[IAEP] Etoys Help Requested / Pedido de Ayuda Etoys
Texto en Español luego del Inglés An Etoys user has contacted us for help. This is what he wants to do: - Take pictures with and XO at regular intervals, let´s say every 10 minutes. - Use a series of these pictures to put together an animation, the final result being something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cl0aw87LqA He wants to work with Etoys, not Smalltalk. He has been trying to use ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ to write a script to take the periodic pictures. He would like to move the pictures to a holder to do the animation. Instead of getting the pictures he is getting just a tile called ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ Your advice would be appreciated. Texto en Español: Nos ha contactado un usuario de Etoys pidiendo ayuda. Esto es lo que quiere hacer: - Tomar fotos con la XO a intervalos regulares, digamos cada 10 minutos. - Usar una serie de estas fotos para juntarlas en una animación logrando un resultado de este tipo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cl0aw87LqA Desea trabajar en Etoys, no Smalltalk. Ha estado tratando de usar ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ para escribir un guión para tomar las fotos periódicas. Le gustaría mover luego las fotos a un contenedor para hacer la animación. En vez de las fotos le está apareciendo un mosaico titulado ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ Los consejos de ustedes serán apreciados. Carlos Rabassa Voluntario Red de Apoyo al Plan Ceibal___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Etoys Help Requested / Pedido de Ayuda Etoys
Try Holder include: Camera's lastframe copy - Bert - On 05.02.2011, at 19:01, Carlos Rabassa wrote: Texto en Español luego del Inglés An Etoys user has contacted us for help. This is what he wants to do: - Take pictures with and XO at regular intervals, let´s say every 10 minutes. - Use a series of these pictures to put together an animation, the final result being something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cl0aw87LqA He wants to work with Etoys, not Smalltalk. He has been trying to use ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ to write a script to take the periodic pictures. He would like to move the pictures to a holder to do the animation. Instead of getting the pictures he is getting just a tile called ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ Your advice would be appreciated. Texto en Español: Nos ha contactado un usuario de Etoys pidiendo ayuda. Esto es lo que quiere hacer: - Tomar fotos con la XO a intervalos regulares, digamos cada 10 minutos. - Usar una serie de estas fotos para juntarlas en una animación logrando un resultado de este tipo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cl0aw87LqA Desea trabajar en Etoys, no Smalltalk. Ha estado tratando de usar ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ para escribir un guión para tomar las fotos periódicas. Le gustaría mover luego las fotos a un contenedor para hacer la animación. En vez de las fotos le está apareciendo un mosaico titulado ⎮Camera´s⎮ Lastframe⎮ graphic⎮ Los consejos de ustedes serán apreciados. Carlos Rabassa Voluntario Red de Apoyo al Plan Ceibal ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Google Summer of Code 2011
Sugar Labs will be applying to Google Summer of Code again for 2011. Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero dir...@gmail.com has kindly volunteered to be our coordinator. He is in the process of updating the wiki. We will be seeking mentors, students, and project ideas. regards. -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] [squeakland] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
Hi Chunka It's basically hunting and gathering vs. agriculture. Or parisitism vs symbiosis. These are built into human nervous systems by genetics, but it is still surprising given that we've had agriculture for more than 10,000 years, and one would think it would be more generally noticed and understood. Here is an example from today that is like the impulse and vision that propelled the 12 year effort that invented personal computing and the Internet. The idea reaches back to the 60s and 70s, but an above threshold invention was not accomplished. Children need to be helped to learn important things, such as reading and writing, mathematics and science and engineering. The helpers need to understand the subject matter, and also how to help the learning process with individual learners. Studies have shown that for many learners, just lowering the learner-to-helper ratio makes an enormous difference. For the US, it has been calculated that it is not possible to create enough knowledgeable K-8 teachers for math and science over the next 25 years, even for the 30:1 student teacher ratios we have today. It has been estimated that this problem is much worse in the developing world. Vision: It is a destiny for interactive computers to become sensitive expert learning helpers for many important parts of human knowledge which children need to learn. This is an extension of what the printing press has meant for learning. There aren't enough Socrates' and other great teachers to go around, but important parts of their magic can be captured in print, replicated and distributed by the millions. This allowed more ordinary teachers plus great-books to do some of what great teachers can do. And this changed the world. Computers can represent books and all other media, and they should be able to actively help us learn to read them (even if we start off not being able to read at all). And we should be able to go much farther beyond the book, to make computer helpers that can also understand and answer many questions in ways that extend our learning rather than undermines the growth of our minds. These computer helpers also help the human helpers. It's not about replacing humans (even if they don't exist) with computers, but making a more powerful learning environment using technology to help. This is a hard vision to pull off, just as personal computing was. The funding needed to be long term in the 60s because much had to be done to (a) even find a version of the vision that could serve as problem and goals, and very importantly (b) to grow the grad students and PhDs, who as second and third generation researchers, were able to frame the problem and do the inventions. The payoff has been enormous. The inventions at PARC alone have generated about $30 Trillion dollars of wealth worldwide (and yes Xerox's return on their investment in PARC has been more than a factor of 200 (from the laser printer alone). The great funding in the 60s was done mostly by the government, and for personal computing and pervasive networks was spread over more than 15 universities and research companies who formed a cooperative research community. (The story of this is told in The Dream Machine by Mitchel Waldrop). The funders today do not have a lot of vision, and they have even less courage. A new kind of user interface that can help people learn is not just for the very important needs of education around the world, but will also open up learning in business, defense, and for consumer design and products. How much would this cost? A critical mass of institutions and researchers could be supported starting at about $100M/year. By contrast, the estimated US spending for Iraq and Afghanistan for 2011 is about $170B. So we are talking initially about less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the cost of these wars. What's the hitch. First there is risk. It is a very difficult problem. But I think a bigger hitch is that it is likely to take more than 10 years to pull off. This is longer than any corporate or government cycle. Perhaps a larger hitch lies in one of the biggest changes in funding today as compared to the 60s. There is no question that a funder of large research monies for high risk projects is responsible. Today's funders are so worried about this responsibility that they confuse it with control and tried to insert themselves in the decision processes. This is a disaster (they are funders not researchers, and the more visionary and difficult the projects, the less their opinion can be at all germane.) The 60s funders made no such error. They said we can't evaluate projects behind the Beltway, so we'll fund people not projects. This required trust in both directions, but it is a proper and good allocation of expertise. The other thing that the 60s funders pointed out when queried by worried politicians, is that they were playing baseball not going to school,
Re: [IAEP] [squeakland] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 14:11, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: Hi Chunka, I've been challenged on this point more than once, and have challenged back to come up with one invention that was done after 1980 that matches up to the top 10 done before 1980. Second the motion. The Internet comes from DARPA. Interactive, collaborative computing comes from Doug Engelbart's group at SRI, with government funding. Alan's work on Smalltalk at Xerox was founded directly on Doug's. The Apple Mac (and Lisa) GUI and Windows are just high-budget, low-concept retoolings of parts of Smalltalk, without the good stuff. The innovations in education that I use come from Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, Georges Cuisenaire, Caleb Gattigno, and others in the early to mid 20th century. The pioneers of computers in education include Omar Khayyam Moore (who supplemented the computer with a graduate student), Ken Iverson, and Seymour Papert in the 1960s. Almost all of the rest of us are working out details from their great insights, or more often ignoring most of their work to concentrate on some tiny part of it. Men of one idea, like a hen with one chick, and that a duckling.--Henry David Thoreau Alan has asked what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart's ideas. I don't think the situation is globally that dire, but I do think that the next wave will not come from Silicon Valley, but from somewhere unexpected, quite likely some place where our XO children are allowed sufficient freedom to innovate, or find ways to do it regardless. However, there is a substantial movement now to replace printed textbooks with less expensive computers with Free Software and Creative Commons content. There is a substantial movement to create unencumbered content, particularly in academic publishing. There is not a very rapid uptake of these tools in school systems, but it is early days yet. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.--Mahatma Gandhi Then they claim that it was their idea all along.--Edward Mokurai Cherlin I am in discussions with Dan Cohen the Mathman, mathman.biz, over his Calculus By and For Young People, and with the company that Caleb Gattegno founded to commercialize his Silent Way of teaching languages, for donations of content to Sugar. I will be talking with the Squeakland list about putting their approaches into Etoys software. This has not happened. I've been able to show the prior art for all suggestions. Essentially everything in the last 30 years has been commercializations and other forms of innovation based on what was funded by ARPA, ONR, and by extension, Xerox in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The important point here is that there are many new inventions needed, and they can be identified, but no one has been willing to fund them. It's not that the early birds got the worms, but that most of the needed worms out there are being missed. The problem in education research goes much deeper than lack of funding. It is deeply political, and touches many people's sense of who and what they are, including parents, teachers, school administrations, and politicians. There are worms that got initial research funding, but the political environment is so toxic that we cannot use the results. An example of a toxic dispute that is not overtly political is whole word vs. phonics in teaching reading. Both are required in English, which has many variant spellings for its phonemes, and words such as 'once' that conform to no rule at all. One of the political dimensions of this and related disputes is that teachers refuse to discuss linguistics research. In part it is a status thing, a Thorstein Veblen/Theory of the Leisure Class phenomenon, because teachers want to teach the high-status version of any language, not the vernacular, and because teachers have been losing status in the US for decades, with shrinking pay, benefits, and rights, and constant attacks from political grandstanders. An example of a purely political dispute is evolutionary biology vs. Creationism, where some Creationists have convinced themselves that Darwin is the Apostle of the Antichrist, and most agree that science is part of a plot to destroy all that is good and true in human society. Sex education is to them the clearest symptom that this moral decay is deliberate. Cheers, Alan From: Chunka Mui chu...@cornerloft.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: Carlos Rabassa car...@mac.com; america-lat...@squeakland.org america-lat...@squeakland.org; squeakland.org mailing list squeakl...@squeakland.org; Maho 2010 m...@realness.org; IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes olpc-...@lists.laptop.org; olpc bolivia olpc-boli...@lists.laptop.org; OLPC Puno olpcp...@gmail.com Sent: Sat, February 5, 2011 10:53:44 AM Subject: Re: [squeakland] [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
Re: [IAEP] [squeakland] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
What about the world wide web? That is usually credited to have been invented in 1990 at CERN. Of course we all stand on the shoulders who have gone before us. Martin sevior - Reply message - From: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 6:11 am Subject: [IAEP] [squeakland] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric To: Chunka Mui chu...@cornerloft.com Cc: voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes olpc-...@lists.laptop.org, squeakland.org mailing list squeakl...@squeakland.org, america-lat...@squeakland.org america-lat...@squeakland.org, Carlos Rabassa car...@mac.com, Maho 2010 m...@realness.org, olpc bolivia olpc-boli...@lists.laptop.org, IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org, OLPC Puno olpcp...@gmail.com Hi Chunka, I've been challenged on this point more than once, and have challenged back to come up with one invention that was done after 1980 that matches up to the top 10 done before 1980. This has not happened. I've been able to show the prior art for all suggestions. Essentially everything in the last 30 years has been commercializations and other forms of innovation based on what was funded by ARPA, ONR, and by extension, Xerox in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The important point here is that there are many new inventions needed, and they can be identified, but no one has been willing to fund them. It's not that the early birds got the worms, but that most of the needed worms out there are being missed. Cheers, Alan From: Chunka Mui chu...@cornerloft.com To: Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com Cc: Carlos Rabassa car...@mac.com; america-lat...@squeakland.org america-lat...@squeakland.org; squeakland.org mailing list squeakl...@squeakland.org; Maho 2010 m...@realness.org; IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes olpc-...@lists.laptop.org; olpc bolivia olpc-boli...@lists.laptop.org; OLPC Puno olpcp...@gmail.com Sent: Sat, February 5, 2011 10:53:44 AM Subject: Re: [squeakland] [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric On Jan 30, 2011, at 9:21 AM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: GE is being congratulated for recognizing that the iPhone and iPad are pretty good ideas and technological realizations. But isn't this like the congratulations Bill Gates got for finally recognizing the Internet (about 25 years after it had started working)? Seems as though Apple had a lot more on the ball than Bill Gates or GE here (they used to do computing in the 60s, but couldn't see what it was). And most of the ideas at Apple (and for personal computing and the Internet) came from research funding that no company or government has been willing to do since 1982. Alan -- Could you say more about this point? Surely there's been tons of CS and IT funding since '82, both govt funding to universities and massive research budgets at msft, hp, Regards, Chunka Cheers, Alan From: Carlos Rabassa car...@mac.com To: america-lat...@squeakland.org; squeakland.org mailing list squeakl...@squeakland.org; Maho 2010 m...@realness.org; IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes olpc-...@lists.laptop.org; olpc bolivia olpc-boli...@lists.laptop.org; OLPC Puno olpcp...@gmail.com Sent: Sun, January 30, 2011 4:11:49 AM Subject: [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric We try to learn from those who have succeed for a long time: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1XWm2q8nQ-l5KUJ_PWkQruLDx-nZ7nsKDfg4idDlsU50 Carlos Rabassa ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ squeakland mailing list squeakl...@squeakland.org http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2011-02-04
Couldn´t save files and many more problems. That sounds a bit like the live-cd type of install? I have had someone contact me before saying they had installed Sugar in Virtual Box on their computer and they said every time they used Sugar they started from scratch, turned out it was the installation was the live-cd kind. Instructions on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Downloads#Apple_Mac_OS_X do say they are for building and booting a live usb and it is hard to follow for a non geek. There have been many conversations about this and satellit among others has been quite active in pursuing how to make this better. Copied him into this message. Part of the problem is that these adults all have different models of computers so they need different instructions, but we can't ask everyone to buy the same model computer as we have our own reasons for choosing different computers. It would be a book entitled Sugar for Dummies There is http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Getting_Started which links to the Sugar Learners Manual available in html or pdf. I think a lot of the information required is out there, it is just pointing people to the right place and checking it is placed in that right place rather than spread out all over the web. That is why we need to all help make sure the sugarlabs website is designed well, kept up to date and easy to navigate. Tabitha ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Fwd: [Sugar-devel] unique activities . . . for Oceania XO's, or other regions.
reposting to oceania and iaep list ... -- Forwarded message -- From: Sean Linton s...@lpnz.org Date: 3 February 2011 22:32 Subject: [Sugar-devel] unique activities . . . for Oceania XO's, or other regions. To: sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org Hi: One of the things I would like to know is that even at the current level of deployment the OLPC project doesn't get attacked for eroding the indigenous cultures of places when with some careful planning and insight it could contribute to the opposite. The sort of thing I am thinking about is for example where you have the TamTam activities, which have a pretty good representation of instruments from around the world built in to the activity already, but at this stage are not tailored to different regional environments. I am thinking about the difference in using that program for a child whose local music culture is represented by the program, and a child whose musical instruments are not included in that program. At one level the activity is useful for either child - the first can see that his or her culture is part of this world wide project and that is really neat, and the second child is at least given the opportunity to see what other instruments from around the world are like. So either way it is an education for who ever is using it, but with out that renewal of the traditional instruments and the unique backgrounds (culture) being brought into the light of this empowering technology I feel there is a danger that the result is a monoculture. To counter this one other thing that I can see being accomplished with the OLPC project is the ability to create audio content, and distribute it locally. In this situation although we don't have 'place specific instruments' loaded as a part of the music iconography of the OLPC, we at least have the ability to couple with community radio, or other audio frameworks to promote locally generated content. One thing I have heard is that OLPC, in a way, creates this situation of the 'haves' and the 'have nots'. Maybe you have heard this too? I think as long as a focus of the project is making a contribution to building communities through learning and networking the technology itself is less like a piece of the pie and more like mixing dish. It would be great to see the Canadian 'drumbeatshttp://www.olpccanada.com/content.php?id=12' activity ported to all the places where the computers are, and that all of those places could create their own version of that interface, drawing on indigenous knowledge and experience of sound. However if for example 'drumbeats' is what makes OLPC in Canada unique, and that unique identity is being expressed through this activity then it makes less sense to try and do it in other places because that would be back to creating a sameness which is contrary to the aim of renewal of indigenous music. My feeling is that the identity created by 'drumbeats' is in the content and not in the fact that it is unique to Canadian machines, and for that reason think it would be great to see some more discussion on how to better equip this technology to provide insights into more specific / less generic backgrounds. It would be good to establish some more contacts who are on the same page with this, I have also heard similar thoughts expressed by someone in Nepal. all the best, Sean ___ Sugar-devel mailing list sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-devel] unique activities . . . for Oceania XO's, or other regions.
I am all for eroding some aspects of traditional cultures. I have had a conversation with a Maasai chief about the possibility of using XOs in his campaign against female genital mutilation. The report on Ethiopia talked about replacing the pure rote teaching style, where asking questions was an insult, with an exploratory, collaborative style, where teachers of their own volition scheduled question time for the whole class. On a larger scale, I am all for destroying cultures of slavery, of oppression, of corruption, and of a multitude of other ills. When we talk about preserving cultures, however, I am all for showing students how to use their XOs to preserve local languages, oral history, music, knowledge of the environment...and to create jobs based on their traditional cultures, whether in arts and crafts, in tourism, in harnessing local resources, or in other ways. There is no reason for XOs to threaten cultures. But we must accept that every culture changes as the climate changes, or technology, or the available foods, or their neighbors, or a multitude of other things. The most resilient cultures are not dependent on keeping everything just as it was, but are able to adapt what is essential to them to new circumstances without being swallowed up. On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 21:19, Frederick Grose fgr...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Sean Linton s...@lpnz.org wrote: Hi I will look into creating a ticket. Thanks for your help most appreciated, As far as Sugar/OLPC is world wide, and the places the computers go to have their own pedagogies, have people encountered issues regarding the embedded pedagogy within this technology. The thing to remember maybe that OLPC also contains a learning environment which has its own consequences, which on one level is a neutral learning environment - that assumes universal recognition of symbols and on screen aids. Even if the embedded pedagogy of OLPC is an experiential learning environment in itself this doesn't mean that an inherited pedagogy will begin to disappear (that 'social missions' are competing) maybe just that it is a sign of what can be expected, and needed to prepare children for growing into adults in the 21st century. One way these two backgrounds (or pedagogies) may complement each other, and I think OLPC and Sugar are already on the way to doing this is by trying to balance creating a neutral learning platform and encouraging virtual learning environments. Virtual learning environments are powerful because they may contain cultural metaphors, however they can also feel limiting where the user is bound by what is already familiar. The strengths of a neutral learning environment include a sense that what is possible is not already defined. How broad do people think the metaphors contained with the activities should be? Can anyone relate to the metaphor as an effective way of making sense of a new experience, perhaps with a specific activity? Sean On 4 February 2011 00:21, Aleksey Lim alsr...@activitycentral.org wrote: On Thu, Feb 03, 2011 at 10:32:28PM +1300, Sean Linton wrote: Hi: One of the things I would like to know is that even at the current level of deployment the OLPC project doesn't get attacked for eroding the indigenous cultures of places when with some careful planning and insight it could contribute to the opposite. The sort of thing I am thinking about is for example where you have the TamTam activities, which have a pretty good representation of instruments from around the world built in to the activity already, but at this stage are not tailored to different regional environments. I am thinking about the difference in using that program for a child whose local music culture is represented by the program, and a child whose musical instruments are not included in that program. At one level the activity is useful for either child - the first can see that his or her culture is part of this world wide project and that is really neat, and the second child is at least given the opportunity to see what other instruments from around the world are like. So either way it is an education for who ever is using it, but with out that renewal of the traditional instruments and the unique backgrounds (culture) being brought into the light of this empowering technology I feel there is a danger that the result is a monoculture. To counter this one other thing that I can see being accomplished with the OLPC project is the ability to create audio content, and distribute it locally. In this situation although we don't have 'place specific instruments' loaded as a part of the music iconography of the OLPC, we at least have the ability to couple with community radio, or other audio frameworks to promote locally generated content. One thing I have heard is that OLPC, in a way, creates this situation of the 'haves' and
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2011-02-04
