Re: [IAEP] lesson plans in French
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 1:34 AM, Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com wrote: It may have been me, I got it from Samy at OLPC France and have linked to it several times Let's talk with them next week about how to translate this! I speak French fluently (I'm half French) but I've hesitated to take that on, very full plate I'm looking to read it myself for the content, not to create a word-for-word translation. I bet I can get what I need from a machine translation. I'd also love to meet the authors and talk together about teacher training strategies and how we can share resources long term. Do you know if they will be at Sugar Camp? I'm staying for a week afterwards so maybe I could set up something for later in the week if they aren't. Thanks! Caroline thanks Sean On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 1:45 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: French document written by teachers in Gabon: #LINK http://collabo.fse.ulaval.ca/olpc/index.php?2009/02/13/13-redaction-d-un-guide-pedagogique-du-xo-par-une-communaute-d-apprenants I ran google translate on the blog article this looks great. But when I try the pdf it says too big to translate. I'm fairly new to working across languages but it looks like if we could get this in smaller chucks auto it could be autotranslated well enough for me to get the gist and see if its a good starting place for doing some teacher training over the summer. Unfortunately I don't remember who gave me this link! Does anyone know the owners of this document? Thanks! Caroline -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] versus, not
My take on this over the years has excluded labels and categories for a variety of reasons. But I do think thresholds are important for most areas of learning. For example, at what level would an actually literate person consider a high school graduate to be fluent in literate actions and thinking? At what level would a mathematician consider a high school graduate fluent in mathematical actions and thinking? This is very different from asking questions about the level that a professional would need to attain. At levels below these two, we are talking about areas of study that are neither about literacy nor about mathematics, but something else. The something else could be useful (for example, reading street signs and goods in stores, or adding up simple sums). My main complaint about most schooling processes whether official or grassroots is that for a wide variety of reasons they settle for the something else rather than try to find ways to help the students learn the real deals. If the real deals are chosen, then the interesting question is what kinds of processes will work for what kinds of learners? If it is some non-trivial percentage of direct instruction, then this is what should be done (and depending on the learner, this percentage could range from 0% to a surprisingly high number). However, part of the real deal is being able to *do* the pursuits, not just know something about them, so all pedagogical approaches will have to find ways to get learners to learn how to do what practitioners do who above the two thresholds of fluency and pro. Tim Gallwey is one of the best teachers I've ever observed, and he had a number of extremely effective techniques to help his students learn the real deal very quickly (and almost none of these were direct instruction -- partly because, as he liked to say, The parts of the brain that you need to do the learning very often don't understand English!). But if he could see that the student had gotten on a track that couldn't be influenced by guided discovery, then he would instantly tell them to do it this way. In other words, he was not religious about his own very successful method, but instead did what his students individually needed and that worked the best for them (which happened to be learning by doing). Best wishes, Alan From: Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com To: Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com Cc: iaep iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Sugar-dev Devel sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org; community-n...@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Monday, May 4, 2009 5:20:50 PM Subject: [IAEP] versus, not On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: ===Sugar Digest=== I encourage you to join two threads on the Education List this week: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005382.html, which has boiled down to an instruction vs construction debate; and http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2009-April/005342.html, which has boiled down to a debate of catering to local culture vs the Enlightenment. I encourage you to join these discussions. Agree that these are important discussions Need to be careful about the use of the versus depiction of these discussions IMO, this tempting shorthand can create the wrong impression eg. I would see direct instruction as a must for autistic children but don't see that it follows as a general model for all education (special