Re: [IAEP] [squeakland] What makes examples good for novices? and How do we tell if an example is good for novices?

[Caryl Bigenho]

Hi...
RE the Khan Academy programming video... I have tried some of them in parallel 
with hands-on, and while they do teach some concepts well, they aren't 
particularly exciting. Perhaps that is why I stopped working on them. I really 
believe that the Khan Academy videos, and other video instructional videos, 
work best in the "flip your class" type situation. Watch the video first, 
individually as an introduction to a topic. Repeat and "rewind" as much as you 
need to feel comfortable with the subject matter. Then follow up in a "class" 
situation where there are other learners (and perhaps a "teacher" or mentor) to 
help you practice the skill or process you have been practicing. This could 
just be with a friend, in a club or a group of other interested learners. It 
might even work well with one of Sugata Mitra's "Granny" clouds. Hummm I 
wonder anyone want to be this Grannie''s Granny?
Caryl (aka sweetxogrannie or GrannieB)
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 01:18:47 -0500
From: sthom...@gosargon.com
To: lengli...@cox.net
CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; squeakl...@squeakland.org
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [squeakland] What makes examples good for novices? and How 
do we tell if an example is good for novices?

Lawson,
On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 10:16 PM, Lawson English  wrote:


  

  
  
I can't give you any stats other than positive feedback I have
gotten, but the Salman Khan style of video teaching seems to work
well for programming as well as for math.
I generally like the Salman Khan video's and think they have their place (flame 
away folks :).  The ability to watch at my your pace and on your own time is a 
big plus and my kids use them sometimes when they are struggling with a 
concept.  While it is preferable to struggle with the concepts ourselves, who 
has the time (or the ability) to re-construct all that knowledge. So, I think 
there is a role for a "good explanation."  Of course, it would be nice if he 
had more "Sugar" like artifacts to play and learn with.

That said I really didn't like his Programming videos.  Programming, I believe, 
is much better if taught with lots of hands on opportunities and problems.  
Videos could be used after the learner has a chance to work on a problem. 
Perhaps to show different ways to solve a problem and/or Providing a Guided 
Tour through "good literature" (well written code) and perhaps bad as well or 
something like Java Puzzlers, to let kids learn where the pitfalls are and get 
a better understanding of how things work.




My video series, Squeak from the very start, is a very conscious
effort to duplicate his style:



http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6601A198DF14788D&feature=view_all



Friends characterize my video style as being like a mentor in a
pair-programming session.
I like the idea of kids pair-programming although I would think you would need 
to set some ground rules like (the "advanced" kid can't touch the keyboard).

FYI, I like your videos and have used them for myself.
Thanks,Stephen 



On 2/2/12 5:56 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
So I am taking a P2PU course On How
to Teach Web Programmin to Free Range Learners and a couple
  of questions came up:

  

  So I pose them to the community:

  
What makes examples good for novices?
How do we tell if an example is good for novices?
  
  Also where can I find a good set of examples for learning
programming?

  
  It would be nice to have a curated set of "Great literature".
  Pointers to any research on the topic would be appreciated.

  
  Stephen

  
  

  
  

  ___
squeakland mailing list
squeakl...@squeakland.org
http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland




  


___

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
  ___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] [squeakland] What makes examples good for novices? and How do we tell if an example is good for novices?

[Steve Thomas]

Lawson,

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 10:16 PM, Lawson English  wrote:

>  I can't give you any stats other than positive feedback I have gotten,
> but the Salman Khan style of video teaching seems to work well for
> programming as well as for math.
>
I generally like the Salman Khan video's and think they have their place
(flame away folks :).  The ability to watch at my your pace and on your own
time is a big plus and my kids use them sometimes when they are struggling
with a concept.  While it is preferable to struggle with the concepts
ourselves, who has the time (or the ability) to re-construct all that
knowledge. So, I think there is a role for a "good explanation."  Of
course, it would be nice if he had more "Sugar" like artifacts to play and
learn with.

