The Future of Edubuntu

[David Farning]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)
<jonathan at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi Edubunteros
>
> I'm writing this message hoping to get some answers from Canonical on
> the future of Edubuntu. I have just written a blog entry on the topic
> [1] that explains in more detail why it's important to get these answers.
>
> For Edubuntu to continue to exist and possibly one day flourish, we need
> to find answers to the following questions:
>
> 1. What does Canonical want and expect from the Edubuntu project?
>
> I think it's important the the Edubuntu community works closely in line
> with the goals of its sponsors, but unfortunately Edubuntu's vision and
> goals are very blurry at this stage.
>
> 2. What do our users and potential users want from Edubuntu?
>
> Combined with question #1, the goals of Edubuntu can be shaped so that
> it will be beneficial to both Canonical and our users. There are many
> ideas in our community that can be implemented to improve the education
> experience for our users, but we certainly don't want to feel like we're
> stepping on the Canonical's toes either.
>
> -Jonathan
>

Hey Jonathan and other Edubuntu developers,

I would like to respond with an upstream perspective.  I have cced
Walter Bender, Sugar Lab's Executive Director, and Sean Daly, our
Marketing Director, in case they have input in this discussion.

I am part of Sugar Labs[1] and our entire model depends on Ubuntu,
other distributions, and their partners for delivery and support of
our product.

>From a technical POV, elementary education is a very tough market.
Some of the constraints include:
1.  A single teacher working with 25 squirmy kids.
2.  Very little system administration support.  In a typical
elementary school in the developed world there are 450 students and
150 computers.  A system administrator who splits his time between
several schools usually has less than 5 hour per school.
3.  There is a limited amount of teacher training and support available.
4.  A school day is divided into distinct sessions or lessons.  A
given lesson has well defined learning objectives and testable
performance measures.

The education market makes enterprise seem easy!

>From a business POV there is currently not much money in education
technology. Several of the existing operating system vendors give away
their products as lose leaders to prevent losing marker share.

>From a Social or community POV.  Most community hackers don't develop
and maintain kid's applications to scratch an itch. They do it to
scratch one of their own kid's itches:)

No one has ever accused me of down playing the challenges in the
education market.  With all of that being said, the community
development model is a natural fit for developing a standardized
learning platform.

Rational - The key to winning the educational market will be creating
a critical mass of localized learning content and activities.  That
critical mass of content and activities depends on an open, rock
solid, commodity platform around which an entire ecosystem develops.

Road Map - The wedge that got FLOSS software into the server room was
the LAMP stack.  Linux as the solid foundation.  MySql as the
datastore. Apache as the presentation layer.  Perl, Python, and PHP as
the glue to hold that stack together.

The education sector could use a similar Linux, Telepathy, Sugar, and
Python stack.

The Sugar Plan - At Sugar Labs, we intend to focus on developing the
Sugar Learning Platform and building a hardware and distribution
agnostic ecosystem around that platform.

In terms of partnerships, Ubuntu and Canonical bring to the table an
effective and well marketed distribution channel.

Sugar Labs brings:
1.  A good enough code base that others are starting to improve and
build products on top of the platform.
2.  A high visibility and compelling project to get a foothold in a
new market and attract new community members.
3.  A community focused project who's goal is to create an FLOSS
community to support our educational goals.

thanks
david

1.  http://www.sugarlabs.org/