Sorry Laura, but I don't think you actually read what I wrote. Most of
the "Goals" you refer and the objectives you refer to are really
"activities." Please re-read my letter below and, if you think I am
wrong, I suggest you Google "Goals vs Objectives vs Activities" to see
what they really are.
As an educator I have spent many hours writing goals, objectives, and
activities (many of the latter were actually to qualify for grant
money). It was part of my job and that of many other educators.
Now, back to goals... We should start with 4 - 5 clear, concise, goal
statements (each may cover a fairly broad topic). I suggest something
simple, such as Google Docs as a place to start. When we have
something concrete that most folks can agree with and support, it will
then be time to move them to the wiki.
Remember the KISS principle. It is how to get things done! (also can
be Googled or searched for in Wikipedia if you need clarification).
Caryl
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Laura Vargas <la...@somosazucar.org>
*Sent:* Monday, April 10, 2017 11:45:26 AM
*To:* Caryl Bigenho
*Cc:* Samson Goddy; sameer verma; Lionel Laské; Adam Holt;
igna...@sugarlabs.org; walter.ben...@gmail.com; Tony Anderson; George
Hunt; José Miguel García; SLOBs; iaep; sugar-devel; Dave Crossland
*Subject:* Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] 2017 Goals for Sugar Labs
Hi Caryl and all,
Last year we - as a community - made the exercise to document a list
of technical and organizational goals here at the wiki:
https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/2016_Goals
It may be the logical start point for an updated version.
As for Objectives, and according with our mission*, earlier this year
I suggested:
[1] To sponsor any motivated, active individuals in need to continue
doing the best they can to support our mission.
[2] To make sure our servers are safe and our systems are distributed.
[3] To maintain domains and trademarks.
As for the official mission I would be on favor of eliminating the
text "Originally part of the One Laptop Per Child project" just
because it is irrelevant.
From https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Mission
*Mission
Sugar Labs^® <https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Trademark> is a
volunteer-driven member project of Software Freedom Conservancy
<http://www.sfconservancy.org/>, a nonprofit corporation. Originally
part of the One Laptop Per Child project, Sugar Labs coordinates
volunteers
<https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Getting_Involved> around the
world who are passionate about providing educational opportunities to
children through the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar Labs® is supported
by donations and is seeking funding
<https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Donate> to accelerate development.
Regards and looking forward for your comments,
Laura Victoria
2017-04-10 11:58 GMT-05:00 Caryl Bigenho <cbige...@hotmail.com
<mailto:cbige...@hotmail.com>>:
Hi Folks,
First, thanks go to Walter for the very comprehensive review of
Sugar Labs and what has been done and is currently being done. It
is very helpful. However, it, in no sense of the words, represents
goals and objectives for SL going forward.
I know Sameer really does want to share more with us to assist in
developing a viable list of goals and objectives, but I also know
he is very busy with his teaching job. So, I have taken the time
to find a couple of resources from education that show what goals
and objectives really are and how the activities we choose to
undertake are related. These resources are attached.
The next thing that needs to be done is to go through Walter's
fine document and identify all the specific areas Sugar Labs works
with and write one goal for each. Don't do anything else until
these goals are written. These should be done in a sharable online
document. Everyone who wants to participate should be encouraged
to do so. There should be no special priority attached to any of
these goals. At this point they would be of equal value.
There should be one goal for each area... I suggest we start with
these 4 broad areas:
1. Sugar
2. Sugarizer
3. Stand Alone Projects
4. School Server
Each goal should be concise and precise. _Preferably one
sentence._ Under each goal go objectives. There can be _more than
one_ objective per goal.
An objective should follow the form of *Who* is going to do *What*
by *When* and *How* will success be measured.
A goal can have several objectives under it... for example, the
objectives for Sugar could have objectives addressing both Raspian
and Trisquel (two separate categories).
Once the objectives are filled in, it will be time to start
working on activities. These will include actual activities like
producing a new version of Sugarizer, conducting a Music Blocks
workshop, showing Sugar Labs "products" and recruiting users and
volunteers at Linux conferences and educational conferences, etc.
After this every project proposed can be analyzed with the
question in mind, "How does this project help Sugar Labs achieve
its stated objectives (and thus its goals as well).
Please! Someone start a doc for this to all happen. Begin with
just the 4 (or 5 if you want to separate Raspian and Trisquel).
Make a simple goal for each. Then collaborate on getting the goals
"just right" before moving on to objectives.
Then do the same thing for objectives.
This may seem like a lot of "busy work." But, trust me it isn't.
It will give Sugar Labs a strong platform to work from, enabling
the best use of limited time and resources.
Caryl
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* IAEP <iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org
<mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org>> on behalf of Laura
Vargas <la...@somosazucar.org <mailto:la...@somosazucar.org>>
*Sent:* Monday, April 10, 2017 7:31:18 AM
*To:* Samson Goddy
*Cc:* SLOBs; iaep; sugar-devel; Dave Crossland
*Subject:* Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] 2017 Goals for Sugar Labs
Thank you Samson
Then I guess the email format is not the best choice. Could you
please document it on a wiki page at the Sugar Labs wiki?