That said I really didn't like his Programming videos.  Programming, I
believe, is much better if taught with lots of hands on opportunities and
problems.  Videos could be used after the learner has a chance to work on a
problem. Perhaps to show different ways to solve a problem and/or Providing
a Guided Tour through "good literature" (well written code) and perhaps bad
as well or something like Java Puzzlers, to let kids learn where the
pitfalls are and get a better understanding of how things work.


> My video series, Squeak from the very start, is a very conscious effort to
> duplicate his style:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6601A198DF14788D&feature=view_all
>
> Friends characterize my video style as being like a mentor in a
> pair-programming session.
>

I like the idea of kids pair-programming although I would think you would
need to set some ground rules like (the "advanced" kid can't touch the
keyboard).

FYI, I like your videos and have used them for myself.

Thanks,
Stephen


>
> On 2/2/12 5:56 PM, Steve Thomas wrote:
>
> So I am taking a P2PU course On How to Teach Web Programmin to Free Range
> Learnersand
>  a couple of questions came up:
>
> So I pose them to the community:
>
>1. What makes examples good for novices?
>2. How do we tell if an example is good for novices?
>
> Also where can I find a good set of examples for learning programming?
>
> It would be nice to have a curated set of "Great literature".
>
> Pointers to any research on the topic would be appreciated.
>
> Stephen
>
>
> ___
> squeakland mailing 
> listsqueakland@squeakland.orghttp://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
>
>
>
> ___
> 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

[IAEP] Replacing Textbooks server working again

[Edward Mokurai Cherlin]

The Replacing Textbooks server, http://booki.treehouse.org/ is back up
on its new hardware. Everything is functioning as before, as far as I
can tell.

-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] What makes examples good for novices? and How do we tell if an example is good for novices?

[Dr. Gerald Ardito]

Steve,

Your question made me think about research I read about a couple of years
ago. The researcher was investigating narratives between patients and
doctors. Their major finding was that patients naturally needed to narrate
what they were experiencing, and that close to 100% of the time, the doctor
stopped them from talking.

What makes the examples good is that are narrative, rather than functional.
For example, I want to do this, instead of here's how you define a class.

I hope this helps.

Gerald

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:56 PM, Steve Thomas  wrote:

> So I am taking a P2PU course On How to Teach Web Programmin to Free Range
> Learnersand
>  a couple of questions came up:
>
> So I pose them to the community:
>
>1. What makes examples good for novices?
>2. How do we tell if an example is good for novices?
>
> Also where can I find a good set of examples for learning programming?
>
> It would be nice to have a curated set of "Great literature".
>
> Pointers to any research on the topic would be appreciated.
>
> Stephen
>
> ___
> 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] What makes examples good for novices? and How do we tell if an example is good for novices?

[Steve Thomas]

So I am taking a P2PU course On How to Teach Web Programmin to Free Range
Learnersand
a couple of questions came up:

So I pose them to the community:

   1. What makes examples good for novices?
   2. How do we tell if an example is good for novices?

Also where can I find a good set of examples for learning programming?

It would be nice to have a curated set of "Great literature".

Pointers to any research on the topic would be appreciated.

Stephen
___
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

Re: [IAEP] [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2012-02-02

[Walter Bender]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Fred juma  wrote:

> Bungoma OLPC HIV/AIDS  XO project has introduced more activities.Now there
> is internet connection on XO for children in primary Schools.Community
> outreach using XO machines has been introduced.the rural community is so
> excited.This courtesy of Sandra Thaxter of Solutions in USA.She is visiting
> the Kenyan OLPC XO projects to ensure there success.Hands of Charity has
> reached over 7 schools in Bungoma Kenya.The Maths programme has progressed
> too.I has changed the perfomance in Maths in Butonge Primary School in
> Bungoma County.Its a very good idea for learners.
>

Very interested to learn more about what activites you find useful and more
about the HIV/AIDS-specific efforts.

regards.

