SugarLabs+Report

SugarLabs started as part of the One Lapotop per Child creating just their operating system. Walter Bender, co-founder of OLPC in 2006, was in charge of this project at OLPC, but decided to break away in early 2008 when Microsoft became a large contributor to the non-profit. Bender remains tied with OLPC as the founder and director of SugarLabs, contributing the main software components of the laptops distributed to the children. Although difficult to believe after viewing his website, Bender is an expert on graphic design and interactive media. As a professor at MIT, Bender contributes to SugarLabs while on sabbatical from his position as senior research scientist ([|http://web.media.mit.edu/~walter/]). He also frequently blogs about current happenings with the SugarLabs project (@http://walterbender.org/).

Simon Schampijer is currently in charge of Sugar releases and the core of the Sugar operating system. He is under contract with One Laptop Per Child but is a leader of the Core Development Team for Sugar. Generally, Schampijer seems to be the more creative, if not completely insane, member of the SugarLabs leaders. He is an adamant supporter of open source and the No Banana Union who want to end software patenting in Europe. As an interesting aside, Schampijer also has a strong interest in computing and music and often attends conferences to perform his music. His blog can be found here: @http://erikos.sweettimez.de/.

Sugar is based on Seymour Papert's theory of Constructionism, which states that people learn better by doing than by listening or watching, closely related to his colleague and friend, Piaget’s somewhat more well known theory of Contructivism. Educators are an incredibly important piece of the SugarLabs contributor whole. Specifically, Papert is a main partner with Walter Bender in creating an effective learning tool through Sugar. Papert wants children to strive and want to learn through their own activities rather than sitting complacently while teachers stand at the front of the room. Instead of so much //teaching// going on, Papert wants more //learning//. Papert is vital to Sugar, as he was the first person to correlate computing with child development in the 1960s (papert.org). Relating to the One Laptop Per Child organization, Papert, who currently lives in Maine, is heading a foundation that is trying to extend a laptop to every student in Maine. Nonetheless, SugarLabs does not want a computing machine to take over the education of the future. Discussions are held on the wiki and IRC about the appropriateness and when computing should be introduced and when it should be left out. As a responsible organization, all of their work is based on research that can be identified and explained through the many articles, essays and longer bibliographies on their wiki.

Basically, the children are in control of their own education, to the point where they can even contribute to the SugarLabs project. Sugar does come with a programming tool to teach the children the basics and provide a firm footing from which they can build. In order for this learning process to take place, the software must remain open source and available to the children. Fundamentally, the learners are working on a problem that they have not been “taught” how to solve but figure it out themselves. Even better, the software allows these epiphanies to be shared with other children in the vicinity through the Activity collaboration.

The developers use git for their version control, so we will be checking out or cloning the source code through Eclipse with a git plug-in. Sugar on a Stick, basically putting Sugar on a USB drive and booting a computer from that drive, has not worked well for any of us so far. Only one of our computers has successfully booted the operating system so far.

The following tools will enable a user to run the Sugar application and its Activities:
 * Ubuntu Software Center - type 'sugar' into the search box, then select the emulator to download
 * Ubuntu - an open source platform used to support the Sugar software
 * Xephyr - turns a window into a framebuffer/VOD

While getting the application to run on Ubuntu was possible, our attempts at creating Sugar on a Stick failed (to a degree). The Fedora OS installed seamlessly on to a USB along with the ISO file needed to run the Sugar application. However, upon boot from the USB, //sometimes// the application would run and other times not at all.

In using Ubuntu, one can experience the Sugar application and begin to engage in some of the Activities. Although, first, the user needs to visit the Ubuntu Software Center and download some Activities. Some bugs can already be seen from general use:

One annoying bug is upon exiting the Sugar application, it somehow modifies the condition of all other and future windows to have some of the same properties as the framebuffer. For example, mouse clicks anywhere on the page turn into grab motions after shutting down the application.