Scott, Chris, Michael,
so good to hear from you!
so, we're not supposed to like it! :-( (reverse psych won't work with
me, guys) :-)
Well, anything that writes about Sugar in the past or at least as
something missing a major overhaul /does/ get my attention. Not that
Sugar is bad, to the contrary, but that it could be (have been :-)) *so*
much better, were it not hampered by reality-disconnected ideology...
Which, of course, doesn't mean I am sold out on NELL
(your section number, paragraph number)
(Abstract, 1)
/used by.../ IMVHO should be /distributed to/. Very little evidence
that Sugar is actually *used* anywhere regularly, that I know of,
besides maybe Nepal. (y'all know this better than many...)
(1,1)
Solar has so many wrongs in Real World... Will work a piece on that.
(1,2)
note that here you have the machine /initiating/ the interaction.
Everywhere else you seem to have it as the kid being in charge. BIG
difference, except the passing mention in (4,2).
For that latter, well said!
(1,2)
What if she doesn't nod? (or accept to have a story right at this second?)
Everything here seems to be built upon the assumption, which doesn't
hold to any assessment on children-initiated learning I know of, that
the kid will *take* to Nell, just like that and for the duration...
(1,4-5)
I love this! the machine asking for some different kind of action. Very
powerful (actually this idea is the one I like most in the whole paper,
and not hard to implement)
Again, unclear how pervasive is this thing about the machine asking
things, and how will this work if the kid doesn't submit in full?
Non-trivial, I say.
(1,6)
there's something VERY powerful here, "the book tells her ... very good
/*at*/". (3.1,5) sort of very weakly follows up with "*inferred*
learning style". This segue is so weak precisely in the approach that
*I* :-) consider paramount, a major area that needs, *deserves* building
on. Great foundation y'all are fixin' - most authors miss these issues
at all - yet needs muscle and a sharper edge.
(2.1,1) "like *all* humans". Yes, the whole proposal relies on
**stories** being the Grail, but, if you really mean 2.2 and abjure of
one-size-fits-all pedagogy (which I think you are trying), then this
needs the qualifier "most".
(I still think you got a great concept in the storybook metaphor - this
I'm nagging out of principle)
(2.1,2)
characters ... specific . Hmmm, makes me wonder if it would somehow
make someone like a given subject area if they associate themselves with
the character. What if were the kid who assigns
subjects/areas/personalities to the characters?
then, of course, each one's own story would be different from the other
kid's stories, but I see nothing wrong with that. Neal Stephenson and
any SF/parallel universe lover would be proud of such a twist! it also
fits with 2.2,3, and certainly "pervasive customization" in 4,2
traditional lesson plan... aha! Whose? would that be a one-size-fits-all
lesson plan? (that would be very baaaad, and total loosage)
(2.1,3)
The biggest weakness of Sugar is this ideology of kid initiated
learning. A Good (capital G) learning platform gives more guidance than
kuddos or a contextual help (BTW, I find Power's paper tells little
about why that particular approach). IT-platform pedagogy guidance is a
*major* subject of research for me, but this is not my paper, so I'll pass.
I *loooove* the handwriting bit, here and elsewhere. I always felt it
was a crying shame the pads on the sides of the XO didn't make it beyond
the testing stage.
(2.2)
Just this one area, well handled, could give us this time a chance to
change the world :-). I'll look for a paper on adaptive learning I found
somewhere, so you also get more conversant on this. It's quite obvious
y'all know a bit or two about AI. I want to encourage your interest on
adaptive, which I hope you will deepen on, so Nell will spearhead success.
(2.2,2 Am I the only one that shudders when hearing or seeing the word
/Journal/? :-))
(2.3,2)
"growing intelligence"? I just did a word search of something nagging me
in the background, and confirmed that your paper does not once use the
word "knowledge"... hmmm. Is that supposed to mean anything?
(2.3,3)
Does this mean Nell will be issued to teachers also? and the teachers
expected to *use* it? Well, good luck! I have a mind to re-read your
paper with a marker to highlight every idea that has been tried already
with limited or no success (for the record: I have always been a
supporter of using the XO for "grownup stuff", and never belittle it as
a "children's machine" - currently I am writing a manual to use the XO
for mighty microcontroller programming). The problem here is of getting
the grownups buy-in. If Nicholas used the machine, it might be
believable, some. Am I the only one who has presented at a conference
with a paper and presentation 100% done in the XO? Dunno if even RMS did
more than check his email. Danceswithcars, hail!
(2.3,5)
Oh! so there is such a thing as a "capable child", with giftings
uncommon to the rest! :-)
(applause for daring to publish such a not-PC, non teachers-union
notion, though in all fairness I might have to reach for that
highlighter...)
(2.4,2)
get rid of the "our"
Careful about lowering the floor so bad that anything worthy of more
just falls to the basement. I also do wonder how source code editing
works on a handwriting interface
(3,1)
"The" would look more scientsy than "our". "We" is OK
(3.1-2)
OK, so you know about storytelling AI. What about, say, a math module?
(3.3)
JS? hmmm, interesting. I guess it cannot be worse than Python. Can you
please leave LOGO and a command line easily accessible also?
(4,2)
What you mean by "pedagogical guidance" for the students (and teachers)
needs more flesh, since its absence (חוֹשֶך) probably accounts for more of
Sugar's plagues than keyboard issues (merely שְׁחִין), and thus an
alternative needs to be more explicit. Again, applause for daring to
tell some of it.
(5,2)
When you are deploy-testing it, please focus on how much it can fly by
itself, and if at all, whether it remains interesting when novelty has
past and further nice-bwana input and encouragement is not the primary
mover.
I hope some of this is of any use to you guys. I really do appreciate
your hard work, and I do dare to be somewhat sharper than usual because
I hope you're still the tough guys I have had the honor to learn from
and spend quality time with.
I'll follow up with the URL to that adaptive-learning piece, I thought I
saw it in the garage recently. As I keep learning more about what
doesn't work and why, I become more than ever convinced that adaptive is
the way to go, for something scalable, relevant, and a win-win,
especially where education structure is a fail - which seems to inch
toward also including places too close to home...
Yama
On 03/13/2012 06:07 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
I read the following today:
"A healthy [project] is, confusingly, one at odds with itself.
There is a healthy part which is attempting to normalize and to
create predictability, and there needs to be another part that is
tasked with building something new that is going to disrupt and
eventually destroy that normality."
(http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/03/13/hacking_is_important.html)
So, in this vein, I'd like to encourage Sugar-folk to read the short
paper Chris Ball, Michael Stone, and I just submitted (to IDC 2012) on
Nell, our design for XO-3 software for the reading project:
http://cscott.net/Publications/OLPC/idc2012.pdf
You're expected not to like it: this is supposed to be the Barbarian
viewpoint. ;-) Regardless, I've love to hear feedback on what exactly
you didn't like, so that I can improve the arguments for the final
published version (assuming the paper gets accepted). Thanks!
--scott
--
( http://cscott.net )
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
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_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
