Sugar in Edubuntu 11.04

[Caroline Meeks]

Hi,

I have worked with Sugar with students and I am currently working on a USB
bootable ubuntu stick project with software fairly close to Edubuntu.  The
target for my current project is families so we are using the Netbook Remix
UI and software chosen by the Open1to1 project in Maine.

We would love to also have a working Sugar UI available on our USB Sticks.
 I think we would use it as a default for young children probably 3 - 9 or
so, allowing each child to move to another desktop as
they individually became ready for the increased cognitive complexity.
Also The Sugar Activities Portal would be valuable for use cases, such as in
schools, where we might want to only allow students to install educational
software.

This spring we are working with the Haitian Coalition in a housing project
in Somerville MA.  There are a number of XO-Sugar pilots in Haiti and having
Sugar available would be helpful for collaboration.  There are 1 to
2 million kids using Sugar around the world.  Here in the US most urban
schools have kids who's families are from places with Sugar deployments.
 This means there are also culturally specific Sugar Activities for many of
these countries.  Little things, like a map that helps you memorize the
rivers and provinces of Uraguay.  Having Sugar as an option to use these
native language and culturally familiar programs could be valuable. The
value of a program like Conozco
Uruguay<http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4199>
, in a US School isn't about learning the geography of Uruguay, but it could
be very valuable to make families from Uruguay feel included and seen, and
to help children empathize and understand how they are like children from
other parts of the world.  Sugar has incredible promise in terms of cross
cultural education.

I know there are limited technical resources but I wanted to let you know
where and why I see the value.

Thanks!
Caroline Meeks



On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 8:55 PM, Guillaume Ardaud <
guillaume.ardaud at gmail.com> wrote:

> David,
>
> Thanks for your thorough answer!
>
> I am quite familiar with Sugar, and agree with you on the pertinence of
> some of its concepts and mechanisms (notably the journal, etc.) in the
> context of education/the classroom.
>
> My main objection, however, is that Edubuntu does not share these
> mechanisms, thus creating a marked gap between what a user experiences when
> using Sugar compared to what he normally experiences using Edubuntu; and in
> the end, I believe that this creates a subpar user experience.
>
> What is the utility of having Gnome as the Edubuntu UI for most activities,
> and then having Sugar as an intermediary UI for a subset of activities? In
> an ideal system, we either have everything integrated with Gnome, or
> everything integrated with the Sugar UI, but it does not make much sense to
> me to have these 2 distinct layers.
>
> It just occurred to me that perhaps you were talking about bringing the
> journal, telepathy sessions, etc. to Edubuntu as a whole, in which case my
> point is moot; and I believe such a direction would be worthy.
>
> Ultimately however, any efforts in that direction would be useful somehow;
> I just think that these concerns are worth considering. In any case, it is
> definitely something worth exploring; as you said, there is no reason for
> Ubuntu to keep lagging in the domain of Sugar integration.
>
> Guillaume
>
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-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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