needs are special) or that we should even think it is possible to have a correct general model. I don't think there is one and good teachers swap between multiple models all the time. no one on this list has argued overtly against the enlightenment or that local culture ought not to be taken into account, eg. Ties said think practical, the response was of the nature that our context demands we do a certain course of action however, I do think the roll back of enlightenment principles is not well understood (http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals) and that a better understanding might persuade more people of the need to keep searching and struggling for different ways to go against some of the tide of local culture - there is a recent interesting comment thread on mark guzdial's blog which is worth reading from this point of view http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK3F4TMBURELZZK ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] versus, not
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 9:26 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: If the real deals are chosen, then the interesting question is what kinds of processes will work for what kinds of learners? If it is some non-trivial percentage of direct instruction, then this is what should be done (and depending on the learner, this percentage could range from 0% to a surprisingly high number). However, part of the real deal is being able to *do* the pursuits, not just know something about them, so all pedagogical approaches will have to find ways to get learners to learn how to do what practitioners do who above the two thresholds of fluency and pro. Tim Gallwey is one of the best teachers I've ever observed, and he had a number of extremely effective techniques to help his students learn the real deal very quickly (and almost none of these were direct instruction -- partly because, as he liked to say, The parts of the brain that you need to do the learning very often don't understand English!). But if he could see that the student had gotten on a track that couldn't be influenced by guided discovery, then he would instantly tell them to do it this way. In other words, he was not religious about his own very successful method, but instead did what his students individually needed and that worked the best for them (which happened to be learning by doing). I think it may be useful to distinguish tracks, and destinations to which they lead. The real deal destinations are to make mathematics: coin definitions and refine them, pose problems, form conjectures, construct example spaces, create models and so on. Activities with real deal destinations invite students to make mathematics; this is the part where I get pretty religious and I suspect Tim does, as well. Then teachers can help students to search for tracks toward these destinations, by whatever methods work best. Searching for fruitful tracks is a large part of the real deal, of course. But such searching, for field practitioners, does involve referring to past work in the field, and getting direct instruction from peers and more advanced colleagues. For example, a kid I observed, trying to extend her model of division to also work on improper fractions looked at a bunch of traditional algorithms in search of ideas. Math Club members attempting to create a definition of multiplication that makes sense to them were directly instructed on some existing definitions, to which they listened with rapt attention. When Tim would instantly tell them to do it this way it made sense, because this way was a track toward some real deal destination. -- Cheers, MariaD Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath our email group http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] versus, not
Listen, I don't want to argue with Alan Kay. Obviously I'm not as smart nor have I been at it as long as him (I googled him and watched 3 different videos - amazing!). My job is to set the record straight. 1. Tim Gallwey is one of the best teachers I've ever observed, and he had a number of extremely effective techniques to help his students learn the real deal very quickly (and almost none of these were direct instruction... I would be willing to bet $10 (I'm cheap, alright?) that Mr. Gallwey has used the principles of Direct Instruction to teach. I'd love to see Mr Gallwey teach a child with autism, developmental disability, or speech/communication issue how to talk, ask questions, etc. without Direct Instruction/Applied Behavior Analysis. About 1-3% of the educational students have serious learning issues and about 17% have undiagnosed learning disabilities that make these students fail in current constructionist educational system. In all, there are an average of 13% students in special ed, some of which are there simply because they can't read. 2. At levels below these two, we are talking about areas of study that are neither about literacy nor about mathematics, but something else. The something else could be useful (for example, reading street signs and goods in stores, or adding up simple sums). I'm sorry, that doesn't make sense. Below heady levels of learning ARE the basics - arithmetic and literacy (learning to read). 3. However, part of the real deal is being able to *do* the pursuits, not just know something about them... Direct Instruction and Applied Behavior Analysis actually require the ability to generalize what you have learned to new situations. The do not preclude activities to generalize concepts. Often, however, activities are foregone due to time constraints - which is unfortunate. If students are not generalizing, the Analysis part should indicate ooops, I messed up as a teacher. I've done it myself when my son's therapists realized (to their surprise) that he forgot the meaning of bigger and smaller. The items used to teach these concepts were limited to one exemplar and it did not get generalized. We then moved the program to a more natural environment (think Helen Keller going around and touching things in the room) and voila, the problem was solved. 4. My main complaint about most schooling processes whether official or grassroots is that for a wide variety of reasons they settle for the something else rather than try to find ways to help the students learn the real deals. Yes, and watching kids struggle in class, say they are stupid, practice avoidance behavior due curriculum and teacher aversions is NO FUN. It is easily solvable by putting kids in appropriate curriculum that lets them succeed. I saw it with my fourth graders (and some fifth) more times than I care to admit in a short 12 week period. It was very sad so see 2 out of 24 of my fourth grade students completely, 100%, illiterate and about 20% illiterate enough to be unable to comprehend what they were reading. And this was at the most elite school in the town. I'm not religious about DI but I have to fight for it everywhere to simply be considered, included, or even considered as an option. In my state, constructivism is so rampant that when I mention DI I get treated like the red headed step child. And so does the option of Direct Instruction because, you see, the dirty little secret is that DI is not really an option at all. -Kathy _ From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Alan Kay Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 6:27 AM To: Bill Kerr; Walter Bender Cc: iaep; Sugar-dev Devel; community-n...@lists.sugarlabs.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] versus, not My take on this over the years has excluded labels and categories for a variety of reasons. But I do think thresholds are important for most areas of learning. For example, at what level would an actually literate person consider a high school graduate to be fluent in literate actions and thinking? At what level would a mathematician consider a high school graduate fluent in mathematical actions and thinking? This is very different from asking questions about the level that a professional would need to attain. At levels below these two, we are talking about areas of study that are neither about literacy nor about mathematics, but something else. The something else could be useful (for example, reading street signs and goods in stores, or adding up simple sums). My main complaint about most schooling processes whether official or grassroots is that for a wide variety of reasons they settle for the something else rather than try to find ways to help the students learn the real deals. If the real deals are chosen, then the interesting question is what kinds of processes will work for what kinds of learners? If it is some non-trivial percentage of direct instruction,
Re: [IAEP] Library Activity
Aleksey, I've read over your latest Activities/Library document and it looks good. There is one useful feature that Calibre has that your spec lacks, which is the ability to launch a viewing application once you find the book you're looking for. I would expect this feature to work on texts in the local Journal only, not on texts in someone else's Library. I would also desire it to be intelligent about which viewing application it opens. By this I mean: 1). MIME type of text/plain would be opened by Read Etexts. The Journal makes you choose between Read Etexts and Write for this MIME type. If you just click on the icon the Journal will pick one of these Activities and load it. There is no way to tell the Journal entry which one to use by default or which one to use for a given Journal entry by default. This makes reading Gutenberg etexts much more difficult than it should be. 2). MIME type of application/zip *could* be opened by one of three Activities: * View Slides * Read Etexts * Etoys Again, in the Journal there is no way to specify which one should be used by default for a given Journal entry. You have to remember to choose the correct Activity from a special menu each and every time. So when we're thinking about tags there should be a tag to specify which Activity to use to open one of these Journal entries. After you've specified this you should be able to open any book in your Library with one click. Read Etexts works with text files contained in a Zip file because you cannot use the Browse Activity to create a Journal entry from a plain text file. Browser will simply load the text file as if it was a web page. Browse will let you download a Zip file to the Journal, and this is a format that Guitenberg can provide. View Slides uses Zip files containing multiple image files, which may or may not be be in subdirectories. I have no idea what Etoys does with Zip files, but I suppose there should be a way to indicate that by default a given Journal entry in the Library should be opened with Etoys. 