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Line 245: − Sugar Labs® is supported by donations and is constantly seeking funding to accelerate development of Sugar. We do occasionally raise money for paid student internships as well. + − − − Towards these ends, we chose the GPL as our primary license. It has been said of the GPL that it “restricts my right [as a developer] to restrict yours [as a user and potential developer]”, which seems ideal for a project that wants to engage a broad and diverse set of learners. But at Sugar Labs we go beyond the usual goals of FOSS: a license to make changes to the code is not enough to ensure that users make changes. We also strive to provide the means to make changes. Our success in this goal is best reflected in the number of patches we receive from our Community. (We achieve this goal through providing access to source code and development tools within Sugar itself. We also actively participate in workshops and internship programs such as Sugar Camps, Google Summer of Code, Outreaching, and Google Code-In.)+ − + − When we first created Sugar Labs, we envisioned “Local Labs”—hence the name “Sugar Labs”, plural—that would provide local support in terms of local-language support, training, curriculum development, and customizations. This model has not ever gained the scale and depth envisioned (we can debate the reasons why), although there are still some active local communities (e.g., Educa Paraguay) that continue to work closely with the broader community. There are also individual volunteers, such as Tony Anderson and T.K. Kang, who help support individual schools in Rwanda, Malaysia, et al. An open question is how do we support our users over the long term?+ + + + + + + + + − + + + + + + + + + Line 269:
Line 283: − − ===Specific actions=== − After last year’s Libre Planet conference, several community members discussed a marketing strategy for Sugar. We thought that if we could reach influencers, we might be able to greatly amplify our efforts. There are several prominent bloggers and pundits in the education arena who are widely read and who might be receptive to what we are doing. One significant challenge is that GNU/Linux remains on the far periphery of the Ed Tech world. Although the “love affair” with all things Apple seems to be over, the new elephant in the room—Chromebooks and Google Docs—is equally difficult to co-exist with. Personally, I see the most potential synergy with the Maker movement, which is building up momentum in extra-curricular programs, where FOSS and GNU-Linux are welcome (hence my earlier focus on RPi). (There are even some schools that are building their entire curriculum around PBL.) We can and should develop and run some workshops that can introduce Sugar within the context of the Maker movement. (Toward that end, I have been working with some teachers on how to leverage, for example, Turtle Blocks for 3D printing.) It is very much a tool-oriented community with little overall discussion of architectural frameworks, so we have some work to do. But there is lots of low-hanging fruit there.
add link to walter's post in mailing list archives
Sugar Labs goals for 2017.
Sugar Labs goals for 2017.
''[This is a draft based on proposals made on the [http://www.mail-archive.com/iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg17778.html IAEP email thread] started on April 9th.]''
''[This is a draft based on proposals made on the [http://www.mail-archive.com/iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org/msg17778.html IAEP email thread] started on April 9th plus the [[2016 Goals|goals identified on 2016.]]]''
''[See [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fvR8Qr3CVI_n8ccho0dEW81hvAhgoWmJJl6ACgDvBNY/edit Sugar Labs Goals] for another shared editing document started in that thread.]''
''[See [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fvR8Qr3CVI_n8ccho0dEW81hvAhgoWmJJl6ACgDvBNY/edit Sugar Labs Goals] for another shared editing document started in that thread.]''
==Mission==
==Mission==
''[Our Mission is the responsibility of the Board; any changes to the Mission must be passed by the Board.]''
''[Our Mission is the responsibility of the Board; any changes to the Mission must be passed by the Board. Here is the Mission from the Board in May 2017:]''
Sugar Labs<sup>®</sup> is a volunteer-driven member project of Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit corporation. Originally part of the One Laptop Per Child project, Sugar Labs coordinates volunteers around the world who are passionate about providing educational opportunities to children through the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar Labs® is supported by donations and is seeking funding to accelerate development.
Sugar Labs is a volunteer-run project whose mission is to reach global learners and educators with a collection of tools that enable them to explore, discover, create, and reflect in their local language. Sugar Labs distributes these tools freely and encourages its users to appropriate them, taking ownership and responsibility for their learning.
==Vision==
==Vision==
==Context==
==Context==
''[A current and historical context to guide the goals, objectives and actions listed above. This text is modified from what Walter Bender posted on sugar-devel@ in response to request.]''
''[A current and historical context to guide the goals, objectives and actions listed above. This text is modified from what Walter Bender [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2017-April/054050.html posted] on sugar-devel@ in response to request.]''
