Sugar Teams Update Report Name of team: Education Team
Mission statement: The stated mission of the education team is to explain why Sugar is an excellent platform for learning, and to provide guidance and feedback to those who are working on how Sugar enhances learning. The Sugar Education team has largely been subsumed by the OLPC education team led by Claudia Urrea. Melissa Henriquez, Pedro Cuellar, Sandra Barragán, Sdenka Zobeida Salas, Pacita Pena, and Mariana Cortes are among the regular participants. They participate in a weekly discussion with educators using Sugar (irc.oftc.net #olpc-aprendizaje). The discussions are archived here [1]. Within that context, the goals are broader than the original mission statement: build capacity, make sure programs are design and implemented well, create a self sustain community of educators among OLPC programs world wide, promote research and evaluation within OLPC programs and across programs, etc. There is also a discussion forum [2] with participation from a broad cross-section of our community of teachers, students, educators, and engineers. Ed Cherlin (Mokurai) has launched a "Replacing textbooks" program for creating digital e-learning materials under Creative Commons licenses. The program will also develop new curriculum materials integrating Sugar and other software into every subject at every level. Finally, OLPC Australia has created a portal for working directly with teachers; the focus is mostly in regard to pragmatic issues [4]. Short Term Goals(three–six months): 1. Finish writing up the report and recommendations from the Innovation in Evaluation meeting held in April, 2011 [5] 2. Finish writing an essay on Fundamental Ideas on Learning Medium Term Goals(6 months–one year): 1. Design a portal for content sharing among teachers and Sugar users, i.e., a space for people to share objects, artifacts, and reflections 2. Design a space for building connections between local curricula guidelines and Sugar activities Long Term Goals(one year–three years): 1. Digital textbooks incorporating Sugar activities What does the team see as its constraints from being more successful in its Mission? Lack of a forum for teachers: irc and the wiki are not places where teachers naturally congregate. What are you doing to try to resolve the constraint? What can Sugar Labs 'central' or the community do to help? Help us find the place(s) where teachers would be willing to engage. -walter [1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Chat_Espanol_2011 [2] http://en.forum.laptop.org/viewforum.php?f=13 [3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks [4] https://www.yammer.com/australianxoteachers [5] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Innovation_in_Evaluation -- 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