Blessings and a nice week to all
Laura Victoria
2017-04-10 8:25 GMT-05:00 Samson Goddy <samsongo...@gmail.com
<mailto:samsongo...@gmail.com>>:
If i am wrong, walter made it clear earlier that this is a
"draft proposal" meaning you can input.
Samson
On Apr 10, 2017 2:15 PM, "Laura Vargas" <la...@somosazucar.org
<mailto:la...@somosazucar.org>> wrote:
2017-04-09 19:03 GMT-05:00 Walter Bender
<walter.ben...@gmail.com <mailto:walter.ben...@gmail.com>>:
On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 7:56 PM, Dave Crossland
<d...@lab6.com <mailto:d...@lab6.com>> wrote:
Hi
Thanks Walter. I'd like to better understand some
additional context before diving in :)
Does this mean Sameer you have stopped the project
planning process you started, and we should not
expect you to restart it again?
At the most recent SLOB meeting Samson brought up the
fact that we were still waiting and so I volunteered
to write something up to get the conversation going again.
Thanks for doing this Walter,
After a quick read, I have to confess I feel sad and
excluded because none of the projects I have worked on [1]
is mentioned on your view of Sugar's history.
Regards and blessings,
Laura V
[1] http://pe.sugarlabs.org/ir/Proyectos
<http://pe.sugarlabs.org/ir/Proyectos>
Walter, are these the goals for this year, or are
they your proposal for the goals for this year?
Not sure I understand what you are asking. I wrote up
a draft of goals but they are not "the goals" until we
agree to them.
regards.
-walter
On Apr 9, 2017 3:31 PM, "Walter Bender"
<walter.ben...@gmail.com
<mailto:walter.ben...@gmail.com>> wrote:
As per the discussion in the last Suagr Labs
Oversight Board Meeting, I had agreed to write
a draft statement of goals for 2017. The
document below includes feedback from Samson
G. I hope this document can serve to
revitalize our discussion from 2016 that never
reached resolution.
Sugar Labs Plans, Goals, Aspirations
What is Sugar Labs?
Sugar Labs creates, distributes, and maintains
learning software for children. Our approach
to learning is grounded in Constructionism, a
pedagogy developed by Seymour Papert and his
colleagues in the 1960s and 70s at MIT. Papert
pioneered the use of the computer by children
to help engage them in the “construction of
knowledge.” His long-time colleague Cynthia
Solomon expanded up his ideas by introducing
the concept of engaging children in debugging
as a pathway into problem-solving. Their 1971
paper, “Twenty things to do with a computer”,
is arguably the genesis of contemporary
movements such as the Maker Movement and Hour
of Code.
At the core of Constructionism is “learning
through doing.” If you want more learning, you
want more doing. At Sugar Labs we provide
tools to promote doing. (We focus almost
exclusively on tools, not instructional
materials.) However, we go beyond “doing” by
incorporating critical dialog and reflection
into the Sugar learning environment, through
mechanisms for collaboration, journaling, and
portfolio.
Sugar Labs is a spinoff of the One Laptop per
Child (OLPC) project and consequently it has
inherited many of its goals from that project.
The goal of OLPC is to bring the ideas of
Constructionism to scale in order to reach
more children. A particular focus is on
children in the developing world. In order to
meet that goal, Sugar, which was originally
developed for OLPC, was by necessity a
small-footprint solution that required few
resources in terms of CPU, memory, storage, or
network connectivity. The major change on
focus from the OLPC project is that Sugar Labs
strives to make the Sugar desktop available to
multiple platforms, not just the OLPC XO hardware.
Who develops Sugar?
Sugar Labs is a 100% volunteer effort
(although we do occasionally raise money for
paid student internships). Sugar development
and maintenance is incumbent upon volunteers
and hence we strive to provide as much control
as possible to our community members,
including our end-users. (In fact, one of our
assertions is that by enabling our users to
participate in the development of the tools
that they use will lead to deeper engagement
in their own learning.) Towards these ends, we
chose the GPL as our primary license. It has
been said of the GPL that it “restricts my
right [as a developer] to restrict yours [as a
user and potential developer]”, which seems
ideal for a project that wants to engage a
broad and diverse set of learners. But at
Sugar Labs we go beyond the usual goals of
FOSS: a license to make changes to the code is
not enough to ensure that users make changes.
We also strive to provide the means to make
changes. Our success in this goal is best
reflected in the number of patches we receive
from our community. (We achieve this goal
through providing access to source code and
development tools within Sugar itself. We also
actively participate in workshops and
internship programs such as Google Summer of
Code, Outreaching, and Google Code-In.)
Who uses Sugar?