FLOSS Manuals is ever ready to take on such projects, whenever we get enough writers, editors, artists, and so on who can get together. We are ramping up for Spanish translations in booki, scheduled to start next month. http://booki.flossmanuals.net/ On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 11:50, Carlos Rabassa car...@mac.com wrote: Walter, This section of your message caught my attention: ... (Indeed, a recent marketing survey conducted by a team of Sloan students suggested that while 90% of those surveyed recommend Sugar to others, only 33% of those who then try to download Sugar are successful.) ... Recently I have read several messages about idea banks and about new projects to tackle. If I may make one more suggestion, let me tell you what I would like to see. It would be a book entitled Sugar for Dummies I promise to be the first one in line the day it starts selling; I clearly feel I need it. And now after the figures you just mentioned, I believe a market study for such a book is not necessary. There seem to be a lot of other dummies like me. The book I dream of would have two sections. One for Windows users and one for Mac users. Each section would describe in plain everyday English a step by step installation procedure. It would be the procedure to install whatever is necessary to run the XO applications in a non-XO computer like the ones many adults like me have and use. The explanations should be thoroughly tested, prior to publication, to make sure they do work, I volunteer to be a beta tester for the Mac version. They should be reviewed for language, like lawyers do with contracts, making sure that any word that is not in the everyday plain English vocabulary, is properly defined before using it. A final suggestion is that it be published in Google Docs or as a pdf file attached to emails, no wikis please. Wikis are not yet in the realm of everyday English. Would this be possible or is this an impossible dream? Please help me and help others by remembering I said I am a Sugar Dummy. I do not understand complex explanations or shop talk. Something like this publication would multiply tremendously the number of capable, useful, volunteers that could help in many projects. First project where someone like me could help, is very close to another one of your comments; You said: ... there is an opportunity for using Sugar in an informal setting as well, where, unconstrained by the official curriculum, the learner has more of an opportunity to dig more deeply into areas of personal interest. I am thinking of something we have in Uruguay, the merenderos. Literal translation of merendero would be place where mid afternoon snack is served. School children go to these places after school and spend time there. It would be nice if someone with knowledge about them could explain how they work. We have the honor of personally knowing for many years a powerful driving force behind this institution of the merenderos. Almost half a century ago, we were married by Fr. Uberfil Monzón, the priest who, as head of INDA, Instituto Nacional de Alimentación, promoted the merenderos. http://www.inda.gub.uy/ INDA has been assuring for a long time that school children are properly fed. Fr. Monzón with the merenderos brought home the idea that it is not only a question of giving children food for the body. Children go to the merenderos after school. They not only find adequate food but also can play, practice sports, socialize with other children. They receive visits by role models such as soccer stars with whom they can talk face to face. It seems to be the ideal set up for what you so well describe of children using Sugar in an informal environment. Sincerely, Carlos Rabassa Volunteer Plan Ceibal Support Network Montevideo, Uruguay On Feb 4, 2011, at 6:13 PM, Walter Bender wrote: ===Sugar Digest=== 1. While shovelling snow I have been reflecting on Sugar – a lot of snow, hence a lot of reflecting. Looking back, I came across a quote [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094695.stm] from 2007: change equals risk. At the time, I was speaking out against incremental change to a global educational system that was failing to meet the needs of our children. The ''status quo'' was failing – and is still failing – and we embarked upon a path to do something about it. We developed a deployable model of one-to-one computing enabling us to advocate for a pedagogy of constructionist learning [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki Constructionism_%28learning_theory%29], where learning can happen most effectively when people are also active in making tangible objects in the real world. Over the course of four years, we've put Sugar into the hands of almost two-million children. Our goal has been to give them a learning platform – one that encourages them to be expressive with knowledge, to collaborate, and to reflect. While we
