Sugar: An activity-focused, open-source software learning platform for children
sugarlabs.org
sugarlabs.org
Regarding the comment that kids like computers (and will learn to use them without needing any special enticement), I couldn't agree more. Alan Kaye has been saying as much since the 1970s. But that said, while kids can learn to use computers, are they learning to use computers to learn? The latter is the goal of Sugar: to make the path of least resistance be one where kids engage with powerful ideas while constructing (not being instructed -- they already have plenty of that in their lives). So most of the activities are about building things. And the Sugar Journal is a vehicle for reflection on what they have built.
Rather than condescending to kids, we empower them: Sugar is not just "open source". The kids are only one mouse-click away from seeing the source code of whatever activity they are engaged in. And Sugar provides affordances for the kids to then modify the code -- taking full ownership of their tools. Not every kid goes this deep into Sugar, but many do.
Presumably, that means that there are also people who are adults now and got started with Sugar. Are you collecting testimonials by them anywhere? That would be fun to read.
Uses python, so the desktop is interpreted & open for modification (not compiled).
Sugar was so incredibly far ahead of the curve. Figma & multiplayer computing? Sugar was doing this in ~2007. Local-first software, where a class-room without internet connectivity could share a canvas & collaborate together: https://help.sugarlabs.org/en/collaborating.html
The underpinnings were amazing. They used DBus for a lot of the activities to expose themselves programatically. To make things multiplayer, they used link-local XMPP to connect various DBus instances together. It was a brilliantly direct & straightforward & not-absurd way to take the FreeDesktop ideas & turn them into something connected & cross-system, without having to build a whole new stack. https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/doc/book/sect.tubes.dbus.h...
It's really easy to see all the ways Sugar and OLPC didn't accomplish their mission & to see how it didn't work. But people just pass over all the incredible competently resourceful tech choices that were made here. And seemingly no one has had the ambition to unleash FreeDesktop technologies again (also RIP Maemo). Heck, no one's made a local-first laptop ever again!
I'm actually curious if there's research on how learning is impacting by the presentation of the material and how fun the activities are. Naively, I'd think those old educational software I've seen worked better because by being fun, they encouraged the child to try and solve puzzles, do activities longer.
I have a child who is soon going to be 3 and I'd like to let him play some educational software 30 minutes a week or so so I'm actually actively interested in figuring what is something that's good, fun and has the most positive impact. So if anyone has some relevant studies etc... I'm all ears
Also it's a one off purchase. (Edit - on android, free online it seems)
If that's not as relevant for you where you are, it might give some jumping off points for finding more like it
Sugar has the TurtleArt activity, which is very much like Scratch but with the LOGO turtle: https://help.sugarlabs.org/en/turtleart.html
My 4+ year-old doesn't seem to mind the amount of fun in these activities; the rather boring-looking Maze activity is a current favorite. That said, I do think that many of the activities in the catalogue have a user interface that I find alienating or somewhat ugly.
Looked it up for nostalgia and found we must have been inadvertently been playing on a harder difficulty. Feel somewhat vindicated. https://strategywiki.org/wiki/The_Castle_of_Dr._Brain/Outsid...
If your kids watch any PBS shows them they'll recognize the characters.
The activities were fun enough for our twins to learn how to use computer mice at age 3.
Tux Paint is also really fun for young kids and a good way to learn mouse usage:
Haven't looked at the PBS shows yet, right now our son has been rather obsessed in a BBC show called Maddie do you know? because it explains how things works and he's excited to see train tracks, helicopters etc... He also really liked Mickey Clubhouse which has the advantage of being translated in Cantonese (my wife's language).
I'm okay with it, despite preferring names that help frame the product's purpose in my mind, but I can see the kid appeal in a name like Sugar Lab. Maybe I am missing some negative association, though.
I've tried Sugar out and I frankly find it somewhat condescending to children. Kid's don't need to be manipulated into using computers. They like them already and can readily appreciate that they are both fun and powerful. Rather than present to them a dumbed down interface we should be empowering them to use computers as they are, and conditioning them to expect that the computer itself be accessible to them, not hidden behind a fancy UI. When my kid was barely able to read I was showing him how to edit code and observe how it changes the behavior of characters in a game. He got it. We don't need goofy simplified user interfaces.