===What is Sugar Labs?===
===What is Sugar Labs?===
Sugar Labs has inherited many of its goals from the OLPC project. The goal of OLPC is to bring the ideas of Constructionism to scale in order to reach more children. A particular focus is on children in the developing world [Reference needed here]. In order to meet that goal, Sugar, which was originally developed for OLPC, was by necessity a small-footprint solution that required few resources in terms of CPU, memory, storage, or network connectivity. The major technical change on focus from the OLPC project is that Sugar Labs strives to make the Sugar desktop available to multiple platforms, not just the OLPC hardware. The major ethical challenge Sugar Labs has is to keep supporting with high quality software and equivalent tools to the OLPC ecosystem.
Sugar Labs has inherited many of its goals from the OLPC project. The goal of OLPC is to bring the ideas of Constructionism to scale in order to reach more children. A particular focus is on children in the developing world [Reference needed here]. In order to meet that goal, Sugar, which was originally developed for OLPC, was by necessity a small-footprint solution that required few resources in terms of CPU, memory, storage, or network connectivity. The major technical change on focus from the OLPC project is that Sugar Labs strives to make the Sugar desktop available to multiple platforms, not just the OLPC hardware. The major ethical challenge Sugar Labs has is to keep supporting with high quality software and equivalent tools to the OLPC ecosystem.
Sugar Labs<sup>®</sup> is a volunteer-driven member project of Software Freedom Conservancy. Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) is a not-for-profit charity that helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus on what they do best — writing and improving FLOSS for the general public — while Conservancy takes care of the projects' needs that do not relate directly to software development and documentation.
Sugar Labs<sup>®</sup> is a volunteer-driven member project of Software Freedom Conservancy. Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) is a not-for-profit charity that helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus on what they do best — writing and improving FLOSS for the general public — while Conservancy takes care of the projects' needs that do not relate directly to software development and documentation.
Sugar Labs® is supported by donations and is constantly seeking funding to accelerate development of Sugar. We do occasionally raise money for paid student internships as well.
As with any other non profit, the practice of '''charity''' means the voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act.
As with any other non profit, the practice of '''charity''' means the voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act.
Sugar is not a 100% volunteer effort. The OLPC project has supported many developers along Sugar's history and many initiatives to allocate resources to support professional services (such are Activity Central, OLPC Australia, etc) have been tried. In the same way, many of the packages that make doable a Sugar distribution are re-cycled from other libre software projects that may or may not be the results of volunteers efforts.
Sugar is not a 100% volunteer effort. The OLPC project has supported many developers along Sugar's history and many initiatives to allocate resources to support professional services (such are Activity Central, OLPC Australia, etc) have been tried. In the same way, many of the packages that make doable a Sugar distribution are re-cycled from other libre software projects that may or may not be the results of volunteers efforts.
Sugar development and maintenance is incumbent upon its community and hence we strive to provide as much control as possible to our community members, including our end-users. Towards these ends, we chose the GPL as our primary license. Support of Sugar and Sugar Activities core packages is coordinated at the Development mailing list [Reference required here].
Sugar development and maintenance is incumbent upon its community and hence we strive to provide as much control as possible to our community members, including our end-users. (In fact, one of our assertions is that by enabling our users to participate in the development of the tools that they use will lead to deeper engagement in their own learning.)
We also strive to provide the means to make changes. Our success in this goal is best reflected in the number of patches we receive from our Community. (We achieve this goal through providing access to source code and development tools within Sugar itself. We also actively participate in workshops and internship programs such as Sugar Camps, Google Summer of Code, Outreaching, and Google Code-In.)
===Who uses Sugar?===
===Who uses Sugar?===
Ultimately, our goal is to reach learners (and educators) with powerful tools and engage them in Constructionist learning. Currently we reach them in many ways: the majority of our users get the Sugar desktop preinstalled on OLPC hardware. We have a more modest set of users who get Sugar packaged in Fedora, Trisquel, Debian, Ubuntu, or other GNU/Linux platforms. Some users get Sugar on Live Media (i.e., Sugar on a Stick). Recently Sugarizer, a repackaging of some of the core Sugar ideas for the browser, has been finding its way to some users. There are also a number of Sugar activities that are popular outside of the context Sugar itself, for example, Turtle Blocks, which has wide-spread use in India. Harder to measure is the extent to which Sugar has influenced other providers of “educational” software. If the Sugar pedagogy is incorporated by others, that advances our goal.
Sugar is marketed as software usable by Children. Ultimately, our goal is to reach learners from all ages with powerful tools and engage them in Constructionist learning. Currently we reach them in many ways: the majority of our users get the Sugar desktop preinstalled on OLPC hardware. We have a more modest set of users who get Sugar packaged in Fedora, Trisquel, Debian, Ubuntu, or other GNU/Linux platforms. Some users get Sugar on Live Media (i.e., Sugar on a Stick). Recently Sugarizer, a repackaging of some of the core Sugar ideas for the browser, has been finding its way to some users. There are also a number of Sugar activities that are popular outside of the context Sugar itself, for example, Turtle Blocks, which has wide-spread use in India. Harder to measure is the extent to which Sugar has influenced other providers of “educational” software. If the Sugar pedagogy is incorporated by others, that advances our goal.
===Who supports Sugar?===
===Who supports Sugar?===
A very cool team of volunteers takes care of our infrastructure such as the wikis, mailing lists, code repositories, localization platforms, etc.
Organizational rules and financials are constantly crafted by the team at the Sugar Labs Oversight Board.
Sugar Labs was envisioned as a supporting platform for multiple “Local Labs”—hence the name “Sugar Labs”, plural—support in terms of local-language localization, training documentation and customizations. This model is growing slowly as there are some active local communities (e.g., Educa Paraguay, OLPC France, Sugar Labs Colombia and Sugar Labs Perú) that continuously work closely with their communities while contributing to the upstream project.
There are also individual volunteers, such as Tony Anderson and T.K. Kang, who help support individual schools in Rwanda and Malaysia. Our diverse ecosystem of doers has lead to a set of friendly experimental prototypes that extend Sugar functionalities to end users such as Sugar Network (that provides a feedback channel among users and developers) and Sugarizer (An evolution of the Sugar Web initiatives that provides the Sugar learning experience via web and stand alone applications).
An open question is what is needed to support our users and supporters over the long term?
===What is next for Sugar?===
===What is next for Sugar?===
We face several challenges at Sugar Labs. With the ebb of OLPC, we have a contracting user base and the number of professional developers associated with the project is greatly diminished. How can we expand our user base? How can we attract more experienced developers? Why would they want to work on Sugar as opposed to some other project? The meta issue is how do we keep Sugar relevant in a world of Apps and small, hand-held devices? Can we meet the expectations of learners living in a world of fast-paced, colorful interfaces? How do we ensure that it is fulfilling its potential as a learning environment and that our users, potential users, and imitators are learning about and learning from Sugar. Some of this is a matter of marketing; some of this is a matter of staying focused on our core pedagogy; some of this a matter of finding strategic partners with whom we can work.
We face several challenges at Sugar Labs. Since we are serving children's needs, with a particular focus on children in the developing world, we must adapt to their real needs as much as possible. Quality assurance for all our products must be an obsession.
With the ebb of OLPC, we have a contracting user base and the number of professional developers associated with the project is greatly diminished. How can we expand our user base? How can we keep our more experienced developers? Why would they want to work on Sugar as opposed to some other project? The meta issue is how do we keep Sugar relevant in a world of Apps and small, hand-held devices? Can we meet the expectations of learners living in a world of fast-paced, colorful interfaces? How do we ensure that it is fulfilling its potential as a learning environment? How do we ensure that it is fulfilling its potential as a collaboration tool?
Some of this is a matter of strategic planning; some of this is a matter of staying focused on our users real needs; some of this a matter of finding friendly coherent partners with whom we can work with.
Specific actions
After last year’s Libre Planet conference, several community members discussed a marketing strategy for Sugar. We thought that if we could reach influencers, we might be able to greatly amplify our efforts. There are several prominent bloggers and pundits in the education arena who are widely read and who might be receptive to what we are doing. One significant challenge is that GNU/Linux remains on the far periphery of the Ed Tech world. Although the “love affair” with all things Apple seems to be over, the new elephant in the room—Chromebooks and Google Docs—is equally difficult to co-exist with. Personally, I see the most potential synergy with the Maker movement, which is building up momentum in extra-curricular programs, where FOSS and GNU-Linux are welcome (hence my earlier focus on RPi). (There are even some schools that are building their entire curriculum around PBL.) We can and should develop and run some workshops that can introduce Sugar within the context of the Maker movement. (Toward that end, I have been working with some teachers on how to leverage, for example, Turtle Blocks for 3D printing.) It is very much a tool-oriented community with little overall discussion of architectural frameworks, so we have some work to do. But there is lots of low-hanging fruit there.
We have several near-term opportunities that we should leverage:
We have several near-term opportunities that we should leverage:
* Stand-alone projects such as Music Blocks have merit as long as they maintain both a degree of connection with Sugar and promote the values of the community. It is not certain that these projects will lead users towards Sugar, but they do promote FOSS and Constructionist principles. And they have attracted new developers to the Sugar community.
* Stand-alone projects such as Music Blocks have merit as long as they maintain both a degree of connection with Sugar and promote the values of the community. It is not certain that these projects will lead users towards Sugar, but they do promote FOSS and Constructionist principles. And they have attracted new developers to the Sugar community.
* School-server: The combination of the School Server and Sugar desktop is a technical solution to problems facing small and remote communities. We should continue to support and promote this combination.
* School-server: The combination of the School Server and Sugar desktop is a technical solution to problems facing small and remote communities. We should continue to support and promote this combination.