
Sugar: Open-source software learning platform for children - geogra4
https://sugarlabs.org/
======
blowski
For all the adults moaning about it on here, I showed it to my 5 year old
(British/Brazilian) son and he loved it.

~~~
tuukkah
This is the most relevant comment here this far! Sugar wasn't designed for
western adults, their prejudice and office work but for children's learning in
pedagogical scenarios within developing countries.

~~~
rbanffy
Not trying to compete in developed countries was probably a mistake. That
could offer them more exposure and welcome funding.

But, then, they'd need to offer support they weren't ready to. Working with
governments has some advantages.

------
VikingCoder
I absolutely love the mission of OLPC, and I hate literally every decision
they made. I think they sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, and I think
Sugar is possibly the worst part.

~~~
mikepurvis
It's really beyond belief that they insisted on reinventing the wheel with so
much of the system. How much more sane would it have been to just ship a
regular Linux desktop with a curated selection of libre applications and
established programming environments/repls?

RPi is the learning computer that OLPC never was.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Keep in mind it was meant to be hackable by young, non-English speakers with
limited literacy. Starting with Linux and heavy suites of apps meant and built
for/by technically inclined westerners would not have been a better fit, IMO.
Especially within the resource and budget constraints they had to work with. A
mid-oughts, sub-$200 device just didn't have the capacity for layers of legacy
software.

------
geogra4
I was just playing around with Sugar in a VM and it reminded me so much of how
the earliest GUIs on a Mac as a kid felt. In general I've been kind of
struggling to how to introduce my kids to computing. They're at the age now
where they ask about it and see me on the computer and want to be part of it.

Sugar seems to be a good introduction - one of the best that's just not just a
normal linux distro with a bunch of edu apps thrown in.

~~~
josinalvo
How do you feel it compares to "just a normal linux distro with a bunch of edu
apps thrown in"?

~~~
geogra4
Other options with more 'kid friendly' UIs like UKnow4Kids, Educado,
DoudouLinux, or Leeenux Kids just seem to have stopped development many years
ago.

Something like Edubuntu isn't really appropriate for small children - it's a
little too complicated.

I don't think the UI is perfect, fwiw

~~~
radicaldreamer
I think the standard Linux Gnome or KDE UI is probably better for kids to
learn than Sugar, primarily because the learning curve to transition to any
other computing interface is pretty high because Sugar's UX is really poor.

------
filmgirlcw
I promise I'm not trying to be flippant, but is this still actively around? I
see there have been two seemingly-minor releases this year, the first project
activity since 2017.

I had insomnia a few weeks ago and was re-reading a bunch of "whatever
happened to OLPC" stuff to remember that utter disaster, and AFAIK, the Sugar
project is basically just a few people, its now under the auspices of the SFC
and its really barebones with almost no hardware support (the last OLPC
devices were sold years ago). Even the base image of Ubuntu it offers for the
USB stick reached EOL more than 18 months ago.

We can all say this was a nice idea -- but this certainly isn't an active
project in the sense that there is developer or monetary investment.

------
AngeloAnolin
Interesting stats (on the bottom of the page[1])

3,000,000+ Users 11,531,321+ Activities Downloaded

Significant numbers altogether.

[1] [https://sugarlabs.org/](https://sugarlabs.org/)

~~~
ascales
"To date, OLPC has distributed more than 3 million laptops to children around
the world."

Not quite 3 million active users, but 3 million machines that came pre-loaded
with this

[http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-
partnership...](http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership-
with-zamora-teran-foundation/#.XWl8pihKguU)

------
elkos
Wasn't that the original environment of the OLPC computers? IMHO nowadays an
X220 with a Debian and a KDE/Gnome/xfce environment goes a long way for me.

------
ascales
This was part of the One Laptop Per Child program, and the '3 million users'
stat comes from the fact that this was preloaded on every one of the 3
million+ laptops distributed.

[http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-
partnership...](http://blog.laptop.org/2015/09/03/olpc-announces-partnership-
with-zamora-teran-foundation/#.XWl8pihKguU)

------
kazinator
Looks nice; name makes me cringe.

If I'm crazy and names don't matter, then why not call it "Cigarette: open-
source software learning platform for rug-rats ... from Tobacco Labs!"

A parent that wants to reinforce a consistent "sugar is bad" signal to their
kids will feel that such a thing undermines their message.

~~~
DonHopkins
Funny you'd mention that. Philip Morris was a Media Lab sponsor in 2004 and
2005.

[http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres04/07.05.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres04/07.05.pdf)

[http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres05/07.06.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres05/07.06.pdf)

(Those are the years I happened to know of -- looks like there are more.)

[https://www.google.com/search?biw=1183&bih=978&sxsrf=ACYBGNR...](https://www.google.com/search?biw=1183&bih=978&sxsrf=ACYBGNR0daBOkOIRA7YO3G6rfkJvH58Uzg%3A1567203842906&ei=AqJpXcr1Ns3FwQKckKXQAw&q=site%3Aweb.mit.edu+%22philip+morris%22+%22media+lab%22&oq=site%3Aweb.mit.edu+%22philip+morris%22+%22media+lab%22&gs_l=psy-
ab.3...0.0..52314...0.0..0.0.0.......0......gws-
wiz.fDmFfjjZfL4&ved=0ahUKEwjK_uKi0avkAhXNYlAKHRxICToQ4dUDCAs&uact=5)

------
klenwell
I see a link for "How to get Sugar on an OLPC XO Laptop".

