Sugar Mission Statement

Quoted from Sugar Labs mission statement:

“Sugar is based on the following principles:

• everyone is a teacher and a learner;
• humans by their nature are social beings;
• humans by their nature are expressive;
• you learn through doing; and
• love is a better master than duty”

To these principles, I say Yes! I think it is important for my students to know that Sugar is based on these principles. I want them to think whether or not  these principles are compatible with their own thinking about themselves as learners, and about learning.  I see how these principles connect to the Quaker principles of our school. Will they? They need not offer a response right away but this question or query would be one that I will revisit often with them. They are learning how to learn and grow, and I am learning how to facilitate that process more efffectively.

Draft of Sugar Pilot Program Proposal at CFS grade 1 room 2

I am Lynne May, first grade teacher at Cambridge Friends School. Right now I am working on finalizing a proposal for a SoaS pilot in my classroom. This proposal will be submitted to our head of school. The proposal will likely be approved. Thinking about how to integrate SoaS into my curriculum so that  skills and knowledge the students gain from this experience relate to and enhance what they are learning in other curricular areas – and wondering which skills are complimentary and parallel. These are some of what I hope to get out of doing the pilot.

Proposal for Sugar-On-A-Stick Pilot Project

Cambridge Friends School (CFS) Grade One Room 2

Background

The social studies curriculum for grade one room 2 will focus on communities for the rest of the school year beginning February. The students will explore three parallel communities: the school community (where they work), the neighborhood (where they live), and the Sugar Labs community (where they share ideas). In the course of this unit, the students will attempt to answer these two questions:

1. What role do I play in these communities, and how do I fulfill this role?
2. What makes a community work well for me, and how could I tell if it would work well for someone else?

The school community will be represented by and limited to Cambridge Friends School. The neighborhood communities will include places where students in our class live – in Cambridge, Arlington, Somerville, Jamaica Plain/Dorchester. The Sugar Lab community is a group within the open-source community with a mission to produce, distribute, support, and gather users and developers of the Sugar Learning Platform.

Proposal Description for Sugar Pilot Program:

Students will have an opportunity to participate in the Sugar Labs community as users and quality assurance engineers, i.e., they will provide developers feedback about the activities developed for Sugar. Students will:

1. Learn by doing.
2. Have a thumb drive or USB stick that can start a computer using the student’s personalized Sugar environment. It will store the applications students will need to run Sugar and store their work.
3. Explore age-appropriate teacher-selected Sugar activities supported by the Sugar learning platform contained in the thumbdrive.
4. Collaborate with one another and with the SoaS Deployment support team as learners and teachers.
5. Learn how to offer constructive feedback and relay sequence or series of events, with attention to cause and effect, e.g, “when I…this happens…”
6. Have about 30 minutes computer time every week. They will keep a SoaS journal to record their thinking and findings.
7. Have regularly scheduled “Upstream Day” with the SoaS deployment support, Mel Chua, i.e., filing bug reports, blog posting, and checking in with Sugar labs community.
8. Use pseudonyms for their blog posts and Sugar community membership.
9. Demonstrate their learning by mentoring other users and communicating to others their observations and thinking, including the SoaS deployment support team.

10. Post blog entries to document their work and interface with others in the Sugar Labs community.

Parent/Guardian Participation and Involvement

Parents will be informed about the pilot project via written communication. In addition, Mel Chua will be available to meet parents on February 26, 2010 from 3:00 to 4:00 pm.

Parent participation and involvement will be encouraged. They may drop-in to observe during the first three weeks of March, or volunteer to come into the classroom from 9:15 to 10:15 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to support students working at the computer station, and/or work alongside them exploring Sugar activities.

Parents will also decide whether or not they give the school permission to publish pictures or video clips, which include their child, for purpose of documenting the pilot program and sharing with the larger community.

Equipments, Accessories, and Cost Structure:

The SoaS Deployment Support person, Mel Chua, will provide three netbooks at around $300 each. If needed, we will look for donations of used and functioning laptops to serve as additional units.

We will need one thumb drive for each student and teacher, and additional thumb drive for testing and back-up. We need 15 thumb drives all together. The estimated cost of a thumb drive is about $12.00, for an estimated total of $180.

We are currently considering whether or not to give children the option of using an optical mouse or a trackball to navigate the screen. The estimated cost of three computer mice/trackball plus mouse pads is  $120.

Total CFS out-of-pocket is estimated at $300.00, including the cost of computer mice/trackballs.

Deployment

The deployment period is currently set for February 23, 2010 and ends in May, 2010.

Proposal Submitted by Lynne May Lim

February 9, 2010