GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Code-in 2014

Sugar Labs

License: GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3)

Mailing List: sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org

Sugar Labs is a 100% volunteer-driven project, a member project of the nonprofit Software Freedom Conservancy. Sugar Labs coordinates volunteers—international community of teachers, software developers, artists and writers, parents and children—who are passionate about providing educational opportunities to children through the Sugar Learning Platform. Globally, there are teachers that discuss how they use Sugar in their classrooms; students who blog about their Sugar learning experiences; and everyone, not just software engineers, contribute to the code base. (Children as young as 10-years old have written Sugar activities and we regularly receive patches from 14-year-olds.) At Sugar Labs, we promote investing locally in learning that works for every child. While there are many great ICT-oriented learning projects, what distinguishes Sugar is its platform features. Like a sponge, Sugar pulls in projects such as Gcompris, Etoys, Scratch, and Open Office for Children, as well as hundreds of learning activities specifically written for Sugar, making those great tools available to more children. But the Sugar platform further enhances the learning experience through its mechanisms of collaboration and reflection. With Sugar, the computer represents more than an opportunity for interaction with isolated applications; it is the manifestation of a change in the culture of learning. Sugar will engage even the youngest learner in the use of computation as a powerful “thing to think with.” They will quickly become proficient in using the computer as a tool to engage in authentic problem-solving. Sugar users develop skills that help them in all aspects of life. The Sugar software is a learning platform designed for children, originally designed for the XO laptop of the OLPC project, but completely independent of OLPC since Q1 2008. Sugar installs on most GNU/Linux distros, hence it can run on most netbooks and PCs and on virtual machines in Windows and iOS. Sugar is used by more than three-million students in Peru, Uruguay, Rwanda, Nepal, the United States, and more than 40 other countries. Sugar is Free Software (GPL3) and is available in more than 25 languages. (We have projects in more than 150 languages and full support in many indigenous languages, such as Quechua and Aymara in Peru. Sugar Labs provides i18n support for many of our upstream projects, including Abiword and Etoys.)

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