Is this going to revitalize my old XO laptop? (I would really love to be able
to do that.)

~~~
khm
Your XO shipped with Sugar. Assuming it's an XO-1, the latest OS and
installation instructions are here:
[http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.2.10#XO-1](http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/13.2.10#XO-1)

------
dr_dshiv
Then there was Playpower, open source learning games for the _$10_ computer --
an 8bit 6502 Famicom clone

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/04/playpower...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/04/playpower-80s-computing-21st-
century)

------
annoyingnoob
I gave my nephew an OLPC with Sugar on it. Must have been 10 years ago. He
could not figure it out, seemed useless to him.

------
nimrody
I thought one of the original aims was that kids could easily explore and
modify the code behind the apps (python code I think).

I like that approach but couldn't find the "show/edit source button" (using
the Sugarizer web based platform)

Perhaps a simplified Smalltalk environment would be better?

~~~
nine_k
Sqeakland.org has that: eToys.

Not that the UI is very intuitive there, too.

~~~
ObscureScience
That kind of saddens me as well. How can a GUI be this clunky and confusing?
Why would an application mainly for children use the "put every option on
screen and in the one uncontextual contex menu" atitude? I think it's low
hanging fruit to create the best educational and entertaining environment for
children, ask 4.99 on an appstore and be set for some time.

------
choward
Those autoscrolling things are very frustrating. I start to read something or
look at a screenshot then it goes away. I can't make it stop either.

I honestly don't get who thought this was a good idea but it makes me question
the UX of the entire product when stuff like that gets okayed.

~~~
CodeMage
I figured it out by accident, after a whole lot of frustration: click on the
image itself and the carousel will pause.

------
thomk
[https://imgur.com/l99s11R](https://imgur.com/l99s11R)

For those times when you want your child to learn about alcoholic beverages.

From a computer.

On the internet.

~~~
dmurray
A child being able to identify a martini glass doesn't seem like a terrible
loss of innocence.

~~~
thomk
Agreed. However, that's not a just martini glass, that's a martini. Maybe they
are teaching kids about olives? :)

------
Havoc
I really like this.

The concept resonates - even though I have no children.

One thing I'm not seeing is spaced repetition? It's one thing I'd really want
if I DIY learning

~~~
mnemonicsloth
1\. Spaced repetition is for the end of the knowledge acquisition process. It
crystallizes what you already understand pretty well. Sugar is for the very
beginning: making kids aware that some subjects are interesting enough to
learn.

2\. Spaced repetition is boring, especially for kids.

~~~
mikekchar
I'm going to disagree with you, but I'm actually very interested to hear your
reasoning behind your comments on spaced repetition. It is a very interesting
perspective that I haven't heard before so I'm quite keen to hear more.

Having said that, here's my point of view. Spaced repetition is not really
directly involved with knowledge acquisition. When I say "acquisition" I have
a very specific meaning in mind. In recent language acquisition theory there
is a distinction between "learning" and "acquisition". Learning means to be
able to go from not knowing something to being able to remember something.
Acquisition means to go from not being able to use something to being able to
use it appropriately without undue effort. Learning does not always lead to
acquisition (something that's still not penetrated the organisations that do
education, unfortunately).

Spaced repetition is wonderful for learning. You can go from not knowing
something to being able to remember something for a very long time with
minimal effort. Again, it does not necessarily lead to acquisition. From the
perspective of language, to acquire language you need to be exposed to it in
realistic contexts where you understand the meaning. Personally, I have found
that learning can _help_ with acquisition because it kind of gives you a super
fast dictionary to look things up and allow you to comprehend things when you
are exposed to them. You need a lot of exposure and comprehension to actually
acquire the knowledge, though -- and spaced repetition alone won't get you
there. I think the same is true of all skill acquisition, but there is a lot
of research to be done to show that (as an example, imagine learning all the
rules of calculus -- you still won't be able to write proofs easily, but it
_will_ help you to save massive amounts of time when you start studying
proofs).

Where I think you might be coming from is that there is a period when learning
something where you just can't remember it for a significant amount of time.
In most spaced repetition software (like Anki), you go from a 10 minute review
spacing to a whole day -- and even going from 1 minute to 10 minutes can often
be a jump.

What's interesting about that is that there is a _different_ concept called
"spacing" (which is unfortunately very similarly named to "spaced
repetition"). With "spacing" the idea is that you will reduce the slope of the
forgetting curve faster _if you forget something_. This is a crazy idea, but
it seems to work very well. If you want to read a _tonne_ of papers on the
subject, google "desirable difficulties".