3). MIME type of application/pdf and application/djvu should be opened with Read. 4). Opening with the fbreader Activity should be a choice for everything else. Since you're the one writing this Activity I'll let you decide what version of the Activity would provide this function. I do think it is a necessary feature, because what is the use of a nice, organized, sharable Library if you have to go back to the Journal to read one of the books in it? James Simmons Aleksey Lim wrote: On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 04:12:39PM -0500, James Simmons wrote: Aleksey, It isn't clear to me what a cloud of tags is. Is there a familiar application that does something like this? thanks to Martin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud I understand that users can tag things to suit themselves, but still I'd want to impose some kind of structure on the views. When I started visiting libraries they had card catalogs for Author, Title, and Subject. It was a good system, and every library used it. You could create a lot of other indexes but they wouldn't get much use. In the Calibre screenshot we had File Size, Publisher, Date, Series, and I could easily do without any of them. Considering that most users of Sugar are going to be children enforcing a minimum structure couldn't hurt. agree, at the end Library's functionality(at least on the paper:) grows I'm thinking about implementing two layers of UI. Another option - using presets of Library object, like * Activities for activities and objects that could be treated like activities(for example .swf files) * Books * All my objects * etc. all these presets could have different sets of default UI elements But anyway, I think its a task for future Library versions. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] versus, not
On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 06:26:31AM -0700, Alan Kay wrote: Tim Gallwey is one of the best teachers I've ever observed, and he had a number of extremely effective techniques to help his students learn the real deal very quickly Any links for the google-impaired? I just found loads of general references to his books. Best wishes, Alan Martin pgpCE6Zqoilyz.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] How to sugarize Learning Now / Apprendre maintenant?
Hi all, The SugarCamap event in Paris will enjoy the participation of Fabrice Menoyot, the developer of Learning Now / Apprendre maintenant! Let's quote from it's website http://freeeducationcenter.com/ : Learning Now v1 (Apprendre Maintenant v1)* is a brand new educational tool originally designed for a 15 to 35 years-old public. Today's version can be used for a larger audience. It is a great new (Freeware - open source) software for building interactive and multimedia books, courses, presentations, digital rooms and educational games for all ages. The project initiated in Jamaica in September 2004 with the support of the UNESCO in Kingston. How could we sugarize it's educational suite? The application is developed in Adobe Flashplayer 10. I got it working with the Web browser Epiphany but not with gnash. Do you see any chance to share this educational tool for the XO users? If you manage to particpate to the SugarCamp in Paris, feel free to aks how we could work together toward the sugarization of Learning Now. Thank you for your comments Samy ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] [RELEASE] TurtleArt-48
== .xo == http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/downloads/file/26052/turtle_art-48.xo == Source == http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/fructose/TurtleArt/TurtleArt-48.tar.bz2 == Features == * BUG FIX: json incompatibility with F11 * New artwork * New unified (improved?) way of handling media objects * Copy/paste stacks * Better handling of i18n text == Documentation == http://sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Turtle_Art enjoy and please report any problems -walter -- 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
Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] Planning for Sugar Camp Paris
