Sugar Labs nonprofit announces v2 of Sugar on a Stick with improved e-book readers and a program that recycles USB flash drives into educational learning environments for children in partnership with Nexcopy, Inc.
PARIS, December 8, 2009 — Netbook World Summit — Sugar Labs®, a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization providing the Sugar Learning Platform for more than one million children worldwide, announces the release of Sugar on a Stick v2 Blueberry. Available for download at https://www.sugarlabs.org, Sugar on a Stick can be loaded onto any standard 1GB or larger USB flash drive to boot a PC, netbook, or recent Mac directly into the child-friendly Sugar environment without affecting the existing operating system installation.
Sugar is also available for GNU/Linux distributions, runs under virtualization on Windows and Apple OS X, and includes built-in classroom collaboration and automatic Journal backup features. The latest version of Sugar introduces simpler navigation, improved wireless networking, streamlined Activity updates for children, easier keyboard configuration, enhanced Gnash support for Adobe Flash content, and new Activities such as Physics and OOo4Kids alongside updated favorites including Browse and Read for e-book viewing.
“Sugar on a Stick is a great way to experience Sugar,” commented Walter Bender, Executive Director of Sugar Labs. “During this holiday season, we want to remind parents and teachers that e-books are not limited to expensive reader devices for the wealthy, but are freely available through the open-access knowledge movement to help children everywhere develop critical learning skills and bridge the digital divide wherever it exists.”
Sugar on a Stick includes several e-book reader Activities capable of displaying PDF, EPUB, and DejaVu e-book formats. The Read Etexts Activity can also read books aloud, transforming older PCs and inexpensive netbooks into text-to-speech learning aids for disabled readers. With Sugar, children can even create their own e-books. Thousands of children’s e-books are available through Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive Children’s Library, epubBooks.com, Feedbooks.com, and ManyBooks.net. Additional resources such as the International Children’s Digital Library also provide online reading opportunities.
Pilot Sugar projects are currently underway in schools across the United States and Europe. School administrators interested in deploying Sugar may also benefit from OLPC’s updated XS school server software, which provides school-level backup, content distribution, filtered Internet access, and Moodle integration.
To support schools testing the technology, Sugar Labs has partnered with Nexcopy, Inc. of Rancho Santa Margarita, California, a leader in USB duplicator solutions, to launch https://recycleusb.com. Nexcopy will collect used USB flash drives, reload them with Sugar on a Stick, and forward them to Sugar Labs for school distribution. Nexcopy has also donated a 20-target USB duplication system to Sugar Labs.
Greg Morris, President of Nexcopy, commented, “Nexcopy is proud to partner with a nonprofit organization such as Sugar Labs. We believe the Sugar Learning Platform is clearly a step in the right direction for getting children involved with personal computers. Our objective is to provide the back-end duplication equipment support needed to make this philanthropy successful and help produce the large number of Sugar Sticks required for global deployment. I am very honored Nexcopy is part of this process.”
For More Information
Sugar Labs
Sean Daly, Marketing Coordinator
Website: https://www.sugarlabs.org
Email: pr!@!sugarlabs.org
Telephone: +1-857-254-1100
Nexcopy Inc.
Greg Morris
Website: https://www.nexcopy.com
Email: contact!@!nexcopy.com
Telephone: +1-949-481-6478
About Sugar Labs
Sugar Labs is a volunteer-driven nonprofit organization and a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Originally part of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, Sugar Labs coordinates volunteers worldwide who are passionate about providing educational opportunities for children through the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar Labs is supported by donations and continues to seek funding to accelerate development. For more information, visit https://www.sugarlabs.org.
About Nexcopy Incorporated
Nexcopy Incorporated specializes in developing and manufacturing feature-rich flash memory duplicators for the global market. As a pioneer in solid-state memory duplication technology, Nexcopy supplies Central and South America, Europe, India, Asia, and the Pacific Rim while serving the U.S. market through its California headquarters.
Sugar Labs is a registered trademark of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners.