I thought that I should share some reflections on SugarCamp Paris. I am pretty sure that I have read that reflection is an important part of learning.
I have been thinking about the Sugar Labs meeting format for the last couple of months. I hesitated to post the theory behind the process until after we had experienced it. If I am going to enforce 'show me the code', I should probably follow it myself. Several times discussions about pedagogy have come up on iaep:) One of the common themes is instructional-ism vs constructional-ism. It struck me as rather odd that in the mail lists and at the November and January meetings we preached constructional-isms while we practiced instructional-isms. One person talking from the front of a room about predefined topics seems pretty instructional. This meeting I wanted to try a guided constructionist approach. We had one day, Sunday, to test the theory. Saturday was OLPCFrance's day We started Sunday by brain-storming about issues and challenges with Sugar and Sugar Labs which could benefit from further exploration. >From there, we broke into teams of 5 or 6 people to collaboratively explore subsets of those issues for about an hour. Following the team sessions we meet again as group to reflect on what we had learned. A member of each team gave a short summary of what that team learned in the team. Finally a break for lunch. We repeated the process in the afternoon. This time drilling more deeply into the issues which we identified in the morning. The original teams from the morning sessions each explored and identified three topics worthy of further discussion. That resulted in 9 topics. We met again as a large group and collaboratively identified the top seven topics we would like to work on throughout the afternoon. For the afternoon team session, we then split into groups of three to four people for the next two hours to produce action items related to the topics identified in the morning. Next, we came together as a large group and reflected on the afternoon as member of each team share their results from the afternoon session. As a final session we each reflected on SugarCamp by sharing three good and three bad things about the weekend. The goals of this SugarCamp methodology are three fold: 1. SugarCamp is a place where participants curious about Sugar come to learn more about the project. By iterating through the topic narrowing process they are immediately immersed in the consensus base decision making process. 2. If Construction-ism is the best method for young learners, it is good enough for us. My prediction is that if we continue this methodology we will learn that there is value in having a few prepared talk. So maybe instructional-ism has a place in learning. 3. It is perfectly scalable. Anyone familiar with the methodology can hold their own regional SugarCamp. You don't need domain experts to come and speak. You can invite a group of interested people to come and learn about the local challenges facing Sugar in your region. Areas to Improve: Improve communication between SugarCamp attendees and the larger Sugar Community. I take entire responsibility for the poor external communication. I didn't think that as a groups we were capable learning an entirely new meeting methodology while attempting to engage the virtual community. (Low floor, High ceiling) Increase the length of SugarCamp. It would be valuable to have one or two prepared talks to start day one. They would provide a chance to learn something entirely new. It would be valuable to iterate through the process a few more times. Either by drilling deeper into a topic or starting fresh with new broad topics. Drilling deeper would be especially useful for new participant as they walk through the entire contribution process. Teachers might create sample lesson plans. Marketers might write the upcoming press release. Developers might hack a bit and submit a patch. Create measures to insure that the knowledge learned is retained and available for distribution. More breaks. I did not anticipate the energy required by this process. It was pretty exhausting. More trained facilitators. This is not an easy process. Maybe that is why deployments complain the construction-ism is difficult without well trained teachers. It was fascinating to watch Caroline Meeks' +1, Scott, work with the distribution team. Scott started with a very limited knowledge of Sugar, yet was able to help the team do some great work. Cultural Issues. Strict enforcement of schedules and deadlines. Any passionate person can come up with a list of 'things we should do', which 9 out 10 times actually means 'things someone else should do.' The difference at Sugar Labs is the ability to identify, prioritize, and accomplish tasks with the limited resources available. Keep your laptop closed during sessions. If you have spent several hundred Euros traveling to a face to face event you might as well take advantage of the time together. If your session is useless, either try to improve it or vote with your feet by going to a different session. There also appears to be a very strong correlation between the enthusiasm with which a participant demands other's attention and the amount of attention that participants pays to others while they are speaking:( In the end, I was pretty happy with the process. Anecdotally, several people have commented they while they felt they did not accomplish much they learned a lot. The proof will be if SugarCamp participants move down the participation funnel and issues that were discussed are fix within the next several weeks. david _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
