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Line 6: − As 2008 comes to an end, it gives me an excuse to do some reflecting on what we are doing as a project and foundation. Most of the following you've read before, but it is helpful—at least to me—to revisit these ideas periodically.+ − The world faces many seemingly intractable problems: war, a faltering economy, an energy crisis, global climate change, to name just a few. My generation has failed to solve these problems. Our children will inherit them from us. But we can leave them something in addition: the means to become a generation of critical thinkers and problem-solvers. The investment that we can make on their behalf that will have the most return is learning. It has a bearing on all of the challenges we face and is essential if our children are to excel in an ever-changing world. Providing every child with the opportunity to learn learning will allow them both to achieve a clarity of purpose and to develop independent means towards their goals.+ − What should children and learn and how should they learn it? Information is about nouns; learning is about verbs. Of course learners should have access to power ideas (I won't debate here which ones we should teach). But they should also engage in exploration and collaboration, appropriating knowledge while engaging in authentic, open-ended problem solving. This can be accomplished within a framework of accountability, one that complements rigorous national standards where learners engage in a process of reflection, public expression, and critique—a "portfolio" approach. What am I learning? How did I learn it? Why is it important? Can I teach it to others?+ − We have some simple, universal points of leverage:+ − * Everyone is a teacher and a learner. + − * Humans are social beings. − * Humans are expressive. − You learn through doing, so if you want to learn more, you want to do more. + − Love is a better master than duty—you want people to engage in things that are authentic to them, things that they love. Internal motivation almost always trumps external motivations.+ − These ideas are not immiscible with current norms within schools, but too often we fall back on what we "know". I challenge you to think of a great learning moment in your life: was it sitting in a classroom, all eyes forward, listening to a lecture or was in when you were trying to solve a problem that was important to you?+ − We know of no better tool for learning than a computer—it is a “thing to think with” when it is used as a means of knowledge creation. (Unfortunately, it is too often thought of and used as simply a mechanism for information retrieval and rote learning in our schools—the modern equivalent of the mimeograph machine, AKA the “purple” plague.)+ − Three experiences can characterize a computer-enhanced learning platform: + − Sharing: The interface should always shows the presence of other learners. Collaboration is a first-order experience. Students and teachers dialog with each other, support each other, critique each other, and share ideas. + − Reflecting: A "Journal" should record each learner's activity. The Journal serves as a place for reflection and assessment of progress—the basis of a portfolio.+ − Discovering: We can accommodate a wide variety of users, 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 personal expression. One should always be able to peel away layers and go deeper and deeper, with no restrictions. This allows the direct appropriation of ideas in whatever realm the learner is exploring: music, browsing, reading, writing, programming, or graphics. The student can always go further. + − These are the core ideas behind Sugar. By embodying these ideas directly into the affordances provided by the user interface, we can skew the odds that teachers and learners will engage in more than the accumulation and transfer of information.+ − In Sugar, have in hand the tools to reinvent how computers are used for education. Collaboration, reflection, and discovery are readily integrated directly into the learning experience. Children and teachers have the opportunity to use computers on their own terms, reshape, reinvent, and reapply both software and content into powerful learning activities. Learning can be focused on sharing, criticism, and exploration. We have a lot of work ahead of us to refine these tools and to refine the practice around them, but we have a solid beginning.+ + + − We can raise a generation of critical thinkers, armed with the complementary tools of science and the arts. (Relatively speaking, it is a trivial investment—probably less than the cost of a single “bridge to nowhere”. All of the necessary tools are freely available under free software licenses. But we do need to invest in engaging teachers, parents, and children in learning learning.) So let's make it happen.+ − === Sugar Labs ===+ − +
Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 21:43, 5 January 2009
, 21:43, 5 January 2009→What's new
=== Sugar Digest ===
=== Sugar Digest ===
I read the new Neal Stephenson book, ''Anathem'', last week. There was one line I cannot resist sharing with the Sugar community. Raz, our hero, is a young mathematician who leaves the nest to solve any number of problems. At one point, he asks why he is the one upon whom everyone is leaning.
"But Raz, you are <i>educable</i>, you can learn 'this kind of thing,'... You've spent your whole life ... becoming educable."
Another book I read over the holidays is a new biography of Andrew Jackson. He remains a pretty controversial figure, but he knew the importance of "staying focused on the things that matter most and not dwelling on the things that pull us apart."
In the case of Sugar Labs, the things that matters most are creating a great learning platform and making it available to learners everywhere.
I am confident that in 2009, we will see Sugar in the hands of many more children and teachers. We'll see an accelerated pace of development and deployment across a diverse set of platforms under an even more diverse set of conditions.
While we debate the various means towards our goals, we need to keep in mind that the most important metric we can hold up to our work is the impact on learning. On the one hand, we need to flexible and inclusive; on the other hand, we need to adhere to the core principles that make Sugar of value to the learner, putting an emphasis on quality over quantity. So while we shouldn't be overly zealous, we need to constantly remind ourselves and those whom we are trying to reach of the value of learning to learn: the authenitic appropriation of knowledge, learning through expressing, debugging, reflection, and critique. If it does not impact the learning, we shouldn't be doing it.
=== Community jams, meet-ups, and meetings ===
[http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConF11 FUDConF11], which will be held this week (9–11 January) at MIT (Cambridge, MA).
=== Help Wanted ===
Christian Marc Schmidt has been working on a static landing page for Sugar Labs. (The wiki is a powerful tool, but not the easiest place to get started from when you are new to Sugar.) Christian has uploaded a build onto a server (See [http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com/projects/sugarlabs/betasite beta sugarlabs.org]). This version is fully dynamic, based on an XML->XSL translation using PHP 5 and Libxslt. Christian has tested it in all major browsers where it seems to work fine, but please exercise it some more.
Christian is ready to concentrate on gathering content for the gallery and the activity sections. There is other content that needs to be prepared as well.
As far as internationalization, we are thinking of adding a simple CSS dropdown underneath the links on the top-right edge of the page. We should decide how best to handle the translations, whether through Pootle or some other mechanism.
One specific area where we are seeking help is in regard to illustrations. One project we have in mind is a comicbook-like narrative about Sugar to be featured on the static site. If anyone is interested in taking on such a project, please come forward.
=== Tech Talk ===
There are some Activity updates to report:
* TurtleArt-27.xo
* Yay!BeeSee-2.xo
=== Sugar Labs ===
Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2008-Dec-27-2009-Jan-2-som.jpg|SOM]]).
Gary Martin has generated another SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:Image:2008-December-20-26-som.jpg|SOM]]).
Gary has also made some significant changes to the text-metric extraction code; he is trying to fully normalize the frequency of each term. He hypothesizes that this will allows the maps to more clearly show the finer details that are otherwise drowned out by heavy terms like "Sugar", "Work", "Use", "Project", "Want", etc. He'll be posting some examples in the wiki.
=== Community News archive ===
=== Community News archive ===