Sugar, Ubuntu and local K-12 outreach

[Brian Fallik]

I'm definitely interested in this, both the technical work and the
support/advocacy side.  Keep me posted on your plans and hopefully I
can attend the kickoff meeting.

brian

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Steve Pomeroy <steve at staticfree.info> wrote:
> I have been talking with Walter Bender from Sugar Labs
> <http://sugarlabs.org> and he was telling me about some initiatives
> involving Sugar, Ubuntu and at least one local elementary school.
> He suggested that our team may be interested in trying to coordinate
> some local Boston efforts to support GNU/Linux / Sugar / Ubuntu in
> education.
>
> For those who don't know, Sugar is the GUI used on OLPC's XO computers.
> Development of Sugar has been an ongoing community effort and with Sugar
> Labs, the community can focus on the most important parts of GNU/Linux
> in education.
>
> Sugar is more than a GUI, though: it's a suite of tools that are useful
> for kids to learn about the world, be creative and collaborate.  While
> many developers have focused on the UI, many more need to focus on the
> tools provided to its users. In a sense, Sugar is a bit like an
> operating system, but with a tool chain for learning instead of writing
> software.
>
> What does this mean for our team? Well, we have a lot of people who want
> to help, but often aren't sure where they can best put their efforts to
> use.
>
> I think our most valuable contribution could be to support and train
> educators and teachers, giving them someone to call if they need a hand
> learning some technology. Ubuntu / Sugar / Linux in K-12 education has a
> lot of potential, especially if the people running it on a day-to-day
> basis are able to get the support they need.
>
> Beyond social contributions, there are some technical problems that need
> to be addressed to make this all happen. Sugar that ships with Ubuntu
> is terribly stale and could use some people familiar with Ubuntu and its
> processes to see that it stays modern. I'd love to see a version of
> Ubuntu that ships with Sugar as the main "OS".
>
> There needs to be a better way to get Sugar into the hands of the kids
> who could benefit most from it. There's been talk of a LiveUSB release
> of it, that would make it easy to get kids playing with Sugar on
> whatever computer they can find.
>
> If there's enough interest, I'd like to coordinate a meeting with Walter
> Bender, some folks from Sugar Labs and as many of us as we can muster.
> We can go over how we can best help local K-12 schools, including one
> particular elementary school in Dorchester, and see what else we can do
> to help out our community.
>
> If you are interested in helping out in the efforts to bring GNU/Linux
> and Sugar to kids, join!
>
> For some interesting updates on Sugar, see:
> http://walterbender.org/
>
> --
> Steve Pomeroy
> http://staticfree.info/
>
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