Recent news for March 31, 2025
Welcome to the third issue of The Sweet Spot, a newsletter for Sugar Labs-related news in development, student and teacher work, events, how to get involved, and other related news and information.
March 25, 2025
Sugarizer maintainer Lionel Laské has announced a new release of the multi-platform clone to Sugar Learning Platform. This release includes a new 3D volume activity, developed last summer for Google Summer of Code (GSoC), improved stability, and a new direct launch feature, allowing users to launch an activity directly at Sugarizer startup. Read the full release notes and watch the video demonstrating the new activity and improvements.
March 24, 2025
We recently compiled a summary of our activities in 2024. In the newly released “Annual report for 2024”, we’ve included information about software development, Sugar in the classroom, and our outreach efforts. In this report, Sugar Labs executive director Devin Ulibarri takes us through the work he did in 2024 to reach more students, represent Sugar Labs at conferences, and oversee development of new Constructionist tools for teaching and learning. Preliminary financial information is also included in this report.
March 21, 2025 by Om Santosh Suneri
New contributors are encouraged to write about their experience contributing to Sugar Labs, what they’re working on and what they’ve learned. In his first article detailing his experience with Sugar Labs, Suneri shares his recent contributions to Music Blocks visual programming language, his inception into free/libre/open-source software, and his advice to other new contributors.
March 12, 2025 by Max Roveri
Linux Professional Institute recently interviewed Sugar Labs executive director Devin Ulibarri, asking him about our key projects, our free/libre/open (FLO) philosophy, our challenges, and our future goals. Read the interview to learn more about the trajectory of Sugar Labs, and share the article to help us reach new people to “expand our mentoring community and grow our team to support diverse stakeholders” as Ulibarri describes in the interview.
March 6, 2025 by Harshit Verma
Read about recent enhancements to the sampler widget, implemented by new contributor Harshit Verma. These enhancements allow users to drag and drop sound samples into the browser to create code, which is expected to make using custom samples in Music Blocks more accessible to users.
February 28, 2025
Google announced in February that Sugar Labs will be a mentoring organization in this year’s Google Summer of Code. For those interested in participating this year as a contributor, please read the projects on the project page and submit your proposal before the submission deadline of April 8th 18:00 UTC.
February 26, 2025
Sugar Labs has recently expanded the ways to donate in support of its mission. Financial contributions can now be made through every.org, a fundraising platform that is itself a nonprofit organization. Every.org accepts donations in many forms, such as credit card, ACH, stocks, PayPal, and crypto-currency donations. Plus, every.org doesn’t charge a service fee, instead it gives the option to donate to their nonprofit.
In addition to every.org, donors may now give to Sugar Labs through Benevity, a Canadian-based firm that supports companies in managing their employees’ charitable giving.
As a US-based nonprofit organization, Sugar Labs is dedicated to creating Constructionist software and experiences for learners in the US and all around the world.
February 25, 2025 by Harshit Verma
New contributor Harshit Verma shares his experience contributing to Sugar Labs. He shares how he discovered Sugar Labs and one of its projects, Music Blocks. He shares the issues he’s helped fix, what he learned during the process, and shares his goals for the future.
Sugar Labs is seeking volunteer assistance in a variety of roles. Sustained, committed help in any of these roles will help us grow as an organization. If you are passionate or curious to learn more about these roles, and are able to commit the time necessary, then we encourage you to apply. Send a notification of your interest to info@sugarlabs.org, including some information about yourself, what interests you about the volunteer role, and what experience and other qualities make you a good candidate for the position.
Please note that Sugar Labs is a growing organization. We don’t currently have the resources to compensate people to fulfill these roles. Our hope is that we one day will be able to, but, for now, we are looking for volunteers to assist the Board of Directors to build out and improve our operations. We can provide assistance in conducting your role, as well as guidance and mentorship. Plus, you’ll gain the experience and satisfaction of working with an organization that aims to do good in society.
Please see: https://www.sugarlabs.org/volunteering
Sugar Labs hosts events and meetings for the community. The current list of scheduled events and meetings are as follows:
Sugar Labs® is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a global mission to create educational opportunities in technology to youth around the world. Volunteer mentors and contributors work together to develop activity-focused software for children. All software is developed with learning as the primary goal, necessitating the need for source code to be published publicly for study, licensed under a Free/Libre license for explicit permission to share and remix, and openly worked upon within a community where students are invited to make contributions, under guidance of experienced mentors. Donations to support the work of Sugar Labs can be made at https://www.sugarlabs.org/donate/.
Below is a complete list of all the official social media and other communication channels for Sugar Labs. If you are on any of the social media platforms, such as Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or X/Twitter, we encourage you to show your support for Sugar Labs by following us. If you are interested in testing and development, GitHub and Matrix are where you can report issues and ask questions.
Communications on our official channels must abide by our Code of Conduct.
You can find this issue and past issues of The Sweet Spot at https://www.sugarlabs.org/community-news/