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Line 21: + − Walter Bender is founder and executive director of Sugar Labs, a non-profit foundation. In 2006, Bender co-founded the One Laptop per Child, a non-profit association with Nicholas Negroponte and Seymour Papert. As director of the MIT Media Laboratory, Bender led a team of researchers in fields as varied as tangible media to affective computing to lifelong kindergarten. In 1992, Bender founded the MIT News in the Future consortium, which launched the era of digital news. + + + + + Line 19:
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== Sugar 2020 ==
I've just reread my [[#Sugar Stable/Sugar Future|vision statement]] from 2 years ago and find it still relevant, although rather than a bifurcation, we have a trifrucation of effort: we still have multiple communities using the Sugar Desktop; we have some pilot programs emerging around Sugarizer, and we have a rapidly growing program in Music Blocks, which can run independently of either the desktop or Sugarizer. A professional curriculum for Music Blocks is being developed and the government of Japan is incorporating it into the primary-school curriculum. The latter effort has consumed the majority of my attention over the past two years as a developer and has been personally very rewarding. I am especially pleased that a team of educators has dedicated time and energy into ensuring that the tools are well matched to the needs of the schools – I anticipate that Music Blocks will be a big growth area for Sugar Labs and one we can point to as evidence of the value of our Constructionist approach to learning.
My other efforts have been administer the Google Code-in and Google Summer of Code programs on behalf of Sugar Labs to leverage great work from new contributors, many of whom have become mentors for future contributors. (For example, Music Blocks has had more than 60 unique contributors.) It is largely this opportunity to work with bright young minds from around the world that keeps me excited about Sugar Labs and its mission. I also need to tip my hat to James Cameron, without whose efforts (and those of the developers he patiently supports), the Sugar Desktop would have atrophied by now. James works diligently to ensure that Sugar lives up to the standards of an open libre project with discipline sufficient to ensure a level of quality needed by our user community.
That said, the past two years have been a personal struggle in regards to the Sugar Labs oversight board. It has been difficult to muster a quorum of board members even for our regularly scheduled one-hour monthly meetings. A disinterested, disengaged board has made it impossible to do any long term planning for Sugar Labs. I'm at an impasse: I have considered stepping down from the board since I feel it is so ineffective. As I outlined two years ago, we have lots of potential as an organization, but I have not been able to realize that potential unilaterally. I am disappointed that we have do so little to engage the Maker community, the existing Sugar communities, or take the time to discuss new opportunities. It all ultimately boils down to communication -- there has been none from the majority of my colleagues on the board. But having reflecting upon it, I have decided to run again for a seat on the oversight board, as I think I still have something to contribute to Sugar Labs. But I will not serve as chair of our meetings as I have not been effective in that role. I am hoping that the community will elect new members who will participate and the dead weight that prevents us from moving forward will be jettisoned. Together, we have much to accomplish.
== Sugar Stable/Sugar Future ==
Sugar Labs has been pulled in two directions the past few years. On the one hand, it is getting much more stable, much more robust, and easier to maintain. The maintenance itself is being provided in large part by a dedicated group of youths and a small handful of professional developers. On the other hand, the world of educational technology continues to move in directions that make it more difficult for the typical individual or school to adopt Sugar as their core platform. While OLPC still stands behind Sugar -- indeed, FZT has launched a program for Sugar development at a university in Managua, the growth potential outside of OLPC for a GNU/Linux-based platform is smaller than it was a few years ago. I do think that the "tablet" meme has been discredited and increasing momentum behind the Maker movement has shifted things somewhat in our favor. We need to be aggressive in reaching out to potential new user communities. At the same time, it is also clear that mobile devices and the Web are going to be the predominant points of access to technology for much of the world, so we are also obliged to try to bring some of our ideas (if not our entire platform) to those worlds. We have some momentum there as well, with the Sugarizer platform and the various JavaScript initiatives underway, e.g., [http://walterbender.github.io/musicblocks Music Blocks]. I don't see any way to avoid splitting our efforts between these two worlds -- GNU/Linux desktop and Web/native Android. Not ideal, but we have things to contribute to both worlds and an opportunity to learn and grow as a community going forward.
