Re: [IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 110, Issue 54

2017-05-30 Thread Valerie Taylor
B

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[IAEP] Global Learning Xprize

2017-02-23 Thread Valerie Taylor
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"?
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Re: [IAEP] IAEP Digest, Vol 60, Issue 27

2013-03-26 Thread Valerie Taylor
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
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[IAEP] Sugar as a Mac Ap?

2012-06-13 Thread Valerie Taylor
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
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Re: [IAEP] Sugar as a Mac Ap?

2012-06-13 Thread Valerie Taylor
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
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Re: [IAEP] Raspberry Pi - $25 computer coming soon....

2011-08-30 Thread Valerie Taylor
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

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[IAEP] Raspberry Pi - $25 computer coming soon....

2011-08-29 Thread Valerie Taylor
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.
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[IAEP] Fwd: Music education and textbooks

2011-07-08 Thread Valerie Taylor
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
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[IAEP] Select Wikipedia articles

2011-07-08 Thread Valerie Taylor
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?
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Re: [IAEP] Select Wikipedia articles

2011-07-08 Thread Valerie Taylor
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?
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 --
 editor, The Digital Reader
 editor, The Unbound Book
 ---
 moderator
 MobileRead Forums
 www.mobileread.com


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Re: [IAEP] Select Wikipedia articles

2011-07-08 Thread Valerie Taylor
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?
 ___
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 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep


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[IAEP] Music education and textbooks

2011-07-07 Thread Valerie Taylor
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
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Re: [IAEP] Music education and textbooks

2011-07-07 Thread Valerie Taylor
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

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Re: [IAEP] Sugar minimum set

2011-07-01 Thread Valerie Taylor
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

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[IAEP] Sugar minimum set

2011-06-29 Thread Valerie Taylor
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
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Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs: account confirmation

2011-06-29 Thread Valerie Taylor
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

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Re: [IAEP] Sugar Labs: account confirmation

2011-06-29 Thread Valerie Taylor
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

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Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro

2011-06-16 Thread Valerie Taylor
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.
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Re: [IAEP] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro aprender Sugar / I cannot learn Sugar why would YOU want to?

2011-06-16 Thread Valerie Taylor
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.
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Re: [IAEP] [support-gang] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro

2011-06-15 Thread Valerie Taylor
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.
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Re: [IAEP] FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro aprender Sugar / I cannot learn Sugar why would YOU want to?

2011-06-15 Thread Valerie Taylor
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
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[IAEP] Experience using Elgg?

2011-05-15 Thread Valerie Taylor
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?
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Re: [IAEP] OERs and collaboration

2011-05-14 Thread Valerie Taylor
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)
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Re: [IAEP] OERs and collaboration

2011-05-13 Thread Valerie Taylor
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.
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[IAEP] OERs and collaboration

2011-05-12 Thread Valerie Taylor
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?
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[IAEP] Some thoughts and questions...

2011-05-09 Thread Valerie Taylor
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?
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