10,505
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 1:
Line 1: + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + − + Line 13:
Line 51: − + Line 58:
Line 96: + + + +
→Sugar 2019-2021
== Sugar 2020-2020 ==
2020 has been a challenge for everyone and Sugar Labs has not been spared some of consequences of a global pandemic. We have a skeleton set of developer/maintainers and have had little opportunity for outreach either to expand our community or the community of our users. I remain passionate about Sugar, but we missed some important opportunities over the years that would have led to mass adoption rather than niche use. For example, being forestalled in working with Nokia -- they were trying to position us as an alternative to Android. In large part OLPC kept Sugar Labs at arms length from their deployments -- hence we had very little direct contact with our end users -- with some exceptions, e.g., Paraguay Educa -- which is still active. Our involvement has been maintenance, which I think confirms the analysis of James (See http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2020-October/058708.html).
That said, even though it is a bit long in tooth, I think Sugar is still an important expression of many ideas that have yet to find their way into the mainstream and can and should be used as a way to promote these ideas -- whether or not they are ultimately realized in Sugar deployments. The Journal/portfolio, the collaboration model, our approach to FOSS -- providing scaffolding to exercise one's freedoms, and more.
And some of the Sugar activities are still quite viable and are seeing a new life -- either rewritten for Sugarizer or repackaged in Flatpak, where they are then available on any GNU/Linux desktop.
Several topics James did not mention:
The bulk of my personal contributions over the past 5-6 years have been to Music Blocks, one of the most active Sugar Labs repos. I focus there in part because I wanted to have my efforts reach a wider audience -- anyone with access to a browser can use it. (Like Sugarizer, it is also available in the Google Play Store, and in Flatpak. Ironically, it does not work inside Sugar itself at the moment.) But there are several other reasons. Since "you cannot think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something", I wanted to work on a "microworld" that was about something and I had long wanted to scratch a particular itch: music. I seized the opportunity when I met Devin and it has been a vehicle for lots of personal learning. As a stand-alone activity Music Blocks is getting a lot of traction -- including wide-spread adoption in Japan and Peru. And we have 100+ contributors -- new ones popping up all the time. But Devin and I also have another agenda. We think that Music Blocks could provide a vehicle for musicians to expand their repertoires into programming and hence expand their job prospects -- most musicians moonlight and why not moonlight teaching music through the lens of computation? We've also been developing a body of collateral material in support of this goal -- largely in the form of lesson plans.
Finally, I still think of Sugar Labs as a place where people can come to learn. We've been very active in programs such as Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in (alas no more). And while some of the participants have stuck around, almost all of them have learned something along the way -- about programming, about FOSS, about engaging a community, about pedagogy, etc. Supporting Sugar Labs as a place of learning motivates me.
My goals for 2020-2020:
* I remain convinced that Sugar would be a great environment for the platforms like RPi, especially if we develop/support some activities that more directly support the Maker community: the Maker community would seemingly have a natural affinity towards Constructionism and FOSS. We need to research what are the essential tools to that community and make sure that we support them. We also need to demonstrate that some existing Sugar tools are quite powerful out of the box. For example, Josh Burker's work (See http://joshburker.blogspot.com/2015/05/turtle-blocks-and-3d-printing.html) was done with Turtle Art.
* Less obvious perhaps is the home-schooling community, which has grown during the pandemic. Parents are desperate for new approaches and Sugar could offer one. We need to think about how to package Sugar for home-schoolers, including recommendations for how to use Sugar for learning, something that we seem to have often left to others. With that in mind, maybe we could team up with a local education program (I have one in mind) to get them to help us develop some collateral.
* One of the great pleasures of working within the Sugar community over the past ~10 years has been Google Code in. Since Google has decided to end that program, I would like to find a way to do something similar to engage secondary school students in our community. Of course it cannot start off at the same scale as GCI, but I am sure we could plant a seed that can grow. Some other FOSS projects have also expressed interest.
* Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. I am certain that if we have users we will be able to sustain a developer community. I have some ideas around marketing Sugar and there are undoubtedly better ideas in the community we should surface. One "idealet" is to distribute Sugar on a Stick to every member of the FSF. I am working with Ruben Rodriguez (CTO of the FSF) on putting Trisquel TOAST -- the latest version of Trisquel with the latest Sugar bits -- onto USB sticks which will be distributed in an upcoming FSF mailing. Just one idea among many.
== Sugar 2019-2021 ==
In order to rebalance the board seat cycle -- our guidelines are to have 3 seats open every other year and 4 seats open in the off-cycle -- currently we are 2 and 5 -- I will vacate my oversight-board position by stepping down from the second year of my two-year appointment. I will run again in the next election cycle as it is too late to enter this cycle.
My vision statement would be only slightly different that it was last time in that I am convinced that we still have a lot to offer as an organization. The circumstances have changed in that we are in the process of leaving the Software Freedom Conservancy, which means the board will have additional fiscal and oversight responsibilities.
== 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 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.
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 developer -- more on the activity side than the platform side; (2) a liaison to the SFC; (3) the coordinator for both Google Summer of Code and Google Code In; (4) promoting Sugar within academic circles -- most recently a [[MusicBlocks.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 Arabic translations done and we are great in roads in places like Jamaica through that grant.
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.
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.
=== 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 Leaning Program, a forum for collaborative research among universities globally.
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 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.
: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===