-walter

>
> --- On *Thu, 2/2/12, Walter Bender * wrote:
>
>
> From: Walter Bender 
> Subject: [Sugar-news] Sugar Digest 2012-02-02
> To: community-n...@lists.sugarlabs.org
> Cc: "iaep" , "Sugar-dev Devel" <
> sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org>
> Date: Thursday, February 2, 2012, 2:10 PM
>
> == Sugar Digest ==
>
> 1. I spent some time working on the nutrition plugin for Turtle Blocks
> last weekend. I'm actually quite intrigued by the potential. So far, I
> have built a small database of foods (banana, apple, chocolate cake,
> and a chocolate chip cookie), where each object has an associated
> simple polynomial with value for calories, protein, carbohydrates,
> fiber, and fat. These values are respectable on the help palette and
> there are inspector blocks that can get these values as numeric values
> in Turtle Block programs. You can do arithmetic operations on the
> object, e.g., banana * 3 + cookie / 2 and you can use the component
> values in other operations, e.g., forward by get_calories apple.
> Finally, there is an eat method that consumes the nutritional values
> fed to it and accumulates aggregate totals for each component. Using
> those values, I wrote a simple Weight Watchers(TM) "Points"
> calculator. You can play with all of this by downloading the plugin
> from [1].
>
> Next up is to create a palette with foods that are actually meaningful
> within the context of a deployment. There is a nice database to map
> foods to their nutritional components available at [2] so the real
> work is coming up with a representative list of foods and the artwork
> for the blocks. Anyone one interested in exploring this further with
> me?
>
> A screen shot is available at [3].
>
> 2. I am a little late in relaying this, but Caryl Bigenho wrote up a
> nice summary of SCaLE 10X a week ago. You can read about it here: [4]
>
> 3. I am please to announce that Robert Fadel will be taking over as
> finance coordinator for Sugar Labs. Robert has a wealth of
> professional experience in finance and, having previously been a part
> of the core team at One Laptop per Child, he is very familiar with
> Sugar Labs and its mission. Robert has been in communication with
> Bradley Kuhn at the SFC in order to get brought up to speed on our
> finances--Bradley had been distracted by an end of year audit report,
> so things are a bit behind on the finance front. Once he gets the lay
> of the land, I am certain that Robert will have many recommendations
> on how we can improve our financial processes. Robert and Bradley both
> have expressed interest in helping Sugar Labs identify funding
> opportunities.
>
> 2. John Tierney spent the fall semester working closely with a team of
> students participating in the OWL Jr. project at Oakland University
> under the supervision of Dr. Dana Driscoll. The students evaluated
> different aspects of Sugar and the use of Sugar in the classroom and
> have written up very thoughtful recommendations. John is working with
> them to get these materials into the wiki and to mine them for
> potential feature requests. Stay tuned.
>
> === In the community ===
>
> 6. There will be an eduJAM! in the  week of May 7-12 in Montevideo.
> Details to follow.
>
> 7. The week following eduJAM! will be a Squeakfest, also in Montevideo
> (May 16-18).
>
> === Tech Talk ===
>
> 8. The patches for new features for Sugar 0.96 [5] have (for the most
> part) landed. Under the hood, we'll see a migration to GTK-3. This is
> particularly important in "future-proofing" Sugar, ensuring that we
> remain in sync with our upstream and opens the door to much of the
> work in the GNOME community around topics such as accessibility and
> touch. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this major
> effort. Other new features include a global text-to-speech mechanism,
> written by Gonzalo Odiard. You'll be able to highlight text in any
> activity and send it to the voice synthesizer with a simple keyboard
> shortcut. Manuel Quiñones and Simon Schampijer have been porting
> Browse to Webkit as its back end. Simon helped me with "write to
> journal anytime", a feature that enables the user to takes notes
> stored in the Sugar journal from within any activity. And Sascha
> Silbe, Ani

[IAEP] Sugar Digest 2012-02-02

[Walter Bender]

