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About Sugar

What is Sugar?

Sugar is an educational software platform built with the python programming language and based on the principles of cognitive and social constructivism.

Who is doing Sugar development?

Sugar is a community project. At present some of the Sugar developers under contract to OLPC; most of the Sugar developers are volunteers. You can get an idea of the people involve from the Modules page.

What makes Sugar different from other educational software platforms?

The Sugar interface, in its departure from the desktop metaphor for computing, is the first serious attempt to create a user interface that is based on both cognitive and social constructivism: learners should engage in authentic exploration and collaboration. It is based on three very simple principles about what makes us human: (1) everyone is a teacher and a learner; (2) humans by their nature are social beings; and (3) humans by their nature are expressive. These are the pillars of a user experience for learning.

Sugar also considers two aphorisms: (1) you learn through doing, so if you want more learning you want more doing; and (2) love is a better master than duty—you want people to engage in things that are authentic to them, things that they love.

The presence of other people is always present in the Sugar interface: collaboration is a first-order experience. Students and teachers engage in a dialog with each other, support each other, critique each other, and share ideas.

Sugar is also discoverable: it 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 and yet it doesn't put an upper bound on personal expression; one can peel away layers and go deeper and deeper, with no restrictions.

Sugar is based on Python, an interpreted language, allowing the direct appropriation of ideas: in whatever realm the learner is exploring—music, browsing, reading, writing, programming, graphics, etc.—they are able to drill deeper; they are not going to hit a wall, since they can, at every level, engage in debugging both their personal expression and the very tools that they use for that expression.

Using Sugar

Who can use Sugar and how do they benefit?

Sugar is a free and open-source software project, freely available to anyone who want to use it or improve upon it.

The Sugar platform was designed for young children (K–6), but it is finding applicability in a number of different venues where the simplicity of design maps is an enabler, e.g., mobile applications, the elderly, etc.

Why Sugar?

Sugar comes with hundreds of tools for discovery through exploring, expressing, and sharing: browsing, writing, rich media, etc.
Sugar comes with a built-in collaboration system: peer-to-peer learning; always-on support; and single-click sharing.
Sugar comes with built-in tools for reflection; a built-in portfolio assessment tool that serves as a forum for discussion between children, their parents, and their teachers.
The Sugar learning platform is discoverable: it uses simple means to reach to complex ends with no upper bound on where you can reach.
Sugar is designed for local appropriation: it has built-in tools for making changes and improvements and a growing global community of support.
Sugar puts an emphasis on learning through doing and debugging: more engaged learners are to tackle authentic problems.
Sugar is available in a wide variety of forms: as part of GNU/Linux distributions; LiveCD; and in a virtual machine.

There is a further summary of the Sugar benefits here.

Does Sugar run on {GNU/Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, Suse, MAC OS, Windows, etc.}?

Please refer to the Supported systems page for an up-to-date list of supported systems.

Is there an image of the OS that can be run on a PC?

You can download a LiveCD version of Sugar (Please see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/LiveCd) or run Sugar natively on a supported system. (The language can be set from the Sugar-control-panel in the LiveCD image.)

Does Sugar run on an ASUS Eee PC (or other "ultra-mobile" or "mini" PCs)?

There is a thread on the mailing list about success stories with the Eee: http://lists.lo-res.org/pipermail/its.an.education.project/2008-May/000282.html Another pointer is: ftp://rohrmoser-engineering.de/pub/XO-LiveCD/XO-LiveCD_080321.pdf Many manufacturers are beginning to take an interest in supporting Sugar.

Is it possible to have mesh support with the LiveCD ?

Q: If I understand this correctly, mesh support means your wireless card functions as both an access point/router and a network node. In short, your wireless computer can pass along packages from nearby wireless computers and the other way round. Do you need special wireless cards for this, or is this a driver/software issue that could be fixed in the LiveCD, so that more people can experience mesh networks?

A: Yes, it will be possible to have mesh support with the LiveCD shortly, provided you have a suitable wireless card.

open80211s is an open-source implementation of the emerging IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh standard. It has been accepted in the mainline Linux kernel and is included in release 2.6.26. The resulting software will run on GNU/Linux on commodity PC hardware.

open80211s is based on the mac80211 wireless stack and should run on any of the wireless cards that mac80211 supports. At present - september 2008 - four families of drivers are supported or partially supported. The ath5k driver supports Atheros WLAN based chipsets, the b43 driver supports the 802.11 B/G family of wireless chips Broadcom produces, libertas_tf supports the Marvell 88W83886 USB device as found in the OLPC XO-1 laptop, and the zd1211rw driver covers a large proportion of USB-wireless devices on the consumer market as these are based on the ZyDAS ZD1211. Several months after the acquisition, Atheros rebranded the ZyDAS ZD1211 chip to AR5007UG.

Sugar Labs

About Sugar

What is Sugar?

Sugar is an educational software platform built with the python programming language and based on the principles of cognitive and social constructivism.

Who is doing Sugar development?

Sugar is a community project. At present some of the Sugar developers under contract to OLPC; most of the Sugar developers are volunteers. You can get an idea of the people involve from the Modules page.

What makes Sugar different from other educational software platforms?

