[IAEP] [ANNOUNCE] Ballot information for 2011-2012 Sugar Labs election
Hi all, The candidate list has closed; I'm sending out ballots over the next hour. All registered members should receive emails from team[AT]selectricity.org with a subject like: [Sugar Labs Oversight Board Election 2011-2012] Election Begun! Please check your spam folders! On occasion these mails get caught in spam filters. Your email from the voting software contains the link to the election; this URL is unique to you and should not be shared. The election will end at Wed Nov 30 00:00:00 -0500 2011. == Candidate Information == There are 7 candidates for 3 seats. They are listed at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/2011-2012-candidates?oldid=71296, and below: * Gerald Ardito * Walter Bender * Sridhar Dhanapalan * Nick Doiron * David Farning * Chris Leonard (cjl) * Laura Victoria Vargas Position statements from each candidate as indicated on the aforementioned page follow. === Gerald Ardito === I believe Sugar Labs is an amazing enterprise. Miraculous, even. It is a place where people from all over the world are working together to empower learning for children everywhere. And the world of these people is outstanding. In just a few short years, they have developed an operating system and hundreds of applications/activities. And all of them are free and open source, and modifiable by their users. Sugar Labs is also a community. And it is a community, I believe, that is also free and open source. A community of people who are also, in a manner of speaking, free and open source. I am thinking, especially, of the regional versions of Sugar Labs, where developers and others have come together to the serve the unique needs of a particular region. And so, Sugar Labs, like any other enterprise, is a collection of conversations. I would very much like to be a part of this conversation as a SLOB member. Here are my relevant qualifications. I have been managing a deployment of XO Laptops for the last 2 1/2 years in a New York middle school, working with 5th grade students and their teachers. This work formed the basis of my doctoral dissertation research, which I completed in May 2010. I have also consulted with other teachers and schools on the use of XO Laptops and Sugar with their teachers and students. In the Winter, I will be working with three Navajo elementary schools in New Mexico. I sometimes feel that educators and students (at least in the United States) are under-represented in the various discussions around Sugar. I believe my experience could help to close this gap. I look forward to what comes next. === Walter Bender === My position on the board is expiring. After giving it some thought, I will be throwing my hat into the ring. My rationale is that while Sugar Labs has made great progress over the past three years, it still needs shepherding, particularly in regard to maintaining its focus—too often expediency takes precedent over consideration for the learner. The local-lab program is starting to finally take off, but it too needs some further shaping. And while there are numerous commercial entities taking interest in Sugar, our volunteer community remains at the heart of Sugar Labs—I plan to continue to advocate on behalf of the Sugar contributors. By way of example, it is the volunteer community that is leading the effort to migrate Sugar to GNOME 3.0. For those of you who don't know me, here is a bit of background. I am formerly the director of the MIT Media Lab. I took a leave of absence from MIT to found One Laptop per Child with Nicholas Negroponte in 2006. I left OLPC in 2008 to establish Sugar Labs as an independent entity. (At the time, Nicholas had taken the position that Sugar was the problem preventing him from selling more laptops. I was of the opinion that what the children did with the laptops was more important than the hardware. Ironically, but not surprisingly, OLPC continues to ship Sugar with every laptop that they distribute.) At Sugar Labs, I wear many hats: I am the developer or maintainer of numerous Activities, including Turtle Art, Abacus, Portfolio, Measure, Dimensions, etc.; I contribute to the Sugar toolkit—most recently, the enhancements to the View Source mechanism; and the occasional patch to Sugar itself; I am an active member of the Design Team; the Activity Team; and the Learning Team. I was the principal author of the Sugar FLOSS Manual. When I am not writing code, I am advocating on behalf of Sugar Labs and helping out with deployments by running seminars and workshops for teachers and engineers. My blog about Sugar is aggregated at http://planet.sugarlabs.org. === Sridhar Dhanapalan === The easiest way to find out about me is to visit my Web site [http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/about/]. Amongst a variety of Free and Open Source Software contributions since the 1990s [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SridharDhanapalan], I have previously been a board member of Linux Australia and President of the Sydney Linux Users
Re: [IAEP] SugarLabs Candidacy - Supporting Info
Caryl makes a good point when she asks, What goals would you try to have Sugar Labs achieve if you are elected? Summarizing my statement in the wiki [1], I have three goals: (1) helping Sugar Labs maintain its focus on the learner, primarily by amplifying the voice to the Learning Team and the many teachers with whom I interact; (2) helping the local labs program finally take off as a primary vehicle for growth, by establish more clarity of process (with the SFC) and purpose within the community; and (3) helping to sustain our volunteer community, which remains at the heart of Sugar Labs, by giving it a voice and helping to find resources for more face-to-face time between developers and users. [1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Walter/2011_position_statement regards. -walter -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Contemplating Your SLOBS Vote
