Sugar on a Stick

Introduction

The Sugar on a Stick project gives children access to their Sugar on any computer in their environment with just a USB key. You can learn more from Walter Bender's interview with Xconomy, Wayan Vota's video and Micheal Lee's pictures.

Project Goals

Sugar on a Stick as 1 to 1 computing in an elementary school
Sugar on a Stick to empower middle and high school students to help test Sugar as Service Learning
Sugar on a Stick for conferences to let people try Sugar and collaborate with other conference participants

Get Sugar on a Stick

We are currently working towards the first SoaS release, with a hard launch date of April 10th, 2009 where Caroline Meeks and Walter Bender will premiere and distribute SoaS at FOSSVT. What this means is that the current snapshots are still unstable and in testing, and that if you download and try out this software, it might not work yet. Please download, test, and give feedback - we need your help to make our launch date!

Downloads

A .iso image file of the latest development snapshot of Sugar on a Stick is located here: Soas-200902231225.iso (view the release notes).

Previous snapshots of SoaS are available at http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/snapshots/1/.

Creating your stick

The basics of creating and using a bootable Sugar on a Stick are:

Download a .iso image file containing Sugar on a Stick.
Use a Bootable USB creator program to copy the image file to a USB stick.
Configure the target computer to boot from USB.

For more detailed installation instructions on multiple platforms, see /Installation.

Booting your stick

Once you have created your USB key, you still need to set your target system to boot from USB.

The trick is to set the BIOS to boot from USB. Unfortunately this is slightly different on each computer. Explore the setup screen for your system (press Esc or F1 while the computer is booting). If you can't figure it out, search Google for information on your computer model's BIOS.

If you are unable to boot from USB, you can burn a "Boot Helper" CD using the .iso below. This will start the boot from the CD, then read files from the USB.

http://www.sugarlabs.org/~marco/boot.iso

You can also use the 'PLoP Boot Manager' to create a boot floppy for machines without the ability to boot from CD or USB, see:

http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/No_native_BIOS_support

Using your stick

Once your stick boot, you'll find yourself in your own Sugar environment, ready to play and learn. For a guide on how to use Sugar, see the FLOSSmanuals Sugar Users Guide.

Report Bugs

Please keep notes on which version of Sugar on a Stick you have downloaded as the user interface currently does not display this information.

Report bugs to http://dev.sugarlabs.org/. Use the "SoaS" component when entering new bugs.

Join the development effort

We are coordinating work on this project on Sugar Labs Moodle system. Please create an account and join the Sugar on a Stick Class.

http://schools.sugarlabs.org/course/view.php?id=17

TODO List

Create an Easy Emulation for Boston School teachers macbooks - http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/114 <-- Mick is working on this
Create a boot helper CD that lets Macs boot from the stick
Install the latest version of Sugar on a Stick, pick an activity and test it
Create a system for tracking activity testing
Solicit USB stick donations from companies
Create a design for a CD sticker to put on boot helper CDs
Develop specs for Cloning Sugar on a Stick: The vision is that an adult will be able to create a Sugar on a Stick, add activities, set the language and the collaboration service and then "clone" the stick to create Sugar on a Stick for all the students in a class or a school.
[Wish List] of activities etc to put on the stick