Re: [IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 110, Issue 54
B On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 1:37 AM,wrote: > Send IAEP mailing list submissions to > iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > iaep-requ...@lists.sugarlabs.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > iaep-ow...@lists.sugarlabs.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of IAEP digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > >1. [Sugar Labs] Verified Sugar Labs member's list (Laura Vargas) > > > -- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 00:36:48 -0500 > From: Laura Vargas > To: iaep , memb...@sugarlabs.org > Subject: [IAEP] [Sugar Labs] Verified Sugar Labs member's list > Message-ID: >
[IAEP] Global Learning Xprize
Does anyone have any information about the current status of the Global Learning Xprize? For an awesome project, it is relatively difficult to track progress and participation. With the massive interest in education by the US press and level of protests, how can we channel that energy toward "solutions" like IAEP and/or the Global Learning Xprize? How can these folks contribute to fixing "the problem"? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 60, Issue 27
Thanks. I signed up. http://venture-lab.org/creativity I took Designing a New Learning Environment last year, too. I enjoyed it although it was a little long and a bit disorganized. Shorter and a second offering of this course sounds promising. See you there. ..Valerie ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar as a Mac Ap?
XO Activities as iOS or Android apps - sounds interesting. Is this do-able? I know there are lots of issues at the core of XO and Sugar mission and development. But there are also millions of kids with devices in their pockets who would benefit from technology supported learning. We are investigating BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) for use in the US. We haven't been able to get any interest in XOs. But the idea that each kid with their own pocket learning device - includes iTouch with wifi only, is getting a lot of attention. It's an education project too, and one that is desperately needed to help bridge the widening educational divide in the US. Please think about it. ..vt ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar as a Mac Ap?
Thanks Raffael. Seems pretty useful after a quick look. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kiosk-pro-lite/id409906264?mt=8 http://www.ipadkiosks.com/ How hard would it be to make an iPhone version too? We are trying to get the bar as low as possible. We have kids and schools with very limited resources who see the possibilities. An old iPhone with a cracked screen ($8 on eBay) can still connect to wifi at school and in the public libraries as well as download wonderful free standalone apps. There are several easy to use tools to create custom webapps, too, so more educators can create and customize the learning experience. It isn't Sugar or XO but it does allow a large population of kids in the US to have most of the advantages of the OLPC vision. As some kind of starting point I did a simple kids webbrowser for iOS maybe you would like to have a look on it in iTunes App Store it is called: Kiosk Lite. Regards, Raffael ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Raspberry Pi - $25 computer coming soon....
Yes, then every kid has to gather and assemble the parts themselves... That's their whole point! And they will sell any quantity to anyone. They will sell them one at a time or in small quantities. Their goal is to provide a platform for learning programming - cheap enough to encourage learning through hands-on trial and error by the owner / user. Getting back to the good old days of how does it work They are targeting a very different audience, and it is nice to see that they are able to generate excitement for products in this end of the educational market. Most kids today are only interested in what can it do. There are far too few kids who have the slightest interest in opening the hood and fooling around without worrying about breaking something. Anyone stepping up to that challenge should be commended. On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 10:04 AM, John Watlington w...@laptop.org wrote: On Aug 29, 2011, at 3:43 PM, Valerie Taylor wrote: Raspberry Pi - $25 computer coming soon http://www.raspberrypi.org/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/?page_id=2 - specs If you leave out the battery and battery charger, display, USB hub, audio input and output, case, keyboard, etc., the XO-1.75 is cheaper than that. But then every teacher and kid has to gather and assemble the parts themselves... There have been any number of these computers built in the past. Anyone remember AMD's 50x15 brick ? Cheers, wad ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Raspberry Pi - $25 computer coming soon....
