more.html

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title: More Information - Sugar Labs
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<h1>What makes Sugar different?</h1>
<ul>
  <li>Sugar facilitates sharing and collaboration: Children can write,
  share books, or make music together with a single mouse-click.</li>
  <li>Activities, not applications: Sugar activities are applicable
  beyond the scope of the classroom and even Sugar itself.</li>
  <li>Automatic backup of Activity work; no worrying about files or
  folders. Sugar’s Journal makes it almost impossible to lose any
  data.</li>
  <li>The Journal records everything you do: It is a place to reflect
  upon and evaluate your work.</li>
  <li>Sugar runs on most computer hardware, including slower machines.</li>
  <li>Sugar is Free (Libre) Software: It is written in the Python
  language and easily customized.</li>
  <li>Sugar is documented by its users: It is easy to use and teachers
  worldwide have created a wealth of pedagogical materials for it.</li>
  <li>Sugar is written by its users: 50% of the updates to our latest
  release came directly from our users.</li>
</ul>
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<h1>What are the benefits of using Sugar?</h1>
  <ul>
  <li>Hundreds of tools for discovery through exploring, expressing, and
  sharing: browsing, writing, etc.</li>
  <li>Built-in collaboration system: peer-to-peer learning; always-on
  support; and single-click sharing.</li>
  <li>The Journal is a built-in portfolio assessment tool that serves as
  a forum for discussion between children, parents, and teachers.</li>
  <li>A discoverable learning platform: it uses simple means to reach to
  complex ends.</li>
  <li>Designed for local appropriation: it has built-in tools for making
  changes and improvements and a growing global community of support. 25
  languages are currently available.</li>
  <li>An emphasis on learning through doing and debugging: more engaged
  learners are able to tackle authentic problems.</li>
  <li>Available in a wide variety of forms: as part of GNU/Linux
  distributions; LiveCD, LiveUSB; and in a virtual machine.</li>
</ul>
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<h1>What are the Sugar advantages?</h1>
<ul>
  <li>Superior pedagogical framework</li>
  <li>Unique collaboration and journaling (evaluation) features</li>
  <li>Large & successful installed base with hundreds of activities</li>
  <li>Large and committed community base (both developers and teachers)</li>
  <li>24/7 community support; training and workshop materials available</li>
  <li>Rapidly expanding teacher-driven development</li>
  <li>Easily localizable and customizable</li>
  <li>Free open source software: no licensing fees</li>
  <li>A global project: no single point of dependency or failure</li>
</ul>
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<h1>A “learning-centric” approach</h1>
<p>At Sugar Labs, we strive for a “learning-centric” approach, where
teachers mentor students as they engage with powerful ideas, “teaching
less and learning more.” While we want to give children access to
knowledge—through media such as electronic books, the world-wide web,
and multimedia—we also want them to acquire this knowledge by putting
it to use and engaging in critical dialog. With Sugar, we help
learners acquire knowledge by giving them tools that make them
consumers, critics, and creators of knowledge; Sugar welcomes them as
members of a learning community. Cross-community collaboration between
technologists and teachers ensures that the ideals of freedom,
sharing, open critique, and transparency will be part of the interface
to learning that touches children in the world’s classrooms.</p>
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<h1>The Free (Libre) Software culture</h1>
<p>The Sugar pedagogy is embodied in the culture of Free/Libre
Software; teachers and students are empowered with both the freedom to
act and the freedom to be critical. Criticism of ideas is a powerful
force in learning and in fostering economic development; unleashing
that is an important part of the mission.</p>
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