I am thinking about: Hotel Voltaire Republique which I think is fairly close to Sean's house. Am I right about it being a good location? http://www.hostelbookers.com/property/reviews/index.cfm?fuseaction=accommodation.searchisdynamic=1strsearchby=propertystraccommodationtype=hostelsintdestinationid=1069strdestination=parisstrdestinationparent=intnights=10intpeople=1dtearrival=15%2f05%2f2009intpropertyid=19521strTab=reviews On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Nicolas Thill nicolas.th...@gmail.comwrote: Hi Marten, I would recommend the Montclair Hostel in the same neighbourhood (http://www.montclair-hostel.com/) which might be cheaper (there are rooms and dorms) and is on a straight bus line to La Cantine. Let us know if that works for you Regards, -- Nico Marten Vijn wrote: On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 14:39 +0200, Bastien wrote: Hello, Yhank for the tip, If you are not afraid of youth hostels, this one is good/affordable: Woodstock Hostel: http://www.woodstock.fr is booked, is this one nearby? http://www.caulaincourt.com/fr/hotel.htm thanks, Marten It is 10 min by foot from LaCantine, the place where the SugarCamp will be held. I will gather recommendations from other OLPC France members and post it somewhere uesful on our wiki. Best, -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] Planning for Sugar Camp Paris
Marten Vijn i...@martenvijn.nl writes: Woodstock Hostel: http://www.woodstock.fr is booked, is this one nearby? http://www.caulaincourt.com/fr/hotel.htm Yes. Anything in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 9th, 10th, 18th district of Paris is quite close to the place. -- Bastien ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Eclipse Budget
Just an interesting statistic. The Eclipse Foundation who is in a very similar market to Sugar Labs, they foster a ecosystem around a development platform and Sugar Labs fosters a ecosystem around an education platform, has 185 corporate members and a $5 million dollar budget. Many hands make light work. david ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] Planning for Sugar Camp Paris
Hi David the list, I won't say there's good public transportation: there are no trains between 23h30 PM to 05h30 AM, but you're welcome to stay :) Sure it might sound familiar, Philippe Langlois was as at WinterCamp and he should be here, as well as other members of the /tmp/lab crew, hope to see you there ! -- Nico David Farning wrote: Does it have good public transportation to the site? If so, this sounds great for the smaller days around the official OLPC France event. BTW, were you at wintercamp in Amsterdam? /temp/lab/ sounds familiar but I can figure out why:) David On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Nico n...@openwrt.org wrote: Hi Chris, Christoph Derndorfer wrote: With regards to logistics I was wondering where we'll have the meetings, I assume the location that OLPC France is providing is only available on Saturday? Are there any hacker-spaces, apartments, whatever that we can occupy while we're there? Here at the /tmp/lab we can offer the full space for whatever meeting you're planning to setup. Remember that /tmp/lab is in Vitry-sur-Seine, roughtly 45 minutes from SugarCamp at La Cantine. Please le us know if you're interested in :) Waiting to hear from you, -- Nico ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ Grassroots mailing list grassro...@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] Planning for Sugar Camp Paris
Hi Marten, I would recommend the Montclair Hostel in the same neighbourhood (http://www.montclair-hostel.com/) which might be cheaper (there are rooms and dorms) and is on a straight bus line to La Cantine. Let us know if that works for you Regards, -- Nico Marten Vijn wrote: On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 14:39 +0200, Bastien wrote: Hello, Yhank for the tip, If you are not afraid of youth hostels, this one is good/affordable: Woodstock Hostel: http://www.woodstock.fr is booked, is this one nearby? http://www.caulaincourt.com/fr/hotel.htm thanks, Marten It is 10 min by foot from LaCantine, the place where the SugarCamp will be held. I will gather recommendations from other OLPC France members and post it somewhere uesful on our wiki. Best, ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Grassroots-l] Planning for Sugar Camp Paris
On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 16:56 -0400, Caroline Meeks wrote: I am thinking about: Hotel Voltaire Republique which I think is fairly close to Sean's house. Am I right about it being a good location? http://www.hostelbookers.com/property/reviews/index.cfm?fuseaction=accommodation.searchisdynamic=1strsearchby=propertystraccommodationtype=hostelsintdestinationid=1069strdestination=parisstrdestinationparent=intnights=10intpeople=1dtearrival=15%2f05%2f2009intpropertyid=19521strTab=reviews nice one, booked this one for me and Reinder. about 1000-1500 meters walk... thanks, Marten -- http://martenvijn.nl Marten Vijn http://martenvijn.nl/trac/wiki/soas Sugar on a Stick http://bsd.wifisoft.org/nek/ The Network Event Kit http://har2009.org 13th-16th August http://opencommunitycamp.org 26th Jul - 2nd August ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] versus, not