I could not agree with this statement more. I started teaching my daughter Python and bash when she was 8. I am currently teaching my son (11) C++ and bash and he does all of his coding in emacs. They both use exwm and are eager to continue learning.
Having said that, I can see a huge challenge for non-technical parents. If those families would like to teach their children about computers, operating systems, the internet, web browsers and possibly programming, they need help from somewhere. I don't think my kids would have stuck with it if I had just handed them a link to the RFC standards [1] or the c++ getting started resources [2]. I really can't say how I would have approached ensuring my kids had a head start with technical computer knowledge had I not the knowledge myself. It is a predatory world out there, and access to your child's attention is valuable since they are the future. It must be difficult for parents who are conscious of this to find quality technical learning resources for their kids.
Yeah, I was wondering how to teach my kid some computer languages I never quite got the hang of
That is great to hear. My kids are both on pi 4s, but we customized the Debian distribution quite a bit to optimize its hardware acceleration capabilities and to overclock the hardware as much as possible. The pi boots from a fast nvme usb drive and i/o peripherals are connected via a fast usb hub. They are cooled by the ice tower [1]. They are both using exwm [2] and do not require a mouse. They both type on plank mechanical keyboards from olkb. All of this customization they found quite exciting. Especially being able to mess with their own keyboards.
> I'm trying to wean them off iPads and consumption devices. But it feels like addictive apps can draw them back very quickly (looking at you, YouTube).
We do not own any ipads. Only desktop computers, and I own a couple of laptops, such as the librem 14 and the mnt-reform. Youtube is a bit of a problem, I agree. They need access to it for their schooling at the moment, but the use of it does need to be limited, and the content limited as well, or they will just start watching brain numbing junk. I have decided not to block anything on our network with the goal of establishing a sense of trust, but I also don't allow them to have free rein. It is an endless exercise in finding the right balance :-). To be honest, it is much more of a problem with my son, then it is with my daughter, who spends a lot of her free time drawing and writing and isn't as entertained by youtube videos.
As for teaching them to code, I have been giving them series of exercises and challenges that build up their skill with a few goals:
1. to build their own online mud (multi user dungeon)
2. to write their own compiler
3. to write their own operating system
4. to make their own computer
5. They each have come up with their own personal projects, so I tailor exercises to help them with problems that they need to solve
For our development environment, we use emacs + eglot [3], which is not surprising since the windows manager is exwm. I make them compile and debug from the command-line, because I want them to be competent with standard command-line tools. Fancy GUI-centric IDEs are distracting because all of the options are visible to them even though they lack the skill or need for such features.
I wanted this to be a happy experience, so I have never pushed them, but always challenge them to push themselves. I spend a few hours with them every weekend, then a couple of hours with them mid week to help them with challenges. But that is not how I started. I started with 1 hour first thing every morning Monday to Friday to teach them the basics and get them inspired. If they seemed drained, or I sensed that they needed a break, I just let them have a day off.
We also play erion mud [3] and sometimes hexonyx [4] because I wanted them to understand what a mud is all about and to build up interest. I am really into text-based games, so not surprisingly we play nethack (rogue like) [5]. I am also into interactive fiction and started them off on Adventure [6]. If you are interested in interactive fiction, then you might enjoy reading "Twisty Little Passages - an approach to interactive fiction" by Nick Montfort [7].
Full disclosure, I believe that the main reason I am able to pull this all off is that my wife and I home-school our children. It is a challenge though. Very few families where we are from are similar to us in our philosophy of technology and education.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/GeeekPi-Raspberry-Cooling-Cooler-Heat...
[2] https://github.com/emacs-exwm/exwm
[3] https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot
[7] https://quuxplusone.github.io/Advent/play.html
[8] https://www.amazon.com/Twisty-Little-Passages-Approach-Inter...
[2]https://microcorruption.com/
[3]https://amar.bornofsnails.net/login
[4]https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/
Just though I'd toss those your way. I also love text-based gaming, so I'll be trying out the MUDS you linked. I used to play many moons ago, and definitely miss that era of my life. Was also big into the BBS scene in those days as well. And of course, who doesn't love Nethack? Ahh, the memories.
