Sugar: The sweet constructionist learning environment

This talk focuses on introducing an award winning education and learning platform, that is almost completely Python based. Originally developed at MIT Media Lab, the Sugar platform runs on over 1.5 million OLPC laptops worldwide, and is also available in other incarnations such as SoaS (Sugar on a Stick), which has acquired the status of an official Fedora Spin.

The presenters will discuss unique aspects of this platform, and the implications of using such a 'constructionist' and collaborative tool for education and learning. Next, they will discuss the core components of the environment with (if possible) a hands on demonstration of hacking the sugar code. Activities for children are the heart of the Sugar platform. This presentation will bring the audience face to face with some of the core Sugar activities, while discussing how to create them. Finally, a section will be devoted to introducing the sugar community, which will serve as a quickstart guide to get involved and get cracking on the codebase.

1 Whetting your appetite...

1.1 A brief history of the OLPC project

1.2 Implications of using an open-source 'constructionist' and collaborative tool in education and learning

1.3 Stories to tell from active OLPC deployments

2 Introduction to the Sugar platform

2.1 Philosophy - A brief walk through the Sugar Human Interface Guidelines (HIG)

2.2 Introduction to core sugar components with a brief hack session

2.3 Face to face with a few core sugar activities

3 Community

3.1 How to get cracking: learning and documentation resources, IRC, mailing lists

3.2 A footnote on activity and content creation

4 Q&A

Although, sugar development can be done on various platforms including Linux, Windows and Mac, the presenters expect to have the audience to have reasonable Linux knowledge especially for understanding the technical aspects of this presentation.

Anish has been actively contributing to the OLPC/SugarLabs FOSS projects for the past few months. He has also been working in the Semiconductor industry for the past two years. The topics that interest him the most are FOSS, Application of software to Education & Learning, Research and Enterpreneurship. He lives in New Delhi, India.

email - anish@sugarlabs.org

IRC – m_anish on the #sugar and #olpc channels on network irc.freenode.net

website (old and not updated very often) - http://sites.google.com/site/webanish/

Arjun has participated in the design and development of the $100 XO laptop and has also contributed to the Sugar software learning ecosystem. He has worked at OLPC in their US headquarters and also deployed the pilot project in Mumbai, India. Arjun's interests are in ICT for development and sustainable models of learning. He lives in New Delhi, India

email - arjun@laptop.org

website (old and not updated very often) - http://dev.laptop.org/~arjs