Sugar on Stick software was originally meant for the OLPC – One Laptop per Child project, but now can be used on any old PC to give aging computers a new interface and access to collaborative educational software. It can simply be run from a USB drive.
Developed by Sugar Labs, Sugar on Stick has been designed for use by children and was launched at the LinuxTag conference in Berlin. Sugar Labs, nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform to over one-million children worldwide, announces the immediate availability of Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry.
Sugar on a Stick is designed to work with a School Server that can provide:
- Content distribution
- Homework collection
- Backup services
- Moodle integration
- Filtered access to the Internet
Features
Sugar on a Stick provides a coherent and consistent computing experience.
- It reduces costs by providing flexibility in hardware choices, allowing schools to keep their existing investment in hardware.
- Learners can benefit from the increased household ownership of computers.
- Every student has a consistent, comparable computing environment that parents can share in as well.
- It also provides off-line access to applications and content as not every learner has Internet access at home.
- It is possible to store everything you need to run on a single USB memory stick (minimum size 1GB).
- This small USB device can boot into the Sugar learning platform on different computers at home, at school, or at an after-school program, bypassing the software on the those computers.
- Sugar on a Stick will work even if the computer does not have a hard-drive.
Free download
- It is available free for download at www.sugarlabs.org.
- It can be loaded onto an ordinary 1GB USB flash drive
- It can be used to reboot any PC or netbook directly into the Sugar environment.
- It runs on recent Macs with a helper CD and in Windows using virtualization.
Sugar on a stick is a great new opportunity to breathe new life into these old machines,” says Walter Bender, founder of Sugar Labs.
The child-friendly computers currently cost $199 (£120) each. Sugar on a stick, however, can be used on any machine – on Asus, Dell, HP, even runs on phones.This release could help increase the use of the free software, which has until now been predominantly distributed with the XO laptop, the machine sold be OLPC.
(Source: sugar labs)
One Comment