As a member of the Sugar community, I have been active as: (1) a [http://github.com/walterbender developer] -- more on the activity side than the platform side; (2) a liaison to the SFC; (3) the coordinator for both [[Summer_of_Code/2015|Google Summer of Code]] and [[Google_Code_In_2015|Google Code In]]; (4) promoting Sugar within academic circles -- most recently a [[File:MusicBlocks-Constructionism-2016.pdf|paper]] that Devin, Yash, and I wrote for the Constructionist 2016 conference on the work we did together during GSoC; (5) raising funds for internationalization and workshops; and (6) running the monthly SLOB meetings. I don't need to be a member of the oversight board in order to be a developer, but for the other activities, it is important to have a voice within the community. If I am returned to the board, I hope to hand off responsibility for running meeting to another board member. And the role of liaison to the SFC. I think continuity within the Google programs is important, and I plan to continue in that sphere. I will also continue to manage the Trip Advisor grant, which has been really helpful for outreach -- most recently I was able to get some new [https://github.com/walterbender/turtleblocksjs/blob/master/po/ar.po Arabic] translations done and we are making great inroads in places like Jamaica through that grant.
One final note: I am in the process of launching a new college for industrial design. I am instilling Free/Libre Software as a core principle of the college and I hope to be able to make Sugar be at the core of the educational technology section of the school. More on that effort soon.
==Walter Bender==
==Walter Bender==
I was at OLPC for several years and now I am a volunteer on the project. My home page can be found here: [http://www.media.mit.edu/~walter]
I was at OLPC for several years and now I am a volunteer on the project. My home page can be found here: [http://www.media.mit.edu/~walter]
=== bio ===
=== bio ===
Walter Bender is founder of Sugar Labs, which develops educational software used by more than three-million children in more than forty countries. Sugar Labs is a member project of the non-profit foundation Software Freedom Conservancy. In 2006, Bender co-founded the One Laptop per Child, a non-profit association with Nicholas Negroponte and Seymour Papert. As director of the MIT Media Laboratory from 2000 to 2006, Bender led a team of researchers in fields as varied as tangible media to affective computing to lifelong kindergarten. In 1992, Bender founded the MIT News in the Future consortium, which launched the era of digital news. Currently, he is launching a new initiative at MIT, the Open Learning Program, a forum for collaborative research among universities globally.
Bender received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1977 and a masters degree from MIT in 1980, where he built the Electronic Publishing research group. He was a founding member of the MIT Media Lab, where he was a Senior Scientist and holder of the Alexander W Dreyfoos Chair.
Bender serves or has served on numerous boards and committees, including IBM's mobile computing advisory board and the GNOME technical advisory board. He is on the advisory board of the Squeak Foundation, the Center for Educational Technology (CET) in Israel, and Libre Corps, a new program at RIT that builds long-term, on-going relationships between university students and humanitarian organizations. He has held visiting faculty appointments at international universities, including the University of Tampere, and continues to serve on university research advisory boards and on occasion teaches at Hult and MIT Sloan business schools. Bender's book, ''Leaning to Change the World'', on technology. learning, and social entrepreneurship was published in 2012.
=== bio en es ===
=== bio en es ===
<small>'''Nota:''' ''Walter tiene una biografia en la Wikipedia en español, la misma es [https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bender esta]''</small>
Walter Bender es el director de la Fundación Sugar Lab, una organización sin fines de lucro, desde donde ha diseñado el sistema operativo SUGAR que utilizan las computadoras XO de la organización OLPC (One Laptop per Child) Una Computadora por estudiante. Uno de los objetivos de Sugar Lab es ofrecer un espacio de reunión y apoyo para una creciente comunidad de educadores y desarrolladores de software que quieran extender la plataforma de Sugar y quienes han estado creando aplicaciones compatibles con esta. Antes de fundar el Sugar Lab, Walter fue parte de la organización OLPC todavía apoya los esfuerzos de esa organización en el desarrollo y diseminación de tecnologías que puedan revolucionar el mundo de los niños y niñas y los atraigan hacia el aprendizaje. Entre los años 2000 y 2006 Walter fue el Director Ejecutivo del Laboratorio de Medios Media Lab, del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts MIT donde además, por muchos años dirigió el grupo de investigación llamado Las Noticias de Futuro que se fundó en 1996 y su proyecto Publicación Electrónica. En el marco de las investigaciones Publicación Electrónica Walter ayudó a desarrollar en el siglo pasado las herramientas tecnológicas para promover lo que hoy en el siglo XXI conocemos como periodismo ciudadano.
Walter Bender es el director de la Fundación Sugar Lab, una organización sin fines de lucro, desde donde ha diseñado el sistema operativo SUGAR que utilizan las computadoras XO de la organización OLPC (One Laptop per Child) Una Computadora por estudiante. Uno de los objetivos de Sugar Lab es ofrecer un espacio de reunión y apoyo para una creciente comunidad de educadores y desarrolladores de software que quieran extender la plataforma de Sugar y quienes han estado creando aplicaciones compatibles con esta. Antes de fundar el Sugar Lab, Walter fue parte de la organización OLPC todavía apoya los esfuerzos de esa organización en el desarrollo y diseminación de tecnologías que puedan revolucionar el mundo de los niños y niñas y los atraigan hacia el aprendizaje. Entre los años 2000 y 2006 Walter fue el Director Ejecutivo del Laboratorio de Medios Media Lab, del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts MIT donde además, por muchos años dirigió el grupo de investigación llamado Las Noticias de Futuro que se fundó en 1996 y su proyecto Publicación Electrónica. En el marco de las investigaciones Publicación Electrónica Walter ayudó a desarrollar en el siglo pasado las herramientas tecnológicas para promover lo que hoy en el siglo XXI conocemos como periodismo ciudadano.
Desde todas estas perspectivas Walter ha hecho una importante contribución al conocimiento en las áreas de publicación electrónica, medios digitales y tecnologías para aprender.
Desde todas estas perspectivas Walter ha hecho una importante contribución al conocimiento en las áreas de publicación electrónica, medios digitales y tecnologías para aprender.
http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/associate/fsf-9844.png
===Regarding the Sugar Labs Oversight Board===
===Regarding the Sugar Labs Oversight Board===
I am in deep. I live and breath Sugar every moment of every day. Perhaps too much (Mentoring students in Google Code In doesn't help the situation any). But I really do think that Sugar is of great value to learners and, although we are swimming against the tide of the mainstream (learning as consumption), we have had and continue to have a positive influence.
I've spent much of the past two years advocating on behalf of Sugar (I've literally traveled the world to speak about Sugar). The good thing is that being captive in an airplane is a great place to write code. When I speak about Sugar, I use Sugar: i.e., every talk I have given in the past 5 years has been written in Turtle Art.
Of late, I have also been working on raising money towards specific goals. Most recently, with help from Chris and Claudia, I got a grant for Sugar Labs from Trip Advisor to support our localization efforts and our efforts to promote programming by children (See turtleartday.org). I plan to do more targeted fund-raising over the next two years as the needs of our community come more sharply into focus. At the same time, I have been working hard (with Gonzalo and Tincho) to help local deployments fill in some of the development gaps left by the dispersal of the OLPC engineering team. Finally, I am working on developing a new program at MIT to rally universities around Sugar as a research and development platform. All of these efforts are enhanced by my role as a member of the Sugar Labs oversight board. Having an "official" role in the organization gives me more clout with potential donors and collaborators.
My colleagues on the oversight board and in the general community are the best. Thank you for your contributions to the project.
Follow this link to my [[User:Walter/2011_position_statement|2011 Position Statement]].
==== 2011 ====
Follow this link to my [[User:Walter/2011_position_statement|2009 Position Statement]].
Two years ago, I said:
Two years ago, I said:
:This is much the same... although I am perhaps coding more now than ever.
:This is much the same... although I am perhaps coding more now than ever.
===LibrePlanet 2016===
[[File:Education-needs-free-software.pdf]]
===OWF talk===
===OWF talk===
===Recent writing about Sugar and learning===
===Recent writing about Sugar and learning===
* [http://www.linux-magazine.es/issue/54/078-083_SugarLM54.pdf Sugar (Linux Magazine ES)]
* [http://www.olpcnews.com/software/sugar/confessions_of_a_fundamentalist.html Confessions of a fundamentalist (Part 1)]
* [http://www.olpcnews.com/software/sugar/confessions_of_a_fundamentalist.html Confessions of a fundamentalist (Part 1)]
* [http://www.olpcnews.com/software/sugar/more_fundamentalist_confessions.html Confessions of a fundamentalist (Part 2)]
* [http://www.olpcnews.com/software/sugar/more_fundamentalist_confessions.html Confessions of a fundamentalist (Part 2)]
===Sandbox===
===Sandbox===
====Spinner palette gtk-2====
[[File:Abacus-spinner-palette.png|300px]]
====Spinner palette gtk-3====
[[File:Abacus-spinner-palette-3.png|300px]]
====Sound test====
[[User:Walter/Get Sugar]] [[File:Test.ogg|test sound]]
[[User:Walter/Get Sugar]] [[File:Test.ogg|test sound]]