Sugar Network/Declaration of purpose

The Sugar Network declaration of purpose.
(based on Heilmeier's Catechism)

1. What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
   1. Convenient, unified, and well integrated to the Sugar desktop environment access to various Sugar, and, education in general, content. Such as Sugar Activities, content created by Sugar Activities, documentation and educational materials, etc.
   2. Provide this access (1.1), but with different latencies, on several Network levels, i.e., online access to the Internet, access to the school network with possible (but not mandatory) access to the Internet, offline case when Sugar Network participant has only his computer.
   3. Supplement this access (1.1) on all levels (1.2) with social network features when Sugar Network participants can share their creatures, questions, ideas, problems and opinions withing the Sugar Network.
   4. Using social functionality (1.3) and integrated to the Sugar Network automatic bug report functionality, it will be possible to provide technical support, e.g., from Sugar Activity authors or from Sugar deployment personal.
   5. The last, but not the least. The entire Sugar Network should be well integrated to the educational process, e.g., support different scope workflows, such as school, class time, personal home work.
2. How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
   1. In comparing to (1.1). There are several resources for Sugar, and, educational in general, content. Such as Activity Library, several methods to get to get Sugar Activities that are integrated to the Sugar Shell, various Wikis, services placed on school servers (starting from Moodle and ending with ure HTML pages that serves Sugar Activity bundles. The users experience is too different from content source to source. Besides, these sources might be not students friendly, e.g., it will require creating an account (with specifying email address), be too technical like sugar mailing lists. In most cases they are poorly integrated to the Sugar desktop environment.
   2. In comparing to (1.2). The richest resources are all located in the Internet, but Internet access is not chip and wide for all Sugar deployments, and might be simply absent. If some resources are accessible on school servers, it might be not integrated to the global Sugar community. To support offline workflow, students need to routines work, e.g., copying Sugar Activity bundles from the Internet or school's server to the Journal. And as (2.1) points, on all levels the users experience is too different.
   3. In comparing to (1.3). The existing ways to share content within the Sugar community is either imited or too basic. There is the Activity Library, but people can post only reviews. To report a bug they need to login to bugs.sugarlabs.org. To ask question or share ideas, they need to subscribe to mailing lists. All these resources are located in the Internet (2.2). And mostly not users friendly for students at all (2.1). Besides, some resources located on school servers might not allow any collaboration at all, i.e., pure HTML page to download Sugar Activity bundles. And as (2.1) says, the users experience is too different from resource to resource.
   4. In comparing to (1.4). It is mostly impossible to get feedback from students, that use Sugar Activities in the field, on bugs.sugarlabs.org on mailing lists, partially because of lack of Internet connection (2.1) and partially because these resources are too technical (2.2). Besides, there is no convenient and direct (between users and Activity developers) ways to share technical information when Sugar Activity fails.
   5. In comparing to (1.5). For sure, educational support exists. But due to very simple Sugar desktop environment functionality, it is too basic, i.e., download .xol bundle or open the Browse to get access to the content in the network.
3. What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
   1. To solve (2.1) and accomplish (1.1). Sugar Network is not intended to replace all existing (2.1) resources, but rather get singular and unified access point to the same resources from the Sugar Network Browser application that is well integrated to the Sugar desktop environment. It should be friendly to students, i.e., instead of going to bugs.sugarlabs.org, creating an account there, create new ticket with possibility to set bunch of technical fields (like targeting release, OS, etc), a student needs to open Sugar Network Browser, find the targeting activity and type the problem (just the text). Or, to launch Sugar Activity, a student should not browse Activity Library, school server, or Wikis, just click it in Sugar Network Browser.
   2. To solve (2.2) and accomplish (1.2). On all network accessibility levels (online, school, offline), people use the same Sugar Network Browser (3.1). The only differences are: being online, people see the full picture; being connected to school network, people see the picture that is a snapshot of the full picture (that is being updated from time to time); being offline, e.g., switching from online of from school network, people see only resources they marked as persistent manually.
   3. To solve (2.3) and accomplish (1.3). Still, it is the same Sugar Network Browser (3.1). On all network accessibility (3.2) levels, people can ask question, share idea, concern about problem, etc. for all accessible resources in their Browser. After increasing network accessibility level, e.g., connecting to the school server after being offline, all new changes will be merged to the new level.
   4. To solve (2.4) and accomplish (1.4). Still, it is the same Sugar Network Browser (3.1). After clicking the Sugar Activity and getting its fail, the error dialog might show the button "Share the report", then, nothing else from user's point of view. Activity developer will get this repost immediately (depending on network accessibility level). Besides, people can ask questions, share ideas, complain about problems, all this information is accessible for developers.
   5. To solve (2.5) and accomplish (1.5). Still, it is the same Sugar Network Browser (3.1). This part is the most non-trivial and not technical. But, it should be possible to support different educational related workflows withing the Browser, e.g., during the class time, students migth see only resources that are related to the current subject (when teacher has more powerful view in his Browser).
4. Who cares?
5. If you're successful, what difference will it make?
6. What are the risks and the payoffs?
7. How much will it cost?
8. How long will it take?
9. What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?