Ultimately, our goal is to reach learners (and
educators) with powerful tools and engage them
in Constructionist learning. Currently we
reach them in many ways: the majority of our
users get the Sugar desktop preinstalled on
OLPC XO hardware. We have a more modest set of
users who get Sugar packaged in Fedora,
Trisquel, Debian, Ubuntu, or other GNU/Linux
platforms. Some users get Sugar on Live Media
(i.e., Sugar on a Stick). Recently Sugarizer,
a repackaging of some of the core Sugar ideas
for the browser, has been finding its way to
some users. There are also a number of Sugar
activities that are popular outside of the
context Sugar itself, for example, Turtle
Blocks, which has wide-spread use in India.
Harder to measure is the extent to which Sugar
has influenced other providers of
“educational” software. If the Sugar pedagogy
is incorporated by others, that advances our goal.
Who supports Sugar?
When we first created Sugar Labs, we
envisioned “Local Labs”—hence the name “Sugar
Labs”, plural—that would provide local support
in terms of local-language support, training,
curriculum development, and customizations.
This model has not ever gained the scale and
depth envisioned (we can debate the reasons
why), although there are still some active
local communities (e.g., Educa Paraguay) that
continue to work closely with the broader
community. There are also individual
volunteers, such as Tony Anderson and T.K.
Kang, who help support individual schools in
Rwanda, Malaysia, et al. An open question is
how do we support our users over the long term?
What is next for Sugar?
We face several challenges at Sugar Labs. With
the ebb of OLPC, we have a contracting user
base and the number of professional developers
associated with the project is greatly
diminished. How can we expand our user base?
How can we attract more experienced
developers? Why would they want to work on
Sugar as opposed to some other project? The
meta issue is how do we keep Sugar relevant in
a world of Apps and small, hand-held devices?
Can we meet the expectations of learners
living in a world of fast-paced, colorful
interfaces? How do we ensure that it is
fulfilling its potential as a learning
environment and that our users, potential
users, and imitators are learning about and
learning from Sugar. Some of this is a matter
of marketing; some of this is a matter of
staying focused on our core pedagogy; some of
this a matter of finding strategic partners
with whom we can work.
We have several near-term opportunities that
we should leverage:
* Raspian: The Raspberry PI 3.0 is more than
adequate to run Sugar—the experience rivals or
exceeds that of the OLPC XO 4.0 hardware.
While RPi is not the only platform we should
be targeting, it does has broad penetration
into the Maker community, which shares a
synergy with our emphasis on “doing”. It is
low-hanging fruit. With a little polish we
could have an image available for download
from the RPi website.
* Trisquel: We have the potential for better
leveraging the Free Software Foundation as a
vehicle for promoting Sugar. Their distro of
choice is Trisquel and the maintainer does a
great job of keep the Sugar packages up to date.
* Sugarizer: The advantage of Sugarizer is
that it has the potential of reaching orders
of magnitude more users since it is web-based
and runs in Android and iOS. There is some
work to be done to make the experience
palatable on small screens and the current
development environment is—at least my
opinion—not scalable or maintainable. The
former is a formidable problem. The latter
quite easy to address.
* Stand-alone projects such as Music Blocks
have merit as long as they maintain both a
degree of connection with Sugar and promote
the values of the community. It is not certain
that these projects will lead users towards
Sugar, but they do promote FOSS and
Constructionist principles. And they have
attracted new developers to the Sugar community.
* School-server: The combination of the School
Server and Sugar desktop is a technical
solution to problems facing small and remote
communities. We should continue to support and
promote this combination.
Specific actions: After last year’s Libre
Planet conference, several community members
discussed a marketing strategy for Sugar. We
thought that if we could reach influencers, we
might be able to greatly amplify our efforts.
There are several prominent bloggers and
pundits in the education arena who are widely
read and who might be receptive to what we are
doing. One significant challenge is that
GNU/Linux remains on the far periphery of the
Ed Tech world. Although the “love affair” with
all things Apple seems to be over, the new
elephant in the room—Chromebooks and Google
Docs—is equally difficult to co-exist with.
Personally, I see the most potential synergy
with the Maker movement, which is building up
momentum in extra-curricular programs, where
FOSS and GNU-Linux are welcome (hence my
earlier focus on RPi). (There are even some
schools that are building their entire
curriculum around PBL.) We can and should
develop and run some workshops that can
introduce Sugar within the context of the
Maker movement. (Toward that end, I have been
working with some teachers on how to leverage,
for example, Turtle Blocks for 3D printing.)
It is very much a tool-oriented community with
little overall discussion of architectural
frameworks, so we have some work to do. But
there is lots of low-hanging fruit there.
regards.
-walter
--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a
laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
<mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org>
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
<http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep>
--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org <mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org>
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
<http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep>
--
Laura V.
*I&D SomosAZUCAR.Org*
“No paradox, no progress.”
~ Niels Bohr
Happy Learning!
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--
Laura V.
*I&D SomosAZUCAR.Org*
“No paradox, no progress.”
~ Niels Bohr
Happy Learning!
--
Laura V.
*I&D SomosAZUCAR.Org*
“No paradox, no progress.”
~ Niels Bohr
Happy Learning!
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