On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 9:57 PM, Caryl Bigenho cbige...@hotmail.com wrote:
Hi Walter,
Sounds like a great trip and a very complete workshop. I have a few
questions...
1) Were the teachers to go back and train other teachers at their schools?
(the Triple T format... Teachers Training Teachers)
Yes.
2) Were the teachers' expenses covered?
I don't know.
3) Did the teachers receive a stipend? Certificate?
I don't know re stipend, but they did get a certificate.
-walter
Caryl
Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 19:23:19 -0400
From: walter.ben...@gmail.com
To: community-n...@lists.sugarlabs.org
CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; sugar-de...@lists.sugarlabs.org
Subject: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2012-06-10
== Sugar Digest ==
1. The typical trip from Lima to Chachapoyas [1], Amazonas involves
flying and bus travel. A common way point is the city of Chiclayo, on
Peru's north coast. We (myself, Melissa Henriquez (OLPC), Reuben Caron
(OLPC), Raul Hugo (Escuelab), and Alexander Moñuz (Escuelab)) had a
several hours before our bus, so we took a walk through a sea of taxi
cabs and a cacophony of car horns. It reminded me of Lima from five or
six years ago: too many cars and drivers not yet acclimated to the
culture of driving. Lima, in contrast, while still overwhelmed by too
many cars and buses, seems tranquil by comparison: the culture of
driving has caught up with the increased availability of the
technology of driving. Yet another example of Papert's observation
that change is never a technology in isolation; it always has a
cultural component. A goal of our week in Chachapoyas was to help
shape the change in the culture of learning in Amazonas as more
technology is made available to teachers and children in the region.
The bus ride was only eight hours: better than the alternative, thirty
hours from direct Lima. Once the poorly dubbed B-movies stopped
playing on a television inconveniently placed inches from my face
stopped playing, I managed to get some sleep, despite the incessant
swaying of the bus as it snaked its way through the Andes. We arrived
at 6 Sunday morning to a sleepy town, built in the traditional style:
a grid with a central plaza. We had decided to use our one free day to
explore Kuélap, an ancient city another 2.5 hours from Chachapoyas, so
we didn't even manage a cup of coffee before heading up some even more
winding roads.
Kuélap [2] was settled at least 1500 years ago. It is an extensive
ruin on top of a 3000-meter peak. The most characteristic artifacts
are the circular foundations of the houses, packed together in a tight
matrix. Diamond-shaped patterns, reminiscent of snake skin were
frequent sights [3].
When we got back to town, we discovered that coincident with our
week-long teacher-training workshop was a week-long festival,
celebrating both the revolution against Spanish rule and some ancient
traditions regarding inviting the coming solstice. It meant parades
and firecrackers at sunrise, and music each evening. The rhythm of
week was established: breakfast at 7; at the workshop by 8; an early
dinner at 7; evening sessions beginning at 8:30; and dancing from 11
to 1 AM. The music and dancing offered an opportunity to get to know
the teachers outside of the workshop. It was also an opportunity to
observe some of the local ways. Most notable to me was the way in
which the crowds organized themselves: tight circles of 10 to 15
people. If you took an aerial photograph of the festival, you'd see
the same circle patterns as we had just seen in Kuelap. Sometimes a
culture expresses itself in unexpected ways.
Monday morning, we were joined by Elver Guillermo (our host), Alex
Santivanez (DIGETE), and Jorge Parra (DIGETE) (Alex and Jorge arrived
from Lima that morning). And 60 teachers from across six different
regions from Amazonas. We began the week with a question: how do you
use XO/Sugar for learning? It was no surprise that most teachers
answer with, No sé. Even the few that had had some minimal
experience with the XO answered with mundane themes, such as doing
research on the Internet. We asked the same question at the end of the
week, and although I haven't seen the survey results, I am certain
that the teachers expressed a wealth of ideas around communication and
expression, math, science, and the arts. We also asked the teachers if
and where they hung out on-line. Almost all of them were Facebook
users, so Raul set up a Facebook group,
[http://www.facebook.com/groups/370964266297045/ Amazonas XO], for
them to use as a forum for sharing experiences.
At the end of a day using Write, Record, Fototoons, Memorize, Mind
Maps (Labyrinth) and Paint, we introduced the teachers to Portfolio,
and they created their first reflections on the week. That evening, I
reviewed the variety of Sugar activities available and introduced the
Sugar concept of the gear: the invitation of create your own variant
of an activity. I also