Those SRA reading instruction boxes were not Direct Instruction. I hear about those things all the time - my ex-husband learned that way, too. Sig Engelmann is behind Direct Instruction. I think that at some point things will merge, morph, combine. What will emerge is not something I've probably ever seen before or could dream of. It will be field tested and our little Sugar interface (thru somethink like Journal) will collect data so that the instruction can be improved - even if it is a game. [Goodness, if only Pajama Sam Freddie Fish could be more educational (I love those games!).] I'm hoping that we can also, at some point, look at current proprietary content and morph several pieces of content into a public domain like situation. This knowledge (preschool through, say, 6th or 8th grade) is not rocket science here. It really feels like we are inventing the wheel, fire, forks, and everything else again and again and again. You should see some of these teachers putting together their science curriculum. A little from here. A little from there. The time they put in is, honestly, a waste. No wonder they get burned out. And what they put together? Certainly not field tested. 1. We could support proprietry content at some point. *I wish it were free already. 2. Martin pointed out to me that a number of countries have noticed that in the end the government ends up paying for all the content one way or another and they are exploring paying directly for writing the content and free licences. *Sadly, the grip that the textbook industrial complex has on the US - I wonder if we'll ever participate. 3. Improved authoring tools and other automation tools might reduce the level of effort required to create this content. *Yes, this will be key. I really liked some of the ideas that Albert Cahalan put forth - even if I didn't fully understand them. I'd love to hear more of his ideas (hint, hint, prod, prod, wink, wink). -Kathy _ From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Caroline Meeks Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 7:10 PM To: Kathy Pusztavari Cc: iaep Subject: Re: [IAEP] versus, not On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Kathy Pusztavari ka...@kathyandcalvin.com wrote: Bill, there is a difference between direct instruction and Direct Instruction. The latter (big D big I) is usually based on SRA's products and outlined in the Direct Instruction Rubric. Direct instruction (little d little i) is usually a general set of guidelines teachers use to directly instruction - to be a sage on the stage, to teach directly, to teach first then... I am only frustrated by SRA themselves. The products are great and would be extremely useful in teaching but they have a copyright stranglehold. If only I was an attorney and knew how to legally get around that Or if I could find the millions (billions?) to buy it for public domain use. I'm telling you, people would have a fountain of curriculum they could use, morph, etc. Kathy, I know SRA is calling this Direct Instruction, but I wonder if we should be. When I think of direct instruction, I think of the teacher standing in front of the class explaining, which by the way, I think is sometimes appropriate. However, when I read SRA;s materials, and certainly my memory of using SRA, involve a lot of time on structured tasks and relatively little time with the teacher directly instructing. Your experience is way more recent, what do you find? I actually remember SRA fondly from my own 2nd grade experience. We had boxes of SRA material, all leveled and you worked through the levels at your own pace. Because of the way they step up the difficulty and the fact I could set my own pace I think I had good flow experiences with the program. I think it was a good match for my learning style. I was reminded of that experience when I tried out a cognative tutor program in one of my classes. Cognative tutors are programs that take kids through lots of problems, measuring mastery and giving hints as requested. This is a comercial product example of this sort of program: http://www.carnegielearning.com/ I agree with the big tent. We need to teach lots of different people, with lots of different learning styles, lots of different things. I think well thought out programs that step you through learning with early and often error correction can be effective. Right now the level of skilled and unified effort to create this sort of content and out economic structures have resulted in this type of content, both on paper and in terms of computer programs, being proprietary. I don't think that means we should dismiss this for Sugar in the longer term. 1. We could support proprietry content at some point. 2. Martin pointed out to me that a number of countries have noticed that in the end the government ends up paying for all the content one way or another and they are exploring paying directly
Re: [IAEP] lesson plans in French (Google Translated to English)
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Frederick Grose fgr...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.com wrote: ... I'm looking to read it myself for the content, not to create a word-for-word translation. I bet I can get what I need from a machine translation. ... One can copy and paste a page or more from the .pdf into the Google Translate text box, http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=ensl=frtl=en#. Perhaps there are more convenient methods. --Fred I've run the text through Google Translate and put it (with most of the mistranslations) in wiki format here, http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Deployment_Team/Resources/GuideXOGabon. --Fred ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
