Hi Peter, Yes we're meeting tomorrow. Well, later today actually now that I look at the time. 2-4pm The Hub @ Docklands. 17 Waterview Walk, Docklands.
I'm afraid I can't really answer your questions in any way you'll find satisfactory, as I'm not much more than an enthusiastic volunteer. I think the most useful response I can give you is threefold: 1. Check out the Sugar Labs website and the IAEP mailing list [It's An Education Project] There you will find a community of passionate amateurs and professional educators and developers all working hard to extend Sugar, the platform which drives the OLPC, to other machines and even to run from a USB stick. http://www.sugarlabs.org/ http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep 2. As you've suggested, please come along to one of our sugar club meets, to play with the machines, and think about how you can contribute. 3. Specifically - the constructionist approach behind OLPC is based on the work of Seymour Papert, Alan Kay and Marvin Minksy. I've found their writings on the OLPC site to be quite inspiring. See: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Marvin_Minsky http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Learning_Learning http://www.papert.org/works.html http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Constructionist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(learning_theory) Finally, I'm sorry you were unable to find us for the March meeting, but it would seem you were following directions from an old announcement for our December meet, which was at an entirely different venue. I apologise for the confusion. Directions for our meet today - and subsequent meets on the 3rd Saturday of the month (except in November) from 2-4pm can be found here: http://luv.asn.au/2009/04/workshop As we share our location with linux user victoria's beginners workshop . regards Donna On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 19:55 +1000, Peter Raven wrote: > Hi Donna, > > I missed the March OLPC meeting at the hub, but have emailed Jiri > Sabik since about my specific interest, which is the learning process > which can be used by children with the XO. He mentioned that it was > probably more in your area of interest than his own. It would be > useful to learn what the thinking is on the constructivist software > which can be used on the XO. Following the information on the main > OLPC site, the educational aspects always appear secondary, despite > the protestation that its an educational project and not a computer > project. My particular interest is in the use on the Montessori > approach as a means of structuring the child's learning process, using > the XO and its 'activities' I work in a voluntary capacity in a > Montessori school and am trying to initiate a project which brings > Montessori and the XO together, with particular focus on Indigenous > children. > > If I succeed in finding the location of the next meeting and you are > also there perhaps I can learn something of the educational aspects > from you. I haven't seen any details of a further meeting in Melbourne. > > Best wishes > > Peter Raven -- Donna Benjamin - Executive Director Creative Contingencies - http://cc.com.au ph +61 3 9326 9985 - mob +61 418 310 414 open source - facilitation - web services _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
