On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Kevin Mark <kevin.m...@verizon.net> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 08:16:23PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote: > <snip> >> > >> > So what we seem to be left with at this point is a system which tries to >> > force users to add comments or tags even though there is very little >> > incentive or supportive mechanisms to actually do much with that metadata. >> >> One of my favorite examples of using a computer is school is a 1-to-1 >> program at a middle school in Dorchester, MA. The kids spend five >> minutes writing at the end of *every* class, including gym. Even if >> they never use "that metadata", the act of reflecting is important. >> >> We do have some tools/supportive mechanisms for using that metadata, >> including the Portfolio activity. Have you tried it? > > As someone who is not versed in educational theory, I have tried to understand > what intentions where put into Sugar. I have herd mention of Constructionism > and > Constructivism and reflection. I could imagine writing after doing something > as > a way to gain more from any activity, so that sounds like something any > deployment should do, but I dont know the total picture of what was expected. > And I dont know about what is or was done to convey these idea of reflection, > the journal, the writing and collaboration as part of an ecosystem to the > deployment educators. If this is being done, I'd like to learn about it and if > not, then what did I miss about what is told to deployments?
The Sugar design was informed by educational theory and lots of experience on the ground in numerous pilot programs conducted in places as far ranging as an inner-city school in the US to a one-room school in the hill-country of Thailand. That said, the reality of Sugar deployments is that they are largely determined by the local teams, which vary from top-down ministry-of-education initiatives to bottom-up grass-roots efforts by an NGO to the initiative of an individual classroom teacher. So there is not one voice or message. What we try to do with Sugar is to skew the odds that certain (good) things would happen, regardless of the details of the deployment. (In a similar vain, the 5 principles of OLPC are meant to skew the odds that a 1-to-1 deployment will have maximum impact.) But we cannot and don't want to force these ideas on deployments; rather we want them to be appropriated and transformed locally as fit the needs -- a tough balance to achieve. More and better documentation is certainly in order. Even better would be real examples of best practice from the deployments themselves. One of main ideas behind the Journal is to give the learner a place to reflect on their work -- providing a consistent forum for that reflection. We also envision that the Journal will be used as part of the assessment process as entries can be incorporated into a collection of artifacts that the learner can periodically amass and present. (There is some good literature on portfolio assessment, including Stefanakis Evangeline's book -- http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/mi08012002.html -- which I find a nice balance between theory and practice.) Not every deployment has leveraged this aspect of Sugar yet, but as we continue to improve the underlying tools, I think we'll see more use. (By chance, when I was visiting the Caacupé deployment last year, I happened upon a meeting at one of the schools where the parents were being taught how to use the Journal so that they could talk with their children about their work, so I know that at least in some places, the Journal is being used in ways that we envisioned.) It was in response to feedback I got at the OLPC-sponsered assessment summit a few months back that I wrote the Portfolio activity -- http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4437 -- which I am hoping will lower the barrier to using portfolios as a routine part of the Sugar experience. regards. -walter > > -- > | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux ==.| http://kevix.myopenid.com......| > | : :' : The Universal OS....| mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/.| > | `. `' http://www.debian.org/.| http://counter.li.org [#238656]| > |___`-____Unless I ask to be CCd,.assume I am subscribed._________| > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep