Re: [IAEP] OERs and collaboration

2011-05-15 Thread mokurai
On Sat, May 14, 2011 12:08 pm, Valerie Taylor wrote:
 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.

I took a quick look in Synaptic to see what sorts of package Ubuntu offers
for these purposes.

Search repository

Hyper Estraier is a full-text search system.

Search document database

couchdb RESTful document oriented database, system DB
mongodb An object/document-oriented database
Monotone A distributed version (revision) control system
SiSU documents - structuring, publishing in multiple formats and search

No doubt there are others.

 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



-- 
Edward Mokurai
(#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585;
#1580;) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/

___
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

2011-05-15 Thread mokurai
On Fri, May 13, 2011 3:31 am, Teemu Leinonen wrote:
 On 12.5.2011, at 18.09, Valerie Taylor wrote:
 A wiki-based solution could work.

 We are hosting an experimental wiki-like solution for primary and
 secondary school teachers for finding, authoring and sharing OERs. The
 are close to 20 000 educators from 65 countries working in 48
 languages (the UI is available in 14 languages). The site is here:

 http://lemill.net/

Added to

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Open_Education_Resources#Sources

 In LeMill teachers can create:

 I Content
 (1) educational web pages with embedded media,
 (2) exercise with
   a) multiple choice questions,
   b) fill-in-the-blanks exercise,
   c) open-ended questions or upload questions from Hot Potatoes,
 (3) Lesson plans
 (4) Media pieces (upload images and sound clips)
 (5) Reference (links to external websites

 II Methods
 - Descriptions of teaching and learning methods (from brainstorming to
 seminar)

 III Tools
 - Descriptions of teaching and learning tools (from post-it notes to
 mindmap software)

 Despite of the relatively large number of users and OERs only the
 Georgian and the Estonian communities are truly active and lively. The
 tag cloud of languages spoken by the community members is interesting:

 http://lemill.net/community/cloud?base=languagetype=MemberFolder

 We also have some hypothesis why the Georgians and Estonians are so
 active.

 It would be great to have more Sugar-related content on LeMill.

I am the Replacing Textbooks Project Manager for Sugar Labs. We should
discuss how we can work together.

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks

 Best regards,

   - Teemu

 ---
 Teemu Leinonen
 http://www.uiah.fi/~tleinone/
 +358 50 351 6796
 Media Lab
 http://mlab.uiah.fi
 Aalto University
 School of Art and Design
 ---
 ___
 IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
 IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep



-- 
Edward Mokurai
(#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585;
#1580;) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/

___
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

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)
___
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

2011-05-13 Thread Teemu Leinonen

On 12.5.2011, at 18.09, Valerie Taylor wrote:

A wiki-based solution could work.


We are hosting an experimental wiki-like solution for primary and  
secondary school teachers for finding, authoring and sharing OERs. The  
are close to 20 000 educators from 65 countries working in 48  
languages (the UI is available in 14 languages). The site is here:


http://lemill.net/

In LeMill teachers can create:

I Content
(1) educational web pages with embedded media,
(2) exercise with
a) multiple choice questions,
b) fill-in-the-blanks exercise,
c) open-ended questions or upload questions from Hot Potatoes,
(3) Lesson plans
(4) Media pieces (upload images and sound clips)
(5) Reference (links to external websites

II Methods
- Descriptions of teaching and learning methods (from brainstorming to  
seminar)


III Tools
- Descriptions of teaching and learning tools (from post-it notes to  
mindmap software)


Despite of the relatively large number of users and OERs only the  
Georgian and the Estonian communities are truly active and lively. The  
tag cloud of languages spoken by the community members is interesting:


http://lemill.net/community/cloud?base=languagetype=MemberFolder

We also have some hypothesis why the Georgians and Estonians are so  
active.


It would be great to have more Sugar-related content on LeMill.

Best regards,

- Teemu

---
Teemu Leinonen
http://www.uiah.fi/~tleinone/
+358 50 351 6796
Media Lab
http://mlab.uiah.fi
Aalto University
School of Art and Design
---
___
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

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.
___
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

2011-05-13 Thread forster
Valerie

Thanks for the helpful comments.

A problem of educational resources developed by an open source community is 
that people have 'scratched their own itch' and 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. 

I started blogging rather than adding to the wiki for what I suppose are the 
usual reasons: not wanting to mess with another's document, being unsure about 
my work's quality and relevance and wanting to own my own work. Later I changed 
my mind but kept blogging to be consistent.

Anything which makes the invitation to edit a wiki more explicit is good. Any 
tools that make it easier are good. But many will still want to manage their 
own resources. I think the idea of Delicious style tagging is good, but I am 
not sure how you would implement it.

The following examples of sites have good resources in the 'turtle graphics' 
space occupied by TurtleArt, Scratch and Etoys. A search facility that could 
find all of them (and more) would help teachers. Its unrealistic to expect that 
all the resources would be on the wiki, regardless of how easy the editing was.

http://sites.google.com/site/solymar1fisica/fisica-con-xo-investigacion-
http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20189623/The-XO-Laptop-in-the-Classroom
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Aplicacion_Problema_de_Pizzas
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/0/0e/Gravity.odt 
neoparaiso.com
http://ictmindtools.net/scratch/
http://www.waveplace.org/resources/tutorials/


The issues (also addressed in Valerie's 
http://wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/Learning_objects,_personal_learning_environments,_study_guides)
 which make bringing all the resources in some way under one umbrella difficult 
include:

Difficulty and inconsistency in finding and navigating to resources
Different formats of the resources, wiki, blog, image, pdf, doc
Different depth in the resources, ranging from as little as a single image to a 
book
Patchy coverage of the subjects
Different languages, primarily Spanish and English
Difficulty in assigning a resource to a subject or year level
What are the limits of what is relevant?
Authors may be unaware of complimentary resources and not incorporate or cross 
reference
Authors' reluctance to add their own work to a wiki (or tagging) in case its 
not good enough or relevant enough
Abandoned partly completed projects

That's a list of problems, unfortunately I don't have solutions.

Thanks for the comments on http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt

Yes its a big document. Walter has started the steps to breaking this up into 
smaller documents, its already 9 sub documents stitched together (click view 
source to see the structure) Will breaking it up make it easier to comprehend 
and more inviting to edit? Any comments on the structure welcome or just edit 
it yourself.

Glad you like the 'Challenges' section. Would you rather see it closer to the 
top? Does it need a run through of what TurtleArt can do first? In how much 
detail?

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.

Can you flesh this idea out a bit? Or even better do it? I am a bit vague on 
degree of difficulty  curriculum integration for the existing samples, this 
needs feedback from teachers in the field. Getting feedback is important. 

Would you let the tags just grow organically or should we work out some 
hierarchy of tagging? Is it worth making a start with something like Delicious? 
I suspect that reprogramming the wiki is too much to ask for at this stage.

You said you had made a TurtleArt sample. Please add it to the wiki. Feel free 
to restructure the existing pages so that its addition makes sense in the 
larger structure.

Thanks again for the feedback

Tony









 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 

Re: [IAEP] OERs and collaboration

2011-05-13 Thread mokurai
On Fri, May 13, 2011 7:07 am, Valerie Taylor wrote:
 YOU are systematic. It is the rest of us who need help.

It isn't just that. We are talking about producing several hundred
subject-matter OERs for all subjects at all levels, plus local content in
history, literature, health, agriculture and so on, in perhaps a hundred
languages, in both student and teacher editions, where the teacher's
edition will not be distinguished by having the right answers to the
problems, but by having lesson plans for each topic in a variety of
styles, as Muska Mosston put it, From Command to Discovery. And then
permitting remixing and matching to state, province, national, or
subject-matter-expert curricula. Among other things.

 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 will need a proper Free Software document repository built on a
sufficiently powerful database engine to support all of the requirements
mentioned above.

 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

Very nice. I have some to add.

 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...

There are many OLPC and Sugar Labs Wiki pages with lots of good
information and almost no guidance on how to use it. I used to do the kind
of documentation we need for a living, but there is only one of me. We
need a team.

 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

Which one of these meets my needs with the least fuss?

 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.

For the experienced Wikiist, the Edit button is sufficient invitation, but
it takes people a while to believe it.

 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.

We need to make some pages with just challenges and hints. I have been
working on the idea, off and on, at

http://booki.flossmanuals.net/discovering-discovery/edit/

and more recently

http://booki.treehouse.su/discovering-discovery/

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



-- 
Edward Mokurai
(#40664;#38647;/#2343;#2352;#2381;#2350;#2350;#2375;#2328;#2358;#2348;#2381;#2342;#2327;#2352;#2381;#2332;/#1583;#1726;#1585;#1605;#1605;#1740;#1711;#1726;#1588;#1576;#1583;#1711;#1585;
#1580;) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/

___
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

2011-05-13 Thread mokurai
On Fri, May 13, 2011 9:33 pm, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote:
 Valerie

 Thanks for the helpful comments.

 A problem of educational resources developed by an open source community
 is that people have 'scratched their own itch' and 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.

The new Sugar Labs Replacing Textbooks project means to address that
problem, allowing a hundred flowers to bloom, or a hundred itches to be
scratched, and also recruiting professional subject matter experts to
create OERs that conform to various curriculum standards, with peer
review. You can see our beginnings on the test server that dogi set up for
us.

http://booki.treehouse.su/

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

with local materials in topics such as history, geography, civics, health,
agriculture and more. Even in PE we have to allow for countries where the
number one game is soccer, baseball, or cricket. I have proposed teaching
statistics using sports records, so even math materials have to have local
content.

 I started blogging rather than adding to the wiki for what I suppose are
 the usual reasons: not wanting to mess with another's document, being
 unsure about my work's quality and relevance and wanting to own my own
 work. Later I changed my mind but kept blogging to be consistent.

We can and intend to provide space on the booki server for single-author
materials and group efforts. I have many notions about how to use Turtle
Blocks as the introductory math language, with the aim of making it as
natural as learning talk. This was Seymour Papert's goal for Logo, as
described in Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. So I
would like to work with you.

 Anything which makes the invitation to edit a wiki more explicit is good.
 Any tools that make it easier are good. But many will still want to manage
 their own resources. I think the idea of Delicious style tagging is good,
 but I am not sure how you would implement it.

 The following examples of sites have good resources in the 'turtle
 graphics' space occupied by TurtleArt, Scratch and Etoys. A search
 facility that could find all of them (and more) would help teachers. Its
 unrealistic to expect that all the resources would be on the wiki,
 regardless of how easy the editing was.

Reference librarians have plenty of good ideas on managing bibliographies.
What is harder is to make a collection that does not look academic, that
invites children in.

 http://sites.google.com/site/solymar1fisica/fisica-con-xo-investigacion-
 http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/butia/
 http://www.scribd.com/doc/20189623/The-XO-Laptop-in-the-Classroom
 http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Aplicacion_Problema_de_Pizzas
 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/0/0e/Gravity.odt
 neoparaiso.com
 http://ictmindtools.net/scratch/
 http://www.waveplace.org/resources/tutorials/


 The issues (also addressed in Valerie's
 http://wikieducator.org/User:Vtaylor/Learning_objects,_personal_learning_environments,_study_guides)
 which make bringing all the resources in some way under one umbrella
 difficult include:

 Difficulty and inconsistency in finding and navigating to resources
 Different formats of the resources, wiki, blog, image, pdf, doc
 Different depth in the resources, ranging from as little as a single image
 to a book
 Patchy coverage of the subjects
 Different languages, primarily Spanish and English
 Difficulty in assigning a resource to a subject or year level
 What are the limits of what is relevant?
 Authors may be unaware of complimentary resources and not incorporate or
 cross reference
 Authors' reluctance to add their own work to a wiki (or tagging) in case
 its not good enough or relevant enough
 Abandoned partly completed projects

 That's a list of problems, unfortunately I don't have solutions.

Good start. Yes, none of us has the answer. We'll invite the children and
the teachers to help us find some.

 Thanks for the comments on
 http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt

 Yes its a big document. Walter has started the steps to breaking this up
 into smaller documents, its already 9 sub documents stitched together
 (click view source to see the structure) Will breaking it up make it
 easier to comprehend and more inviting to edit? Any comments on the
 structure welcome or just edit it yourself.

 Glad you like the 'Challenges' section. Would you rather see it closer to
 the top? Does it need a run through of what TurtleArt can do first? In how
 much detail?

That's what I particularly want to work on.

 Provide a way to showcase and contribute learning objects - basically
 challenge descriptions with categories / tags - 

[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?
___
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

2011-05-12 Thread Walter Bender
On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com wrote:
 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.

I would love to see what you have been doing. I assume you have seen
Tony Forster's blog and the pages we have made in the wiki regarding
different TA projects around STEM?

regards.

-walter


 Just thinking... Would something like this overcome potential
 contributors' resistance and get the ball rolling? ;o) Other ideas?
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Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [IAEP] OERs and collaboration

2011-05-12 Thread Walter Bender
On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com wrote:
 Actually, it was Tony's blog that got me thinking about how to make
 the wiki entries more additive with templates/forms (rather than
 wiki-style edit everything). His blog entry would be great as a
 section or page or link associated with Activity:Turtle Art. More
 connectivity and networking to facilitate retrieval, adoption,
 adaption, contribution and collaboration.

 Annotated bookmarks Diigo, Delicious address some of the problems
 associated with making existing OERs retrievable but it is hard to
 limit vocabulary or require all categories types be provided.

 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.

thanks.

-walter
 It wouldn't diminish the contribution that Tony is making via his own
 blog, but it would focus activities of retrieval and casual
 contribution into a really useful framework with examples, guided
 contributions, peer review, adaptive uses, technical support...


 On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Walter Bender walter.ben...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:09 AM, Valerie Taylor vtay...@gmail.com wrote:
 How to generate the best collaborative environment to provide
 educators with effective access and adaption of resources ...




-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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