Re: [sugar] Narrative
On Tue, 2008-10-07 at 17:02 +0200, Bastien wrote: Eben Eliason [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: BULLETIN BOARD (activity) I agree such a bulletin board would be very useful - not only to build lesson plans, but also for storing what has been done. When discussing with people from « La main à la pâte » (Hands on pedagogy for teaching science), they told us that the most important tool for the teacher was the classbook. The classbook is a place where they archive all the experiments, the reactions of the children and the lessons learned. I think moodle could fill this role very easily For now they use a physical classbook (which has its own advantages) but having such a tool for the XO would be really nice. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative
sorry for the late replies On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 13:26 -0400, Eben Eliason wrote: Actually, while I may be arguing a point that you might not have been explicitly making, I think there are a few key ways in which we *can* embed a better narrative into Sugar, and I think they will be very powerful. JOURNAL This first of these is the Journal. As Walter has mentioned a few times, the Journal is meant to provide at once a container for all of one's things, as well as a space for reflection upon those things and the actions taken upon them. Right now, all we have is a container. The rest hasn't yet been built. Fantastic vision for the journal! I look forward to seeing them realized, and wish I had time to help directly BULLETIN BOARD (activity) It seems likely that a number of these lesson plans could be created, published, and shared. There are details to hammer out, for sure, but I see a lot of potential in a space which encourages this type of sharing, communication, and narrative. - Eben I like your vision for the Bulletin Board. You could create a new activity for it from scratch, but I would really love to see you work together w/ Martin Langhoff to use moodle for this purpose. The great benefit of using moodle is that lesson plans built w/ it are portable to anyone w/ Internet access. For example, kids and teachers who have access to computers but not XO's could create moodle courses easily portable to both populations. Many of the teachers in Nepal that we are lobbying to create lesson plans for Nepali art, music, and history teach at private schools that probably won't get XO's in the immediate future but do have computer labs in their own schools. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to get them to set up their own moodle servers. It will be easier to convince those teachers to create lesson plans and other resources if they can use them at their own schools. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative
sorry for the late replies On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 13:26 -0400, Eben Eliason wrote: Actually, while I may be arguing a point that you might not have been explicitly making, I think there are a few key ways in which we *can* embed a better narrative into Sugar, and I think they will be very powerful. JOURNAL This first of these is the Journal. As Walter has mentioned a few times, the Journal is meant to provide at once a container for all of one's things, as well as a space for reflection upon those things and the actions taken upon them. Right now, all we have is a container. The rest hasn't yet been built. Fantastic vision for the journal! I look forward to seeing them realized, and wish I had time to help directly BULLETIN BOARD (activity) It seems likely that a number of these lesson plans could be created, published, and shared. There are details to hammer out, for sure, but I see a lot of potential in a space which encourages this type of sharing, communication, and narrative. - Eben I like your vision for the Bulletin Board. You could create a new activity for it from scratch, but I would really love to see you work together w/ Martin Langhoff to use moodle for this purpose. The great benefit of using moodle is that lesson plans built w/ it are portable to anyone w/ Internet access. For example, kids and teachers who have access to computers but not XO's could create moodle courses easily portable to both populations. Many of the teachers in Nepal that we are lobbying to create lesson plans for Nepali art, music, and history teach at private schools that probably won't get XO's in the immediate future but do have computer labs in their own schools. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to get them to set up their own moodle servers. It will be easier to convince those teachers to create lesson plans and other resources if they can use them at their own schools. -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org -- Bryan W. Berry Technology Director OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative.
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Michael Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sugar offers an excellent mode for discovery but no excellent way to manipulate narratives. Both discovery and narrative are essential for learning. [1] I am catching up with this. What Bryan writes is correct, but I am confident we are in the right direction - Sugar supports the user interaction - the narrative belongs elsewhere. Narrative is a basic component of much educational material which Sugar ought to 'natively' recognize, respond to, and manipulate. No, Sugar is a bit lower layer than that. Sugar supports sw that can drive the narrative, and that is the way it should be. You would not want a webbrowser that dictates a path through a website - some websites have navigation optimised for 'random access' and others for sequential access. cheers, [2]: Bryan is currently encoding narratives in HTML and is attempting to use Offline Moodle to make this cheaper to support. And that is a reasonable path. Moodle has _some_ support for narratives (and then again, sanely refuses to put too much emphasis in them). Reading the concept of 'narrative' liberally, one possible tack would be to suggest that Sugar could support a degree of hyperlinking inside activities as a means of defining narratives flexibly -- that's the strategy the web has shown to be the winner. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Offline moodle needs a lot of work to get working properly and really doesn't receive the attention it deserves. Not yet :-) but attention to Offline Moodle will increase... Offline moodle currently does not work very at all I would almost say that it doesn't exist :-) but I am working at this time to increase awareness. You will notice that all the moodle conferences this year have an offline moodle talk that shows a few bits and pieces already in existence (mostly - proof-of-concept stuff), and then talks about the plans. Having good planning conversations with MartinD and the rest of the core team. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 4:29 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 2008-10-05 at 02:25 -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bryan Berry wrote: | There is something I would like to add. Folks from rich countries (like | myself) underestimate the importance of narratives b/c we are surrounded | by libraries, online tutorials in our native language, extensive | versions of wikipedia in our language, etc. There's a real drought of | narratives for poor countries. I don't know what you mean by narrative. If I were to pick a word to describe libraries, online tutorials, wikipedia, and other similar resources, I would choose information. I go to wikipedia to learn facts, not stories. I basically mean structured information put into a structure by a human(s) intended to best build up concepts. I agree that providing information is good and important for education. I don't see how OLPC or Sugar lacks tools to provide information. Including a digital textbook into a Sugar build for XO is extremely easy. ~ We simply don't have the textbooks. The problem, in this case, seems much more like a lack of content and translators. That effort is important and worthwhile, but seems quite independent of Sugar. I agree on this. I don't see how narratives fit into Sugar. Michael Stone has some interesting ideas on this though. I think that Sugar should focus on collaboration and discovery and tools like Moodle can provide the narrative. Actually, while I may be arguing a point that you might not have been explicitly making, I think there are a few key ways in which we *can* embed a better narrative into Sugar, and I think they will be very powerful. JOURNAL This first of these is the Journal. As Walter has mentioned a few times, the Journal is meant to provide at once a container for all of one's things, as well as a space for reflection upon those things and the actions taken upon them. Right now, all we have is a container. The rest hasn't yet been built. The vision for the Journal includes a view of a child's things which includes context such as when and with whom a given thing was created, who gave it to me, where I downloaded it from, who I gave it to, etc. It should also provide information about events which didn't necessarily produce a tangible thing (file), such as joining a group, making a friend, changing the XO colors, etc. This view will provide all of this context, as well as inline previews of files, in essence creating a true Journal of the actions a child has taken and the objects they've made or interacted with over time. I think this will provide a rich narrative space which is perfect also for reflection. Once we have a backup system in place, as well as a system for cleaning out older and less relevant entries, it will become more of a portfolio than a list of every file ever made, holding on to the items which have been starred, used the most, or otherwise considered important in the history of the child's interaction with the XO, further emphasizing the Journal as a place for reflection. Finally, if we can ever get a reasonable tagging system off the ground, it will be possible to categorize the giant stream that represents the entire Journal into streams for various projects and purposes. By filtering the contents to a specific tag -- say, My final science project, it will be possible to narrow in on a series of actions, or a group of objects, or both, which exist within a particular narrative stream. BULLETIN BOARD (activity) Myriad concepts for the elusive bulletin board have been tossed around since before Sugar existed. These days, we have a revised view which we think, finally, fits the primary need. As an activity, the bulletin board fits nicely within the activity paradigm already setup, allowing kids to create as many of them as they choose, allowing them to retain them in their Journals, and allowing them to share them with their friends, with groups, or with everyone as a public bulletin board. The bulletin board, as envisioned, provides a space for sharing things. A child could post photos she took, or a song she composed, or a story she wrote. Others could then look at, or download, these shared objects. Others, likewise, could also post to the bulletin board, to create a multidirectional sharing space. There are some technical details to work out of course; it's not exactly clear how these posted objects (which are clearly just references to objects hosted by the poster, or perhaps by a server, or perhaps by other who have since downloaded them) get resolved such that I might download one on request. I'm sure we can do something intelligent. Another potential feature for the bulletin board comes in two flavors: notes, and comments. Bulletin boards are often a space for posting messages, as well as objects. Support for this could be built-in, so that it's not necessary to first
Re: [sugar] Narrative
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bryan Berry wrote: | There is something I would like to add. Folks from rich countries (like | myself) underestimate the importance of narratives b/c we are surrounded | by libraries, online tutorials in our native language, extensive | versions of wikipedia in our language, etc. There's a real drought of | narratives for poor countries. I don't know what you mean by narrative. If I were to pick a word to describe libraries, online tutorials, wikipedia, and other similar resources, I would choose information. I go to wikipedia to learn facts, not stories. I agree that providing information is good and important for education. I don't see how OLPC or Sugar lacks tools to provide information. Including a digital textbook into a Sugar build for XO is extremely easy. ~ We simply don't have the textbooks. The problem, in this case, seems much more like a lack of content and translators. That effort is important and worthwhile, but seems quite independent of Sugar. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkjoXcEACgkQUJT6e6HFtqR3awCgg4lNrxa3nTDLVf1NIATAgwdF ymEAn1DJ7qaNwIHgirT32K00Gj2ufEKI =XKff -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative
On Sun, 2008-10-05 at 02:25 -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bryan Berry wrote: | There is something I would like to add. Folks from rich countries (like | myself) underestimate the importance of narratives b/c we are surrounded | by libraries, online tutorials in our native language, extensive | versions of wikipedia in our language, etc. There's a real drought of | narratives for poor countries. I don't know what you mean by narrative. If I were to pick a word to describe libraries, online tutorials, wikipedia, and other similar resources, I would choose information. I go to wikipedia to learn facts, not stories. I basically mean structured information put into a structure by a human(s) intended to best build up concepts. I agree that providing information is good and important for education. I don't see how OLPC or Sugar lacks tools to provide information. Including a digital textbook into a Sugar build for XO is extremely easy. ~ We simply don't have the textbooks. The problem, in this case, seems much more like a lack of content and translators. That effort is important and worthwhile, but seems quite independent of Sugar. I agree on this. I don't see how narratives fit into Sugar. Michael Stone has some interesting ideas on this though. I think that Sugar should focus on collaboration and discovery and tools like Moodle can provide the narrative. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkjoXcEACgkQUJT6e6HFtqR3awCgg4lNrxa3nTDLVf1NIATAgwdF ymEAn1DJ7qaNwIHgirT32K00Gj2ufEKI =XKff -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 1:29 AM, Bryan Berry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 2008-10-05 at 02:25 -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bryan Berry wrote: | There is something I would like to add. Folks from rich countries (like | myself) underestimate the importance of narratives b/c we are surrounded | by libraries, online tutorials in our native language, extensive | versions of wikipedia in our language, etc. There's a real drought of | narratives for poor countries. I don't know what you mean by narrative. If I were to pick a word to describe libraries, online tutorials, wikipedia, and other similar resources, I would choose information. I go to wikipedia to learn facts, not stories. I basically mean structured information put into a structure by a human(s) intended to best build up concepts. So, are you talking about a process (or perhaps a template) which allows you to structure information segmented into chapters, topics, etc? Maybe generate Table of Contents, index and so on? -- Sameer I agree that providing information is good and important for education. I don't see how OLPC or Sugar lacks tools to provide information. Including a digital textbook into a Sugar build for XO is extremely easy. ~ We simply don't have the textbooks. The problem, in this case, seems much more like a lack of content and translators. That effort is important and worthwhile, but seems quite independent of Sugar. I agree on this. I don't see how narratives fit into Sugar. Michael Stone has some interesting ideas on this though. I think that Sugar should focus on collaboration and discovery and tools like Moodle can provide the narrative. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkjoXcEACgkQUJT6e6HFtqR3awCgg4lNrxa3nTDLVf1NIATAgwdF ymEAn1DJ7qaNwIHgirT32K00Gj2ufEKI =XKff -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Narrative
Each of us seems to have interpreted Michael's note differently, so perhaps some more clarity of definitions is in order. In any case, my focus was on the assertion that there are no excellent way to manipulate narratives within Sugar. Excellence is the standard we should be striving for and I do agree we have a ways to go in terms of developing tools for manipulating narratives within Sugar. But it seems a funny dichotomy: manipulating narratives vs. modes for discovery. When I think about Sugar, I think about its providing a scaffolding for discovering, expressing, critiquing, and reflecting. Manipulating narrative seems to cut across all of these area (as does collaboration). We have a browser--the discovery platform du jour--but also an ebook reader and media player, and various tools for collecting and inspecting data (e.g, Measure and Distance). In terms of expression, we have a wide variety of tools, including word processing, rich media, programming, etc. Tools for critique and reflection seems the least developed thus far: we have chat and we have sharing and simple debugging tools, and we have the Journal, but we don't yet support (natively) much in the way of organizing data to make an analysis or argument. Is this the role Bryan expects Moodle to play? If so, I don't really see how. There are beginnings of tools such as spreadsheets, mindmaps, etc. being Sugarized. What else should we add to this list? There is also a powerful presentation toolkit built into Etoys--is it the lack of PowerPoint that Bryan is missing?--but it is not very easy to find. Perhaps something more wiki-like or HTML-based would be better. Having it available off-line is probably as important as accessing an on-line system, such as is already available in Moodle and in general on any GNU/Linux (or even Windows) server. In terms of organizing school itself, Moodle and its like certainly have an important role to play. Sugar is not intended to be all things, but part of a learning ecosystem. There is certainly a paucity of lesson plans developed around Sugar: how does one best leverage this collection of tools for learning. And undoubtedly, a dearth of content readily packaged and categorized. But I don't see these as fundamental design flaws in Sugar as much as a place where more effort needs to be invested. Sugar is reaching a point of maturity where such investments make sense. In any case, I'd love to hear Michael's interesting ideas. -walter ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Narrative.
Bryan Berry wholly captured my attention tonight when he said (in summary): Sugar offers an excellent mode for discovery but no excellent way to manipulate narratives. Both discovery and narrative are essential for learning. [1] This statement seems to me both indisputable and damning; if true, it strikes to the core of the claim that Sugar is appropriate for learning. Even though Bryan has already found some partial solutions to this problem [2], we should take time to debate the more primitive thesis that: Narrative is a basic component of much educational material which Sugar ought to 'natively' recognize, respond to, and manipulate. so that we may decide whether this issue should receive a greater share of our limited design and implementation resources. Regards, Michael [1]: Sugar presently records actions which may occasionally be decomposed into narrative or situated within an external narrative; however, Sugar is presently blind to these relationships. [2]: Bryan is currently encoding narratives in HTML and is attempting to use Offline Moodle to make this cheaper to support. I decided to write this email because I believe that it might well be worth our time to either give him a hand with his effort or to bake support for similar use cases directly in to Sugar. ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
