Sugar Labs Announces New Version of Sugar on a Stick, Educational Software for Children

BERLIN, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- LinuxTag -- Sugar Labs(R), nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform to over one and a half million children worldwide, has released Mirabelle, the third version of Sugar on a Stick, a collaborative learning environment that can be loaded onto any ordinary USB thumbdrive and used with a PC, netbook or Mac without touching the hard disk. It is available free for download at http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick. Sugar runs natively on major GNU/Linux distributions and can also run in virtualization under Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X.

One year after the premiere of v1 Strawberry at LinuxTag 2009 and following v2 Blueberry last December, v3 Mirabelle brings improved stability and simplified customization to curious teachers interested in testing Sugar on new netbooks or PCs already in the classroom. We suggest teachers reach out to university-level computer science and education schools to build local support structures, important with an ICT project.

Sebastian Dziallas, Project Lead for Sugar on a Stick and a recent high school graduate based in Germany, said, "Teachers have told us how important reliability is in the classroom while engaging students, so we decided to create a release that has a stable core and can be customized to fit every deployment's needs. Mirabelle is a solid baseline which teachers can customize with Activities interesting to young learners. Part of our strategy is to achieve sustainable development while inviting new contributors. We achieved this by integrating Sugar on a Stick more closely with Fedora, the underlying GNU/Linux distribution; Mirabelle is now an official Fedora Spin."

Sugar Labs is also making available a Sugar Creation Kit, a downloadable DVD which includes Mirabelle, documentation, and a library of Sugar Activities, fun and engaging programs for children taken from the Sugar Activity Library (http://activities.sugarlabs.org).

Thomas Gilliard, a Sugar Labs contributor, said, "The Sugar Creation Kit turns any PC into a Sugar on a Stick generating station. Tools and documentation are gathered on one disk; busy teachers don't have to hunt down anything. This makes it possible to work via 'sneaker net' and in a classroom behind a firewall."

Visitors to LinuxTag are invited to meet Sugar Labs contributors at Hall 7.2a, Booth 115.

Image: http://www.ereleases.com/pic/2010-SugaronaStickMirabelle.png

About Sugar Labs(R): Sugar Labs, a volunteer-driven, nonprofit organization, is a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Originally part of the One Laptop Per Child project, Sugar Labs coordinates volunteers around the world who are passionate about providing educational opportunities to children through the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar Labs is supported by donations and is seeking funding and volunteers to accelerate development.

For more information, please visit http://www.sugarlabs.org.

Sugar Labs is a registered trademark of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

SOURCE Sugar Labs