Raspberry Pi - $25 computer coming soon http://www.raspberrypi.org/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/?page_id=2 - specs Sounds like they are working on having a Fedora distribution for the November launch. They are actively inviting anyone with large educational programs to get in touch with them now. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Fwd: Music education and textbooks
Here is Laurie's reply to your questions... Oak Hill is about 50 miles from Orlando and Daytona. There are universities in both. There are Spanish speaking teachers and volunteers in the community I know there is lots of information in Spanish and independent of Burns School's immediate need, I would like to facilitate collecting that information and getting it translated into English in the wiki. From: Laurie P. Callihan, PhD lacfsu...@yahoo.com Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 9:12 PM Subject: RE: [IAEP] Music education and textbooks To: Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com -- Forwarded message -- From: Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 2:05 PM Subject: RE: [IAEP] Music education and textbooks To: cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.com, vtay...@gmail.com Cc: IAEP SugarLabs iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Hi Valerie, If you can give me a little bit more info I can probably point you in the direction of some useful resources. How many students are we talking about? About 300 total. Approx 2 classes each K-8. How many minutes per week are devoted to music? Likely two 30 minute sessions per week we hope. At least one. How is it delivered... i.e. how many days a week will they have music? 1 or 2. Is there any budget at all? Yes, but more like 1-2,000 after we buy the digital piano and other necessary's. What city are you in? Oak Hill, Fl - south of New Smyrna, Volusia County. What is your nearest large city or university? Titusville, NASA, UCF? ... What are the ethnic backgrounds of the students? Very diverse, mostly black and white some hispanic Is the school a part of a school district? Independent public charter in Volusia county If so, which one? Is the music teacher fluent enough in Spanish to read resources about using TamTam and listen to Video demos of lessons using TamTam? Doubt that . . . but he is extremely talented and academic - doctoral student at UCF . . . ARMY Choir director, Middle school/high school teacher, exceptionally qualified I have family visiting this week so it may take a time to get it all together, but I will see if I can come up with a variety of options for you and your music teacher. Hopefully we can include Tam Tam. Caryl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Select Wikipedia articles
A question about the snapshot of select Wikipedia articles that is loaded onto the OLPC laptops http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060804005291/en/Laptop-Child-Includes-Wikipedia-100-Laptops-Subset Is that a separate entity? Can other educators get a copy of it? A local K-8 after-school tutoring program for at-risk kids is teaching them learning skills including research. They have computers, no internet access but need to practice searching. The Wikipedia snapshot on a local hard drive or CD would be perfect. Can we download it someplace? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Select Wikipedia articles
Thanks! That's what I was looking for. I'll pass these along. On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Nathaniel Hoffelder natehoffel...@gmail.com wrote: There's a 2008 edition that fits on a DVD. You can find it at the bottom of this page: http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/charity-news/archive/2008/10/2008-wikipedia-for-schools You can also make your own: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-free-tools-for-taking-wikipedia-offline/ Nate On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:17 PM, Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com wrote: A question about the snapshot of select Wikipedia articles that is loaded onto the OLPC laptops http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060804005291/en/Laptop-Child-Includes-Wikipedia-100-Laptops-Subset Is that a separate entity? Can other educators get a copy of it? A local K-8 after-school tutoring program for at-risk kids is teaching them learning skills including research. They have computers, no internet access but need to practice searching. The Wikipedia snapshot on a local hard drive or CD would be perfect. Can we download it someplace? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep -- editor, The Digital Reader editor, The Unbound Book --- moderator MobileRead Forums www.mobileread.com ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Select Wikipedia articles
Thanks! On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Gonzalo Odiard gonz...@laptop.org wrote: You can download it from http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/addon/4411 Its a Sugar activity, then you need run it in a Sugar environment. If you are not using Sugar, can use Sugar on a Stick. Gonzalo On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com wrote: A question about the snapshot of select Wikipedia articles that is loaded onto the OLPC laptops http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060804005291/en/Laptop-Child-Includes-Wikipedia-100-Laptops-Subset Is that a separate entity? Can other educators get a copy of it? A local K-8 after-school tutoring program for at-risk kids is teaching them learning skills including research. They have computers, no internet access but need to practice searching. The Wikipedia snapshot on a local hard drive or CD would be perfect. Can we download it someplace? ___ 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] Music education and textbooks
The new charter school I'm working with doesn't have $15,000 for the K-8 music textbooks the music teacher requested. Here is a great opportunity for ebooks if they are available. I would appreciate any suggestions, links, resources. Thanks ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Music education and textbooks
Thanks Alan, James and Chris I would like to see Sugar Activities as the solution, but that is a pretty big step for these folks. :o) They have a cart of windows laptops. We are checking to see if they can run Sugar from a bootable CD or USB stick. So it is a possibility. But this raises an issue that I have seen elsewhere. College Open Textbooks is making some headway as are open courses. http://collegeopentextbooks.org/ Instructors are either willing to create a whole textbook or adopt a whole textbook. Some will include a few resources to augment a textbook. Most faculty don't have the time or the inclination to sift through 100s or 1000s of OERs to piece together a course or text. Now for many elementary schools, curriculum with texts, teacher materials, supplementary materials, teacher training are adopted as a district-wide all-grade levels package. The textbook model covering a whole subject area is important. When the Replacing Textbooks project is further along, it will provide a turn-key solution for all grade levels. With budget cuts, schools may not have the luxury of purchasing subject series textbooks. Seems like that day may be closer than some realized. As I'm new to K-8 and Florida, I don't know what options are available, but I'll find out. On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Chris Leonard cjlhomeaddr...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com wrote: The new charter school I'm working with doesn't have $15,000 for the K-8 music textbooks the music teacher requested. Here is a great opportunity for ebooks if they are available. I would appreciate any suggestions, links, resources. If computers are available, the TamTam Suite is wonderful way to explore music. Gonzalo and I have been discussing building a wiki slice of the instruments included as samples which would serve as useful ancillary text to TamTam. You definitely want to talk to Caryl Bigheno, as she has a degree in Music Education. old page, but still helpful for context http://wiki.laptop.org/go/TamTam Current download cjl ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar minimum set
Thanks, Tom On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 10:34 PM, Thomas C Gilliard satel...@bendbroadband.com wrote: Besides to the fedora Soas Project, You should look at this polished SugarLabs (Ubuntu Based) Project : It uses alsroot's sugar sweets 0.88.1, and shares some features with the XO-1 OLPC Dextrose software * http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Trisquel_On_A_Sugar_Toast#trisquel-sugar_4.5.1_i686 ---More Information: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Community/Distributions/Trisquel ---Importable Virtualbox appliance: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Emulator_image_files#Trisquel-Gnome-sugar_4.5_Release_Candidate ---dd write to 2 GB USB: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Trisquel_On_A_Sugar_Toast#dd_writable_2GB_USB_.img ---Testing: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Talk:Community/Distributions/Trisquel#trisquel-sugar_4.5.1_i686 FYI Sugar-desktop is available in all of these Linux Distributions http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Creation_Kit#Community_Distributions Sugar-Activity Information is available from these links: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sck/activities Tom Gilliard satellit ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Sugar minimum set
Is there a minimum set of Sugar teacher/tutor training, hardware and software that could be implemented by a community supported remedial program that works with kids outside regular elementary school? Is this something that could be considered and/or suggested? A local program provides small group time as their primary learning activities and has some computers that they use already. Most of the software is the usual proprietary kids educational products. Their regular program would lend itself to including basic Sugar Labs Activities. Are there guidelines for when Sugar Labs Activities can be beneficial even if it isn't possible or practical to provide the all-inclusive OLPC environment? In this case, the computers could probably loaded with Linux and Sugar, and would be stand-alone (without a classroom or school server). I don't know if the machines are networked so that groups and neighborhoods could be available. Is anyone doing this now? Does Sugar Labs encourage this? What is a minimum setup that could be considered? What are the gotcha's for doing something like this? To replace textbooks, is there a strategy for moving to wider use of Sugar as part of the process? Thanks ..Valerie ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs: account confirmation
Hi Walter Can you log into Moodle? If you are an administrator, you can make other teachers and/or administrators. What is the objective of these Moodle courses? Were they created for specific audiences? Would it be ok if others who are interested in Sugar access them? I have some experience with Moodle. I would be happy to help. ..Valerie On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 8:12 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 7:23 PM, Tabitha Roder tabi...@tabitha.net.nz wrote: The welcome discussion post was added by David Farning and edited by Walter Bender so you could try talking to them about who is managing the http://schools.sugarlabs.org/ Moodle site. I think this resource is probably under utilised and probably not well publicised. I think I have admin privileges, so I am happy to help. I don't know much about how Moodle works, so I'll need some guidance. -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] Sugar Labs: account confirmation
Liddy is listed as the teacher / owner of the course. I sent her a message to get the key as the course access is restricted - disappointing for something that is part of an open community. Hope to hear from her and take a look around. It looks like she hasn't accessed this site in more than a year. If the Australia original site has been updated more recently, it would be most current. Thanks ..Valerie On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 9:27 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote: What is the objective of these Moodle courses? Were they created for specific audiences? Would it be ok if others who are interested in Sugar access them? I could have this wrong, I would need to view the moodle resources, but I believe that it is a clone of a Moodle course done for OLPC Australia. The Australian version http://laptop.moodle.com.au/ could have later edits or may have abandoned all the early material, I am not sure. The original Moodle course by Liddy Neville was done for school teachers in the Australian deployments. Tony ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro
Don't get me wrong - what is being done is amazing. It is most important to support those who get it and need help as the primary use of time and resources. You only learn what you almost know. It will take valuable limited resources to educate those who are outside the scope of almost knowing the underlying concepts and rational and appreciating how this will fundamentally change education. That is a pretty big step for many people. And I would like to help with that, as I am currently part of the problem, On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 11:16 PM, moku...@earthtreasury.org wrote: On Wed, June 15, 2011 2:40 pm, Valerie Taylor wrote: It is about doing something as soon as possible, not as soon as convenient. There is documentation for teachers, and teacher training material, in Spanish and Nepali that I would like to see translated to English and then to dozens of other languages. We could use more help. Great work as far as it goes. So much more that could be done. Getting help is still a problem in most online communities. It is interesting that open software development has been so successful but all the attempts at organizing volunteers for the peripheral services - documentation, training, marketing, have not been nearly as successful. There has been a substantial amount of grumbling without providing specifics so that we can either change the software or the documentation, as appropriate. Please send me your issues. As far as I can tell, the software is wonderful and getting better all the time. It makes sense that this is the primary focus of the work. For the grumbling from the rest of us - communicate, communicate, communicate. Make it easy (easier) to find stuff. Keep it open (wiki pages - not .pdf, google docs). Work on expanding the information about the underlying ideas to include broader audiences. Make it easier and more visible how to ask for help. And make it easy to volunteer to help and to know how to help. This is how I plan to contribute. I can do some of these. Some of the work has already been done but needs re-discovering, Grumbling is good - I'm here to help. Some of these are hard - there aren't good working models. But heck, that's what makes this important and interesting. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro aprender Sugar / I cannot learn Sugar why would YOU want to?
On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 11:17 PM, moku...@earthtreasury.org wrote: Please put that up on the Replacing Textbooks server. Remixing is one of the points of the program. Will do. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro
As a new independent learner, there is no question that it is difficult to learn Sugar but why would someone want to? I want to because OLPC is on the right track toward the education that should have been researched, implemented and supported for the last 20 years. What is amazing is that those empowered to provide education to millions of the world's most needed children actually get this. It is about priorities, passions and limited resources. Most of the people who have contributed to date have been comfortable with the technology and wrote documentation for themselves and other like-minded users, and this has worked well to satisfy the needs of the primary audience - those implementing whole school XO adoptions. However, developing training and documentation for other audiences has not been provided for whatever reason. I doubt that this is the first time someone has indicated that they had a problem learning Sugar. Apparently little if anything has been done in the past to address these specific concerns. The interest in the current situation is encouraging. It is never too late to provide additional information for those who are interested enough to point out a need that is un-met. Good start on a dialog to discover what is needed and what can be done / provided to make it easier for other interested audiences to learn Sugar as they understand it. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro aprender Sugar / I cannot learn Sugar why would YOU want to?
The concerns are much more technical that I was imagining. I'm really out there on the fringe. I took the liberty of going through the Sugar manual and leaving out anything that was too technical for a general overview. There is still a lot of useful and interesting information about Sugar, Activities and how these fit into teaching and learning, although there is lots more that could be said along these lines. This should help people who want to know about Sugar but aren't particularly interested in running it (yet) - educators, parents. My apologies to all the contributors of the great information - others appreciate it. http://wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/Sugar_manual ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Experience using Elgg?
Does anyone have experience using Elgg - the open source social networking engine that provides a robust framework on which to build all kinds of social environments? http://elgg.org/about.php How was it used? How well did Elgg meet requirements? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] OERs and collaboration
I'm becoming more convinced that the solution is a robust index / retrieval system. Provide the big picture - what OERs are currently available, how they map to the Replacing Textbooks vision of curriculum for all, what is missing, where there are works in progress and the status. This needs to be really up-to-date and easy to update. And of course, open software. Let the OERs live where ever works for the creators. Make open space available by all means. Suggest outlines, vocabularies, categories. Peer reviews and ratings, librarian / curator function for tags and categories would be helpful, too. My first pass of the tasks for this would be: * communication / status - big picture - what is available, what is needed, work in progress, requests for collaboration * curriculum outlines - identify what is needed * existing OERs - find, categorize, dynamic / real-time map to big picture * identify gaps - so work can be directed to create missing * manage volunteers efforts - guidelines, questions * project management there are lots of disconnected education resources but little overall structure. This is not a criticism of the community, without the community, the resources would not exist. We will also need a repository that can handle a multidimensional collection of documents * on every school subject and teacher training subject, plus many more * at every level of child development * for every country * in every language needed That's why I am suggesting an index because the problem is too complex for a single repository which doesn't scale. There are several useful structuring principles. Mine is the growth of children's mental capacities. The solution must support several useful structuring principles. This is a tall order but I think it will have the best outcomes for educators and learners. And with this group behind it, it can attract the critical mass necessary to be seriously important and interesting. :o) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] OERs and collaboration
YOU are systematic. It is the rest of us who need help. On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com wrote: I think there is merit in having a public repository like the Sugar Labs wiki to encourage educators and others to see what is being done, and build on that in a systematic way. We are not exactly systematic about it, but Tony links to his most relevant blog posts in the wiki. Please see http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt#Tutorials and http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Using_Turtle_Art_Sensors As far as how to make these posts have more impact, we are open to suggestions. Good example - the first encounter with the Turtle Art page is a little overwhelming - Obviously tons of wonderful information with pictures and code... Some us need to know what can it do? and why do I need to know all this stuff? (rather than how does it work?). The Challenges are great! This is where it starts to make some sense for me. http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt#Challenges Provide a way to showcase and contribute learning objects - basically challenge descriptions with categories / tags - subject, degree of difficulty, ... and optional information like learning objectives and additional information for teachers or students - setup, curriculum integration, links to more advanced related challenges. There should be a mechanism for adding reviews to challenge entries, too. The Turtle Art page is sooo organized that it doesn't invite contributions or collaboration. If there was a button that said add your own challenge or add a review of this challenge it would create a safe way to contribute. A form pops up with boxes to fill in, including some options, save and it is added to the page in the proper place without the risk of messing up what is already there. This would also help educators (and students) find challenges to try themselves. Once they locate a couple of challenges that seem appropriate and interesting, then they will be motivated to work through all the terrific material provided. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] OERs and collaboration
How to generate the best collaborative environment to provide educators with effective access and adaption of resources across a broad spectrum of curriculum areas and age-appropriate activities? Oh, yes - it must allow for casual contributions without the need for labor intensive moderation and editing and dispute resolution. Everyone talks about OERs - collaboration, adoption. adaption but there isn't really as much activity as there ought to be given the interest, time and money that have gone into discussion these education revolutionizing ideas. This is something that has been needed for many years and still hasn't materialized. Perhaps the Replacing Textbooks program can address some of the functionality. A wiki-based solution could work. Although people are willing to contribute and collaborate, there is a reluctance to change the work of others without some explicit authority to do so. This has been a frustration with WikiEducator - even with notations that collaboration is invited, there are no contributions. There is a frustration with Wikipedia contributions that are promptly removed by the editor. Perhaps there is some middle ground. The idea of comments on a blog post works out pretty well. The commenter augments the information in the post, without modifying the original text. In the Sugar Labs wiki, there are entries for all the Activities which could serve as the basis for the collaborative framework. How about a forms/template based contribution function that will add sections to a wiki entry? For example, I came up with a sixth grade math activity based on Turtle Art and I would like to share it. It would be nice to add this to an inventory of middle school math activities connected to Turtle Art. Others could then find my activity and others based on a search for middle school, math and/or Activity:Turtle Art. Just thinking... Would something like this overcome potential contributors' resistance and get the ball rolling? ;o) Other ideas? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Some thoughts and questions...
Continuing a conversation... Categories and OERs and Activities. The story so far - Diigo is a good model for collecting links, making notes, adding categories/tags, sending emails of updates to subscribers. But Diigo is proprietary and the free version has many limitations and restrictions to be a solution here. So... Activities pages have a share using Delicious - is it free and open enough to use as part of an interim solution? There are lots of tools and APIs for Delicious. In addition to reviews and categories, having subscriptions is a good way to get the word out. Diigo has this built in. The automatic gathering up of newly identified and/or reviewed entries into an email newsletter that is sent to subscribers is nice, especially if the subscriber maintenance is mostly automated. Another automation of links / reviews / commentary subscription newsletter http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm As I understand it, his software gRSShopper does a lot of the work - other than the monumental task of reviewing post, articles, software and writing 5-10 reviews every single day for years http://grsshopper.downes.ca/description.htm He said he limits his comments to about 100 words - seems to be a reasonable guideline. Using something like this to get people to suggest / review OERs and/or provide high-level overviews of Activity uses would create a network effect - what can it do? what is there to do? ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep