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Oversight Board/2017-2019-candidates (view source)
Revision as of 15:12, 31 August 2017
, 15:12, 31 August 2017→[Candidate Name]
As an oversight board member, Devin would bring his insight as an experienced classroom teacher, an artist, and a free/libre software advocate. Devin has been described as "a very patient person", which he hopes would be a contribution to the oversight board if elected.
As an oversight board member, Devin would bring his insight as an experienced classroom teacher, an artist, and a free/libre software advocate. Devin has been described as "a very patient person", which he hopes would be a contribution to the oversight board if elected.
=[Walter Bender]=
After ten years of working on the Sugar Learning Platform, I have been reflecting on the specific tools and affordances we have deployed to engage learners in computational thinking with the overarching goal of fluency. These tools including multiple media-rich programming environments and also mechanism for debugging, collaboration, expression, and reflection. We continue to motivate our selection of tools by revisiting the pioneering work of Seymour Papert, Marvin Minsky, and Cynthia Solomon, who first brought multimedia computing to elementary schools in the late 1960s with the goal of engaging children in the mastery of many of the heuristics and algorithms we associate with computational thinking. Free/Libre Software continues to provide scaffolding for deep and personal expression through programming and for surfacing personal responsibility, a sense of community, and unbounded expectations of Sugar users turned Sugar developers.
Where have we fallen short? Much has changed since we began Sugar development in 2006. Sugar predates smartphones and Apps, Chromebooks and Google Docs, MOOCs and on-line resources such as the Kahn Academy. Edtech is become big business: selling Apps and content is more lucrative and facile than the hard work of engaging teacher and learners in authentic problem-solving. There is a strong temptation to make things as simple as possible so as to reach the broadest possible audience. But some things are inherently complex. Apps might be fun, but the hard part of “hard fun” is in reaching towards complexity. Children should not miss out on the learning that takes place when learning to use tools. At Sugar Labs we are attempting to go where the learners are by providing as much of Sugar as we can as a Web app, on Android, or on iOS, i.e., Sugarizer. At the same time, I am encouraged by the growth of the Maker Movement and are working hard to support Sugar on platforms popular with that movement, e.g., Raspbian.
“It is said that the best way to learn something is to teach it—and perhaps writing a teaching program is better still in its insistence on forcing one to consider all possible misunderstandings and mistakes.” [Papert 1970] We have made mistakes as a community, but we are a learning community and we can and will do better. As purveyors of educational technology we have both a pedagogical and moral obligation to provide the means by which our users can maintain (and modify) our products. Enabling those closest to the learners is in the interest of everyone invested in educational technology as it both ensures viability of the product and it is a valuable source of new ideas and initiatives.
I conclude with a quote from Ezequiel Pereira, Sugar Labs Google Code-in winner and recent recipient of a Google bounty for finding a security hole: “Homework is boring. Looking for bugs is fun.” Let's continue to provide the basis of some fun.
=[Candidate Name]=
=[Candidate Name]=