Hello All, I write this email so all of our Sugar Labs community members may reflect a little on what their SLOBs vote this year will mean. I first want to say that all seven candidates are very qualified and all in their own ways have contributed in substantial way to try and make Sugar better. As I engage in Educational Outreach work for Sugar Labs, I often find myself as a facilitator between the technical/developer portion of the community and the not so technical Teacher and Educators who are using Sugar or who would like to. In this role I often see the gap between how these two different groups see things. The best way for me to describe this would be to say our developers/technical leaning portion of the community believe It's an Education Project as the mailing list states. In working with teachers and educators they tend to see things as It's a Technical Project. On the mailing lists, on IRC, and at community meet ups this theme of Sugar Labs needing to be more inclusive of teachers is a consistent theme. To remedy this situation I believe it is very important for Sugar Labs to have representation from a Teacher as part of SLOBS for two key reasons. -The first is the direction of Sugar Labs and the Sugar Learning Platform can never be as close to our end users Teachers and Students without it. -Second is the loud and clear message it sends out to all the teachers and educators who use or hope to use Sugar that their concerns and issues are truly cared about. Once again without a Teacher on SlLOBs this may be true in word, but for the best outcome for Sugar and it's use in the classroom,this must be true in action. In this years election there is only one candidate that fits that bill and that is Dr. Gerald Ardito, if there was additional teachers I would be lobbying for them as well. Understand this is not about the individual candidates, they are all great! This is about a decision about the direction of Sugar. Those who already may have a favorite candidate because of personally working with them or they may have like minded technical views. I ask you to just take a moment to consider that decision and ask yourself if the SLOBs election results ends again with no Teacher in place can we truly have Sugar become the Learn How to Learn Learning Platform we all desire. All I hope is that when community members are making their selection they will contemplate these thoughts and then make what they believe is the best decision for the future of Sugar. Thank You for Your Time! John Tierney P.S. If anyone believes this should be posted to other lists because not everyone will see it here, I would appreciate if you would pass it along. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [ANNOUNCE] Ballot information for 2011-2012 Sugar Labs election
FWIW I haven't received my ballot e-mail yet. (Just throwing it out there early on because last time around at least a couple of different people had this issue.) Christoph Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc schrieb: Hi all, The candidate list has closed; I'm sending out ballots over the next hour. All registered members should receive emails from team[AT]selectricity.org with a subject like: [Sugar Labs Oversight Board Election 2011-2012] Election Begun! Please check your spam folders! On occasion these mails get caught in spam filters. Your email from the voting software contains the link to the election; this URL is unique to you and should not be shared. The election will end at Wed Nov 30 00:00:00 -0500 2011. == Candidate Information == There are 7 candidates for 3 seats. They are listed at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Oversight_Board/2011-2012-candidates?oldid=71296, and below: * Gerald Ardito * Walter Bender * Sridhar Dhanapalan * Nick Doiron * David Farning * Chris Leonard (cjl) * Laura Victoria Vargas Position statements from each candidate as indicated on the aforementioned page follow. === Gerald Ardito === I believe Sugar Labs is an amazing enterprise. Miraculous, even. It is a place where people from all over the world are working together to empower learning for children everywhere. And the world of these people is outstanding. In just a few short years, they have developed an operating system and hundreds of applications/activities. And all of them are free and open source, and modifiable by their users. Sugar Labs is also a community. And it is a community, I believe, that is also free and open source. A community of people who are also, in a manner of speaking, free and open source. I am thinking, especially, of the regional versions of Sugar Labs, where developers and others have come together to the serve the unique needs of a particular region. And so, Sugar Labs, like any other enterprise, is a collection of conversations. I would very much like to be a part of this conversation as a SLOB member. Here are my relevant qualifications. I have been managing a deployment of XO Laptops for the last 2 1/2 years in a New York middle school, working with 5th grade students and their teachers. This work formed the basis of my doctoral dissertation research, which I completed in May 2010. I have also consulted with other teachers and schools on the use of XO Laptops and Sugar with their teachers and students. In the Winter, I will be working with three Navajo elementary schools in New Mexico. I sometimes feel that educators and students (at least in the United States) are under-represented in the various discussions around Sugar. I believe my experience could help to close this gap. I look forward to what comes next. === Walter Bender === My position on the board is expiring. After giving it some thought, I will be throwing my hat into the ring. My rationale is that while Sugar Labs has made great progress over the past three years, it still needs shepherding, particularly in regard to maintaining its focus—too often expediency takes precedent over consideration for the learner. The local-lab program is starting to finally take off, but it too needs some further shaping. And while there are numerous commercial entities taking interest in Sugar, our volunteer community remains at the heart of Sugar Labs—I plan to continue to advocate on behalf of the Sugar contributors. By way of example, it is the volunteer community that is leading the effort to migrate Sugar to GNOME 3.0. For those of you who don't know me, here is a bit of background. I am formerly the director of the MIT Media Lab. I took a leave of absence from MIT to found One Laptop per Child with Nicholas Negroponte in 2006. I left OLPC in 2008 to establish Sugar Labs as an independent entity. (At the time, Nicholas had taken the position that Sugar was the problem preventing him from selling more laptops. I was of the opinion that what the children did with the laptops was more important than the hardware. Ironically, but not surprisingly, OLPC continues to ship Sugar with every laptop that they distribute.) At Sugar Labs, I wear many hats: I am the developer or maintainer of numerous Activities, including Turtle Art, Abacus, Portfolio, Measure, Dimensions, etc.; I contribute to the Sugar toolkit—most recently, the enhancements to the View Source mechanism; and the occasional patch to Sugar itself; I am an active member of the Design Team; the Activity Team; and the Learning Team. I was the principal author of the Sugar FLOSS Manual. When I am not writing code, I am advocating on behalf of Sugar Labs and helping out with deployments by running seminars and workshops for teachers and engineers. My blog about Sugar is aggregated at http://planet.sugarlabs.org. === Sridhar Dhanapalan === The easiest way to find out about me is to visit my Web site [http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/about/]. Amongst a variety
