[Grassroots-l] SugarLabs Sur - Libre Social Network Project

[Edward Cherlin]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:52 AM, Sebastian Silva
<sebastian at fuentelibre.org> wrote:
> Friends of our community,
>
> I'd like to introduce you to a project that Rafael, me, Alejandro
> (proj.man.) , Antonio (django wiz), Alfredo (theather educ) and Jose
> (mathematics professor at the UNMSM) have been working on.
> It is our proposed strategy for training and supporting a large rural
> and distributed sugar deployment including collaboration servers in
> traditional Computer Labs settings. Already we are preparing for a
> workshop with the first teachers in early february, when the roll out
> will occur.

+1

> We have two main strategies:
>
>  - Reduce the maintenance overhead of schools by providing a tailored
> suite + best practices + documentation ---    "easy to replicate"

Earth Treasury wants to work on the teaching materials. We announced
our intention of forming an R&D consortium for this just a few days
ago.

>  - Harnessing social network functionality for sharing, collaboration
> and peer-support ---  "easy to share"
>
> Everybody understands the value and power of social networks. However
> these remain propietary and have a number of privacy and control
> issues. We'll incorporate existing social networking software (could
> be Elgg, NoseRub, Pinax...) that not only will provide "One Social
> Network Per School", but will jumpstart the first (that I know of)
> massive, self-replicating, decentralized educational social network
> ecosystem, a network of social networks. And we want to make it extra
> easy to add a node anywhere on the globe.

That is another item that Earth Treasury has had on its To Do list. We
have to be able to link schools and individual students around the
world, for educational and social purposes, and then to create
multinational partnerships to set up sustainable businesses.

> Our expected deployment involves ~200 school laboratories (and
> servers), and ~2300 workstations, for a total of tens of thousands of
> students and their respective teachers who will be online and
> collaborating with each other and with the community across
> organizational, geographic, and cultural boundaries. We will foster
> this community and bring them in touch with other teachers using Sugar
> in the classroom. Perhaps even more schools will join this global
> network, as we want to make it as simple as possible.

What computers? XOs? Laptops? Desktops with Sugar on a Stick?

> We hope to give details on this deployment soon but need a particular
> confirmation from the Regional Government. We have submitted a
> proposal for USAID challenge and would use the money as SugarLabs to
> develop, prepare, tailor and integrate a platform that allows us to
> deliver excellent teacher workshops that empower educators to
> appropriate the technology and learn about it "in community" like we
> so happily do in Free Software.
>
> Please find our proposal for at
> http://www.netsquared.org/projects/free-social-networks-rural-education
>
> Give it a look. Think about it. A large social network owned by its
> users, that can grow organically without any need for central offices
> or large datacenters... Give us your comments and feedback and...
>
> Vote for it. The voting process is particular, you have to pick us,
> and then 2 others. You can't vote unless you pick 3. Please do this
> for us.
>
> I would do it if you were asking!        ;-)

I did this before seeing your message. You rock.

> In all seriousness, I think our proposal has a great chance, because
> frankly, i think it rocks and is better than the other options, but
> the first phase of the challenge involves the community for picking
> 15, then a panel picks 3 winners. So we need you, community!
>
> Thank you for your time.
> --
> Sebastian Silva
> Iniciativa FuenteLibre
> http://blog.sebastiansilva.com/
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> Grassroots at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots


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And Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination.
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