only way to interest them in using Sugar in their classroom is the teaching training. It something which doesn't depend of Sugar Labs, but the current Sugar documentation is not maintained and could be converted in the best place to the teachers spend time learning.
3 School content adaptation
The current tools can be adapted by each teacher to their educational requirements. As an example, children can redact better and learn to redact using the Write activity instead of the piece of paper because with the Write activity they can organize their ideas and move the paragraphs to make a well redacted text. Sugar needs a way to show the teachers this kind of advantages and perhaps it's the documentation.
Some new activities need to be created keeping in mind the school program items, good examples are the "I know ..." activities, related to geography.
Some people requested me to stand as candidate for election to the Sugar Labs Oversight Board. Their reasons were about that Sugar needs the viewpoint of somebody who is/was part of a classroom with OLPC/XO.
Some people might don't know me, so here is some information about me. I'm a student at Uruguay. I received an XO-1 when I was in form 5 of school, about ten years old. Two years ago, I joined the Uruguayan OLPC community (CeibalJAM) which has got a great mailing list where users and developers talk and work together. That's a good place to get really involved into a development process and do a transition between Sugar user and an activity developer. Some months ago I met some of the current Sugar maintainers and code contributors and having the possibility to solve problems I noted when developing activities, I started to contribute to Sugar itself. I'm also administrator at the OLPC-Sur mailing list which intends to be a Spanish version of IAEP.
My viewpoint about Sugar
1 The success and reason of Sugar
We all know Sugar can be an excellent learning platform that can be discovered by children providing an excellent experience and getting great results (when the laptops are used successfully). I consider the work on that is already done, but when new features are coming to Sugar thanks to Activity Central, OLPC and our volunteer contributors, Sugar needs the design team to look again at the current Sugar interface and conserve the big work done on the interface.
2 Deployment frustrations
The biggest frustration of OLPC in schools is the low success. A big percent of the laptops with Sugar isn't used in schools with educational objectives because of some reasons Sugar must face.
2.1 Identify the reasons
This is part of the learning team. Sugar Labs needs to know why don't some teachers like to teach with XOs, the biggest part of the reasons are related with the software and content. With those reasons Sugar Labs would be able to make action items and improve the software.
2.2 Time
Sugar doesn't intend to be a productivity environment, but this is the reason of why a very small percentage of highschool teachers in Uruguay are implementing technology in their classroom. They have 45 minutes per class and a long content to have taught at the end of the year, so the most comfortable and fast model, results to be the traditional class, with no opportunities or time to try and discover the environment like the children.
Here Sugar needs work in usability and accessibility, not only simplicity because it doesn't mean limitations. The work in classroom needs to be fast and easy trough improving the usability in activities like Browse, Write, Paint, Labyrinth, et al. but there are other activities such as TurtleBlocks or Scratch to spend time in longer classes or homework.
2.3 Training of teachers
The main problem of an interface made to be discovered is that it can't be used by people who don't want to discover it. This is the case of a big part of the teachers, so their only tool to learn how to use Sugar and the only way to interest them in using Sugar in their classroom is the teaching training. It something which doesn't depend of Sugar Labs, but the current Sugar documentation is not maintained and could be converted in the best place to the teachers spend time learning.
3 School content adaptation
The current tools can be adapted by each teacher to their educational requirements. As an example, children can redact better and learn to redact using the Write activity instead of the piece of paper because with the Write activity they can organize their ideas and move the paragraphs to make a well redacted text. Sugar needs a way to show the teachers this kind of advantages and perhaps it's the documentation.
Some new activities need to be created keeping in mind the school program items, good examples are the "I know ..." activities, related to geography.