(photo by Sugar Desktop)

What is Sugar?

Learning is not a service--it is a process of active appropriation.

The best introduction is to see it.  There is a good video here: http://interdimensionmedia.com/scratch/MoMA/demo_small.html

With Sugar we take a learning-centric approach, where teachers mentor students as they engage with powerful ideas, teaching less and learning more. We give children access to knowledge--through media such as electronic books, the Web, and multimedia. We also skew the odds toward the appropriation of knowledge by putting it to use and engaging in critical dialog. That does not happen by itself; we facilitate appropriation by providing collaborative tools that put learners in the roles of consumer, critic, and creator within a learning community.

Sugar provides the collaborative experience we associate with the Internet directly into the classroom using a peer-to-peer network; children peer-edit with the word processor, share variables with the calculator, share bookmarks with the browser; sharing a photo or video or story is just one mouse-click away. Through its Journal, children share with parents and teachers what they are learning. Sugar enables unbounded exploration: simple tools to explore complex ideas across a
diverse set of domains: numeracy, literacy, rich media, and computation. Sugar empowers teachers and children with the freedom to act and the freedom to be critical.

Features and benefits of Sugar:
  * comes with hundreds of tools for discovery through exploring, expressing, and sharing: Web browsing; reading; chatting; playing movies and music; playing games; word processing; reflecting and assessment; creating graphics; creating rich media; and programming.
  * collaboration features sharing with or without Internet access; benefits include peer-to-peer learning; always-on support; and "single-click" sharing.
  * built-in tools for reflection: features include an auto-generated journal (work is auto-saved and can be annotated/tagged); benefits include a portfolio assessment tool, a place of reflection, and a forum for discussion between children, their parents, and their teachers.
  * features a scalable, "discoverable" interaction model that is iconic and discoverable through hover menus; benefits include that you can progress using simple means to reach to complex ends.
  * designed for local appropriation: it features free software, a view-source mechanism, and built-in tools for making changes and improvements; benefits include a growing global community of support.
  * emphasis on learning through doing and debugging: benefits include a more engaged learner able to tackle authentic problems.

The best introduction is to see it.  There is a good video here: http://interdimensionmedia.com/scratch/MoMA/demo_small.html

Schools create an "activity pack" that meets their needs. (An activity pack is a selection of Sugar activities--typically 30-40 learning programs.)  There are hundreds of activities available.  Some highlights include:

• Write - A simple word processor that allows direct collaboration enabling peer editing and team writing.
• Calculator - In addition to calculations and simple graphs it allows the creation of variables and sharing of variables within a class or group enabling group problem creation and solving.
• Web Browser - Collaborative web browsing creates thumbnails of the sites other group members are viewing and lets students go back and forth.

All the activities are listed here: http://www.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities

Why use USB Keys?

The bootable USB Key gives a student a complete Sugar learning environment on a small inexpensive USB Key.  Our vision is to enable a student to insert the USB key into any computer, restart,  providing students with any time, any computer access to learning.    Our goal is to allow schools to utilize their existing investment in hardware while drastically reducing support costs and user frustration.  We plan to expand student access by using donated older machines  even without hard drives, for student use at home and at after school programs.  Students will not have to carry valuable laptops back and forth to school, just a USB Key that costs around $5.  All student work will be backed up to a School Server and we will be integrating into the project Moodle and ePortfolio tools.

The goal is to provide this computing environment to students and facilitate access to computing both inside and outside of school so students have the time to use computers to create, explore and collaborate.

Attribution: The text on Sugar was written by Walter Bender of Sugar Labs