== Sugar Digest ==

1. I spent some time working on the nutrition plugin for Turtle Blocks
last weekend. I'm actually quite intrigued by the potential. So far, I
have built a small database of foods (banana, apple, chocolate cake,
and a chocolate chip cookie), where each object has an associated
simple polynomial with value for calories, protein, carbohydrates,
fiber, and fat. These values are respectable on the help palette and
there are inspector blocks that can get these values as numeric values
in Turtle Block programs. You can do arithmetic operations on the
object, e.g., banana * 3 + cookie / 2 and you can use the component
values in other operations, e.g., forward by get_calories apple.
Finally, there is an eat method that consumes the nutritional values
fed to it and accumulates aggregate totals for each component. Using
those values, I wrote a simple Weight Watchers(TM) "Points"
calculator. You can play with all of this by downloading the plugin
from [1].

Next up is to create a palette with foods that are actually meaningful
within the context of a deployment. There is a nice database to map
foods to their nutritional components available at [2] so the real
work is coming up with a representative list of foods and the artwork
for the blocks. Anyone one interested in exploring this further with
me?

A screen shot is available at [3].

2. I am a little late in relaying this, but Caryl Bigenho wrote up a
nice summary of SCaLE 10X a week ago. You can read about it here: [4]

3. I am please to announce that Robert Fadel will be taking over as
finance coordinator for Sugar Labs. Robert has a wealth of
professional experience in finance and, having previously been a part
of the core team at One Laptop per Child, he is very familiar with
Sugar Labs and its mission. Robert has been in communication with
Bradley Kuhn at the SFC in order to get brought up to speed on our
finances--Bradley had been distracted by an end of year audit report,
so things are a bit behind on the finance front. Once he gets the lay
of the land, I am certain that Robert will have many recommendations
on how we can improve our financial processes. Robert and Bradley both
have expressed interest in helping Sugar Labs identify funding
opportunities.

2. John Tierney spent the fall semester working closely with a team of
students participating in the OWL Jr. project at Oakland University
under the supervision of Dr. Dana Driscoll. The students evaluated
different aspects of Sugar and the use of Sugar in the classroom and
have written up very thoughtful recommendations. John is working with
them to get these materials into the wiki and to mine them for
potential feature requests. Stay tuned.

=== In the community ===

6. There will be an eduJAM! in the  week of May 7-12 in Montevideo.
Details to follow.

7. The week following eduJAM! will be a Squeakfest, also in Montevideo
(May 16-18).

=== Tech Talk ===

8. The patches for new features for Sugar 0.96 [5] have (for the most
part) landed. Under the hood, we'll see a migration to GTK-3. This is
particularly important in "future-proofing" Sugar, ensuring that we
remain in sync with our upstream and opens the door to much of the
work in the GNOME community around topics such as accessibility and
touch. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this major
effort. Other new features include a global text-to-speech mechanism,
written by Gonzalo Odiard. You'll be able to highlight text in any
activity and send it to the voice synthesizer with a simple keyboard
shortcut. Manuel Quiñones and Simon Schampijer have been porting
Browse to Webkit as its back end. Simon helped me with "write to
journal anytime", a feature that enables the user to takes notes
stored in the Sugar journal from within any activity. And Sascha
Silbe, Anish Mangal, and Aleksey Lim have added proxy configuration to
the network entry in the Sugar control panel. Lots of QA to do, but
the heavy lifting is done.

=== Sugar Labs ===

Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few weeks of discussion
on the IAEP mailing list:

2012 Jan 21st-27th [6] (41 emails)
2012 Jan 14th-20th [7] (28 emails)

Visit our planet [8] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.



[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:Food-plugin.tar.gz
[2] https://www.choosemyplate.gov/SuperTracker
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/0/01/Food-plugin.png
[4] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2012-January/014837.html
0.96/Feature_List
[6] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2012-Jan-21-27-som.jpg
[7] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2012-Jan-14-20-som.jpg
[8] http://planet.sugarlabs.org

-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] [Olpc-open] Fwd: Defining success

[Sandra Thaxter]

Marta, 

 Thank you again for elucidating the broader issues around evaluating OLPC 
impact.  I am going to keep these emails as they are so well written and your 
points so well made.  Let us all broadly distribute this rich contribution.   