I'm ok with it, but you better hope child protective services don't learn of it :)
for a while i used the OLPC XO 1.0 and later 1.5 as a daily driver when on the road. most of the work i was doing was on the terminal, but i used the occasional activities. the browser of course, the camera, and others.
i strongly disagree that the interface is dumbed down. it may look toy like, but it serves its purpose.
the initial screen is just an application starter. i see no difference in that to any others on a standard desktop. the terminal and the source of all activities are available. and the actual inner working of the computer are accessible.
there is even a switch to switch from the sugar desktop to a normal one, and back.
the only valid argument would be, to ask what is the benefit of a different interface, as opposed to using a traditional one. but with that argument we are throwing out the idea of innovating on interfaces. and also a similar argument is used in many places to push schools to teach windows, as if it was important that kids learn to work with the most used interface only.
arguing about the interface is not helpful. if the interface works, it's good. kids need to learn concepts, and understand that computers do not all have to look and work the same way. a child that learns using the sugar interface and later a traditional interface, will learn and understand much more about computers and interfaces than a child that only learns a traditional interface, and then as an adult gets confused when presented with something different because it hasn't learned the actual concepts.
it can also be argued that as a project sugar is overengineered, because it solves problems (like activity isolation) a traditional desktop doesn't (but in reality, more and more needs to do too). but retroactively the same argument could be made for things like squeak, which btw was also available on the OLPC, because it is so different from a standard desktop. to be clear, squeak is not overengineered, but it looks that way from the perspective of todays interfaces, since it duplicates all the dev tools instead of using familiar ones. which is the same problem that sugar is being accused of.
the other side of the argument however is that sugar is what we get if we allow developers and interface designers free reign in creating something new.
so to me, sugar does not represent a dumbed down interface. but it represents innovation. and whether it is better or not should be evaluated on that metric, and not on the metric of how different it is from what we already know.
Society is now starting to recognize the addictive and harmful potential of digital/smartphone overconsumption in children. To name a digital children's product "sugar" evokes (to me) digital addiction, the attention economy, and how children need to get off their phones.
I don't read too much into names, but the branding does feel a bit obtuse at this cultural moment.
In the future, whenever I search for "sugar" I will have to deal with hundreds of unrelated results for a programming language.
I see the same issue with go, d, eclipse, and a few other overloaded words.
This is also the reason why xkcd is such a great name.
Even that is not enough, after a while, and more and more words are needed.
Some search engines are better or worse about this.
Absolutely worst, and brutally addictive. I am sorry but that's... looking for polite word... and failing to find one as a parent.
Can I have some Heroin text editor, while writing back in my Cocaine email client, storing on Meth cluster? Of course all signed and verified by Fentanyl certificate store.
There are literally 200k+ words in just 1 single language. Lets be a bit more creative (or compose name out of 2+ words to steer meaning at least a bit).
Well, actually, for French speaking people, I guess "systemd" is worse.
Pourquoi?
I think it’s incredible that people are volunteering their time to create open source learning software.
I hope it’s extensible enough to incorporate paid content. IMHO anything less can compete for attention in today’s attention economy.
I don't want any paid content in my learning experience. We should encourage free as in beer and free as in freedom learning materials.
Whether it's paid or libre is irrelevant, kids literally don't care about Adult(tm) concepts like that.
The screenshot for "This is one of the many fun activities" is a black and white blocky maze!
I'm sure they mean well, but whoever made this doesn't have children.
I noticed that all the open source learning apps that I could find were kind of amateurish and buggy.
I would pay good money for a tablet filled with software for kids that would teach the basics and be interesting at the same time.
I found some games where I was able to remove adds (one time payment) and an app used for learning reading/writing.
I had a click through of this out of interest; by the time I'd picked a colour for my avatar (awful gaudy colour combinations), read the half-dozen tutorial tool-tips just to get the the main ring, I was already bored stiff, as an adult with an almost limitless concentration span.
I hate to say it, but I can't imagine my children wanting to use this as it's presented, at any age.
Is anyone familiar with how much of the time learning is spent on the Chromebook? Is this normal in other countries?
2 - olpc was as much about making computing hardware cheaply and as accessible as possible to communities that didn't have any access to reliable electricity, let alone computers. Hence the built in hand crank
3 - to my knowledge, olpc distributed globally, but hardly addressed US or EU countries at all, so I'm not sure what you mean by "is this normal in other countries."
i don't see that people who can't afford technology would have any less spare energy than people who do.