So my idea is that you initially want to space a repetition _longer_ than you
would for spaced repetition so that you have to struggle to remember it. This
will help you learn it faster. At that point you should switch over to spaced
repetition. I say "my idea", because there are very few (or possibly none ;-)
) papers that discuss mixing spacing and desirable difficulties with spaced
repetition.... If only I were a psychology prof...

Anyway, there is another concept called "Interleaving". With interleaving,
what you do is intentionally change the subject frequently while you are
learning something. This makes it difficult to remember and potentially
reduces the amount of spacing you require to get the "spacing effect". Many
papers suggest changing subjects every 10 minutes (which seems crazy --
imagine 10 minutes of math, 10 minutes of English, 10 minutes of Foreign
language, 10 minutes of geography, then back to 10 minutes of math, etc, etc,
etc -- but the studies I've read show really incredible rates of learning)

But again, the key is that learning is distinct from acquisition -- so while
learning is useful it doesn't necessarily lead to skill acquisition.

As for #2 I don't think spaced repetition is boring at all -- especially for
kids. Give a small child a cartoon on a DVD. Watch as they repeat it over and
over and over and over again. Watch at they view the video today, the same
video tomorrow, the same video the next day. It's really incredible. Kids love
that kind of repetition.

I get your point that Anki might be boring ;-)

~~~
mnemonicsloth
_> If you want to read a tonne of papers on the subject, google "desirable
difficulties"._

I do. I memorize a lot of stuff (I'm a medical student) and my life will be
way less stressful if almost remembering something means you're on the right
track.

You probably aren't reading this, but thanks for the pointer.

------
pumanoir
This is really cool. Usually on HN the top post is some "controversial"
contrarian opinion and people always fall for it.

------
carapace
One of the coolest things about the OLPC was that adults couldn't figure out
how to open it but little kids could.

~~~
Rediscover
Agreed that that is one of the coolest things about it. Two other features I
loved: The screen -- great for coding outdoors. The DC-input -- the original
Hardware Specification was for "10 to 20 V usable, -50 to 39 V safe, one- time
fuse for excessive input" but changed to "11 to 18 V input usable, –32 to +40V
input tolerated" ^0 with mine working fine from just below 11V up to 18V.

0:
[http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification](http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Hardware_specification)

------
heyiforgotmypwd
Not to be confused with SugarCRM, which also goes by Sugar sometimes.

------
beyondcompute
“Nicotine – a learning platform for adults”.

------
CodeMage
I'm not 100% sure, but I think this might be the first thing I've seen on HN
front page, in all my time on this site, that actually motivated me to jump
right into criticism. Usually I just stay quiet if I don't have anything
positive to say.

First of all, before even clicking through, my reaction to the name was
negative. To quote henrikberggren's comment: "Naming a learning platform
'Sugar' is like naming a rehab clinic 'Heroin'."

Second, those stick figures look like skull-and-crossbones.

Third, your sample "fun activity" looks less fun than anything a kid with a
computer has access to.

Fourth, creating a new user in your Sugarizer demo is an awful experience. It
asked me to pick a name first, then let me go through the rest of the steps --
including "choosing" a new avatar color by clicking to get random colors until
I just gave up -- and then, at the end, told me the user "foo" already exists.

Fifth, I don't find the UI intuitive at all. When I'm inside an activity, if I
want to go back to the activity selection page, I have to click on an octagon
with a square inside it. No idea how I'm supposed to associate that with
"home" or "back" or any of the verbs I could think of.

Lastly, I tried out a few of the activities and I have no idea how any of that
is supposed to help kids learn or collaborate. The "clock" activity just
displays a clock. That's it. The "tam tam" activity has a confusing UI, but
once you overcome the confusion, you can just pick different instruments to
hear their sound. The most confusing was the "maze" activity, because I
pressed one arrow key and it solved the whole maze. Later I realized that it
follows the path until a decision point and then waits for input, but it's
really weird.

I appreciate that this must have taken substantial effort, but I have no idea
just how this is supposed to be useful. And let's face it, I gave it more time
than an average visitor probably would.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Sugar is the original UI of the OLPC XO[1], circa 2006 - it's like a snapshot
from a different world to us now. To be fair, lots of the activities are only
fun when there are multiple users in the mesh network.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO)

~~~
war1025
Is OLPC still active? I remember it being a big deal for a few years and then
never really heard anything about it since.

~~~
core-questions
It was a good idea, but probably too ambitious. I like better the idea of
installing hardened kiosks in public areas - way easier to build and maintain
with commodity parts. Portability is nice but it's honestly not critical.

~~~
hcs
This reminds me of the "hole in the wall" kiosk, installed in a slum in New
Delhi in a way that was supposed to be accessible only to children:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimally_invasive_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimally_invasive_education)

------
henrikberggren
Naming a learning platform "Sugar" is like naming a rehab clinic "Heroin"

~~~
guitarnick
In half jest, how do you feel about "Slack" then? One can argue it makes the
product more memorable.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I don't use Slack, but from what I gather it's general slowness and the way it
aids constant distraction means it is a pretty good productivity killer, so
calling it 'Slack' is actually Truth in Television.