I like your direction, not just a grant to test, but to develop an system of 
evaluation for the 21st century.   As we are in fact implementing learning that 
doesn't fit into the 19th century practices we inherited,   It does go back to 
Piaget.  In Kenya many leading educators agree that the system of exams and 
evaluation is failing Kenyan children, and that the system needs to connect 
learning to life.  The school population in Kenya is so large that many 
children are being left behind.  

See the site  http://amstref.org ... a Kenyan making math relevant.
 
Sandra Thaxter
www.smallsolutionsbigideas.org
san...@smallsolutionsbigideas.org
(617) 320-1098
  - Original Message - 
  From: Marta Voelcker 
  To: 'Sandra Thaxter' 
  Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 3:52 PM
  Subject: RES: [Olpc-open] Fwd: Defining success


  Hi Sandra and list, ( sorry for writing such a long message again J )

  I liked your comments! I have a suggestion

  You wrote:

What we need is a big grant to do some field research and get the data. 
 

  I would say: or,  a system that would do that! 

   

  The system would keep versions of kids "productions", and track kids´ 
progress, and also kids´ attitudes to get to the final product (collaboration, 
creativity, communication, leadership, initiative, problem solving) . not easy 
, I know. but if technology allows that each learner develops its own project, 
we  should not evaluate  all learners  with the same test or exam, should we?   
  So we need new systems of evaluation that might be based on kids productions 
and peer review. Things like the 21st century skills could be used to name some 
of the possible outputs, and there is research behind each one of the skills to 
support the choose of criteria of success.

  Another good point of developing a system instead of or besides  conducting a 
research is that the system would stay for the schools as a  resource to 
evaluate each child and keep their records through the time, also a database 
for the educational system evaluate the schools.

   

  But to do that there is the need of  leaders (educational system reps)  that 
think  on the use of technology to innovate teaching and learning. I wonder 
what is the context on  the deployments?  they probably respond to regular 
country/state  evaluation? Do any of them have as a clear goal to change and 
innovate on education? have they defined what is this change and the criteria 
to identify new outputs?  

   

  At this moment, we have available the greatest technology ever made to enable 
 "the change" in education.

  Change from traditional education ( 19th century) to the currently desired 
education, which in fact, is a change that is desired since the early decades 
of the 20th century, when child psychology evolved (Dewey, Piaget)  and many 
things happened - since that time there are moves to renovate school , to 
prioritize  teamwork, learning by doing, problem solving , creativity. but that 
was an impossible thing to do by the time that all students had to read the 
same book and go through the same exercises and questions because only one 
teacher ( without technology) was not able to  guide a whole class of students 
with different motivation, learning in a different pace and creating projects 
about the subject.

   

  But now that technology could  enable a systemic change on education,  I have 
the feeling that few people remember that desire of change, or maybe they have 
tried so hard ( to change), before the  technology, that they gave up and don´t 
want to try anymore? Or maybe  few people understand "what is the change and 
why is it desired"... I´ve been studying this lately and realized that there 
are so many things and motivations involved. The willing for change is 
frequently present on National or state standards or guidelines for education, 
but is not present on the kids evaluation or assessment.  There is an important 
need for teachers and families to understand what are the outputs of the new 
education.

   

  Once reps from  an educational system have the courage to say: " Yes we want 
to change! Let´s use technology to enable change!"

  Then it would be possible to think, develop  and continuously improve a 
system to evaluate attitudes, skills development.

   

  Or  maybe not, maybe the system should be developed before, and then shown to 
leaders ( educational system reps)  to convince them to experiment change 
(including change on evaluation using the new system) ?

   

  Marta

   

  De: olpc-open-boun...@lists.laptop.org 
[mailto:olpc-open-boun...@lists.laptop.org] Em nome de Sandra Thaxter
  Enviada em: segunda-feira, 30 de janeiro de 2012 10:38
  Para: Samuel Klein; o