I imagine if the company hadn't gone belly-up because the predicted demand didn't really materialize, they might have refined that further, but.
It might be kind of fascinating to revisit how powerful you could make such a device in this day and age of manufacturers having spent many more years trying to improve power/performance in small form factors, but I'm not sure anyone would professionally touch such an idea now, given how visibly it went belly-up...
As far as the human energy cost not mattering - have you ever tried cranking something with mechanical resistance for 6 minutes straight to get an hour of battery life? It's draining, even with practice.
Something interesting might have been something more like a bike pedal mechanism, since that's something a lot of humans have practice at doing without exhausting themselves, but that might still have problems with the amount of resistance required to turn it into electricity...
right, exactly.
As far as the human energy cost not mattering
i think you misread that, unless you are not responding to me. what i am saying is that the human energy of poor people is no different than the human energy of wealthy ones, so the argument that poor people in particular would not have the energy to use a hand crank is nonsense, because, as you rightly say, turning a handcrank is exhausting, but it is exhausting for everyone. (and i know that from experience. we used to mill our own flour with a handcrank)
bike pedal mechanisms for electricity have been spotted in some OLPC deployments, as far as i remember. but a laptop is not the only thing using electricity, so if pedal mechanisms are a good idea, i'd expect to see them more often. my impression is that they are only good as a last resort, when better options are not available.
The OLPC project said "we can help kids by designing $100 laptops just for them", and rich westerners heard "$100 laptops."
The mistakes happened way in the beginning, along with a certain economic downturn. In retrospect, the interest of (on-average) wealthy people in cheap disposable laptops was obscene, and it's a shame the market allowed that interest to be entertained the way it was. Netbooks happened because we are incapable of accounting for the long term costs of crap electronics outside of futile attempts to educate consumers. Thus, netbooks and then equally disposable Chromebooks were dumped into the market without scrutiny, and computers are Google now.
I remember the OLPC hardware was harshly criticized by industry, and even the audacity of the project was widely attacked. I considered it proof they were just ahead of the market here and industry realized it was behind the 8-ball. Meanwhile OLPC spawned a new form factor, netbooks and tablets did not exist until the OLPC project was first proposed in 2005. Netbooks wouldn't materialize until 2007, and the ipad launched in 2010. Once industry caught up though it was hard to compete against that, and at the end of the day OLPC was about the mission, not the hardware - but you can't have the mission without the hardware. So pivoting to Sugar was a smart move to achieve the mission once industry caught up.
You can certainly make other arguments against some of the ideas of the project and what it was trying to achieve though. It definitely is a Western idea being applied to problems other civilizations may not have an interest in contending with. Water and food security, let alone electricity and communication infrastructure, are still real problems in the areas OLPC was targeted at.
What? they've existed for aeons, they were just not practical enough in UI to be a success in the market.
https://youtu.be/IK2bAAAdBxs?t=59
Netbook format computer (thicker than what came after the OLPC, obviously, but still well within the range of tiny machines in terms of keyboard/screen size) that converts into a tablet PC in /1993/.
https://youtu.be/ArjRjU9SSr4?t=189
The UMPC, tablet PCs from the Windows XP era.
https://youtu.be/E1r2e8ub02o?t=245
Sony's Vaio tablet PC with a slider style keyboard.
https://youtu.be/DORREhWt9x0?t=725 Sony PCG-U101, a cross in size between the netbooks and palmtop style PCs.
The fact of the matter, the iPad is still the only device in this kind of form factor that has enjoyed long term success and it is entirely due to the UI being such a good fit for the device. Netbooks entirely disappeared from the market because using linux or windows with that kind of tiny screen is absolutely unpleasant and the tiny keyboards make typing painful. The smaller chromebooks in the market tend to be 12 inches, which is far more manageable than the horrible 9 inches of the average netbook. Chromebooks aren't the successor to this device type, this device type disappeared from the market never to be seen again.
Pleasant to use was not the OLPC strong point either.
Got past that, stuck because it demands to use third-party cookies.
So like 99% of the mainstream web?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/goodbye-third-party...