The Sugar interface, in its departure from the desktop metaphor for computing, is the first serious attempt to create a user interface that is based on both cognitive and social constructivism: learners should engage in authentic exploration and collaboration. It is based on three very simple principles about what makes us human: (1) everyone is a teacher and a learner; (2) humans by their nature are social beings; and (3) humans by their nature are expressive. These are the pillars of a user experience for learning.

Sugar also considers two aphorisms: (1) you learn through doing, so if you want more learning you want more doing; and (2) love is a better master than duty—you want people to engage in things that are authentic to them, things that they love.

The presence of other people is always present in the Sugar interface: collaboration is a first-order experience. Students and teachers engage in a dialog with each other, support each other, critique each other, and share ideas.

Sugar is also discoverable: it 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 and yet it doesn't put an upper bound on personal expression; one can peel away layers and go deeper and deeper, with no restrictions.

Sugar is based on Python, an interpreted language, allowing the direct appropriation of ideas: in whatever realm the learner is exploring—music, browsing, reading, writing, programming, graphics, etc.—they are able to drill deeper; they are not going to hit a wall, since they can, at every level, engage in debugging both their personal expression and the very tools that they use for that expression.

Using Sugar

Who can use Sugar and how do they benefit?

Sugar is a free and open-source software project, freely available to anyone who want to use it or improve upon it.

The Sugar platform was designed for young children (K–6), but it is finding applicability in a number of different venues where the simplicity of design maps is an enabler, e.g., mobile applications, the elderly, etc.

Why Sugar?

Sugar comes with hundreds of tools for discovery through exploring, expressing, and sharing: browsing, writing, rich media, etc.
Sugar comes with a built-in collaboration system: peer-to-peer learning; always-on support; and single-click sharing.
Sugar comes with built-in tools for reflection; a built-in portfolio assessment tool that serves as a forum for discussion between children, their parents, and their teachers.
The Sugar learning platform is discoverable: it uses simple means to reach to complex ends with no upper bound on where you can reach.
Sugar is designed for local appropriation: it has built-in tools for making changes and improvements and a growing global community of support.
Sugar puts an emphasis on learning through doing and debugging: more engaged learners are to tackle authentic problems.
Sugar is available in a wide variety of forms: as part of GNU/Linux distributions; LiveCD; and in a virtual machine.

There is a further summary of the Sugar benefits here.

Does Sugar run on {GNU/Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, Suse, MAC OS, Windows, etc.}?

Please refer to the Supported systems page for an up-to-date list of supported systems.

Is there an image of the OS that can be run on a PC?

You can download a LiveCD version of Sugar (Please see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/LiveCd) or run Sugar natively on a supported system. (The language can be set from the Sugar-control-panel in the LiveCD image.)

Does Sugar run on an ASUS Eee PC (or other "ultra-mobile" or "mini" PCs)?

There is a thread on the mailing list about success stories with the Eee: http://lists.lo-res.org/pipermail/its.an.education.project/2008-May/000282.html Another pointer is: ftp://rohrmoser-engineering.de/pub/XO-LiveCD/XO-LiveCD_080321.pdf Many manufacturers are beginning to take an interest in supporting Sugar.

Is it possible to have mesh support with the LiveCD ?

Q: If I understand this correctly, mesh support means your wireless card functions as both an access point/router and a network node. In short, your wireless computer can pass along packages from nearby wireless computers and the other way round. Do you need special wireless cards for this, or is this a driver/software issue that could be fixed in the LiveCD, so that more people can experience mesh networks?

A: Yes, it will be possible to have mesh support with the LiveCD shortly, provided you have a suitable wireless card.

open80211s is an open-source implementation of the emerging IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh standard. It has been accepted in the mainline Linux kernel and is included in release 2.6.26. The resulting software will run on GNU/Linux on commodity PC hardware.

open80211s is based on the mac80211 wireless stack and should run on any of the wireless cards that mac80211 supports. At present - september 2008 - four families of drivers are supported or partially supported. The ath5k driver supports Atheros WLAN based chipsets, the b43 driver supports the 802.11 B/G family of wireless chips Broadcom produces, libertas_tf supports the Marvell 88W83886 USB device as found in the OLPC XO-1 laptop, and the zd1211rw driver covers a large proportion of USB-wireless devices on the consumer market as these are based on the ZyDAS ZD1211. Several months after the acquisition, Atheros rebranded the ZyDAS ZD1211 chip to AR5007UG.

As a non-programmer/non-developer, how does one go about verifying bugs?

Please see the BugSquad/Triage Guide -- Erikos

If I'm running Ubuntu, where do I report Sugar bugs?

If you are running official (or unofficial) Sugar packages on Ubuntu, and you encounter a bug in Sugar functionality or in an Activity which is bundled, please report it in Ubuntu's Launchpad bugtracker.

If you are running sugar-jhbuild, or the bug is in an activity which you downloaded as a .xo file, please report it in the Sugar Labs bug tracker.

--Morgs 18:32, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

As a non-programmer/non-developer, how does one go about verifying bugs?

Please see the BugSquad/Triage Guide -- Erikos

If I'm running Ubuntu, where do I report Sugar bugs?

If you are running official (or unofficial) Sugar packages on Ubuntu, and you encounter a bug in Sugar functionality or in an Activity which is bundled, please report it in Ubuntu's Launchpad bugtracker.

If you are running sugar-jhbuild, or the bug is in an activity which you downloaded as a .xo file, please report it in the Sugar Labs bug tracker.

--Morgs 18:32, 11 December 2008 (UTC)