On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 08:17:30AM -0400, Walter Bender wrote: > On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Kevin Mark <[email protected]> wrote: <snip> > > > As someone who is not versed in educational theory, I have tried to > > understand > > what intentions where put into Sugar. I have herd mention of > > Constructionism and > > Constructivism and reflection. I could imagine writing after doing > > something as > > a way to gain more from any activity, so that sounds like something any > > deployment should do, but I dont know the total picture of what was > > expected. > > And I dont know about what is or was done to convey these idea of > > reflection, > > the journal, the writing and collaboration as part of an ecosystem to the > > deployment educators. If this is being done, I'd like to learn about it and > > if > > not, then what did I miss about what is told to deployments? > > The Sugar design was informed by educational theory and lots of > experience on the ground in numerous pilot programs conducted in > places as far ranging as an inner-city school in the US to a one-room > school in the hill-country of Thailand. That said, the reality of > Sugar deployments is that they are largely determined by the local > teams, which vary from top-down ministry-of-education initiatives to > bottom-up grass-roots efforts by an NGO to the initiative of an > individual classroom teacher. So there is not one voice or message. > As someone who has followed since G1G1, this is what I learned.
> What we try to do with Sugar is to skew the odds that certain (good) > things would happen, regardless of the details of the deployment. (In > a similar vain, the 5 principles of OLPC are meant to skew the odds > that a 1-to-1 deployment will have maximum impact.) But we cannot and > don't want to force these ideas on deployments; rather we want them to > be appropriated and transformed locally as fit the needs -- a tough > balance to achieve. More and better documentation is certainly in > order. Even better would be real examples of best practice from the > deployments themselves. I am happy that the (ceibal, realness, olpcSF, etc) summits in the last few years have happened to allow folks to compare their efforts and hope it continues. > > One of main ideas behind the Journal is to give the learner a place to > reflect on their work -- providing a consistent forum for that > reflection. We also envision that the Journal will be used as part of > the assessment process as entries can be incorporated into a > collection of artifacts that the learner can periodically amass and > present. (There is some good literature on portfolio assessment, > including Stefanakis Evangeline's book -- > http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/mi08012002.html -- which I > find a nice balance between theory and practice.) > > Not every deployment has leveraged this aspect of Sugar yet, but as we > continue to improve the underlying tools, I think we'll see more use. > (By chance, when I was visiting the Caacupé deployment last year, I > happened upon a meeting at one of the schools where the parents were > being taught how to use the Journal so that they could talk with their > children about their work, so I know that at least in some places, the > Journal is being used in ways that we envisioned.) It was in response > to feedback I got at the OLPC-sponsered assessment summit a few months > back that I wrote the Portfolio activity -- > http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4437 -- which I am > hoping will lower the barrier to using portfolios as a routine part of > the Sugar experience. Its great that things are improving and that deployments are learning to take advantage of the tools that Sugar has! This year and next should see a lot of improvement after EduJam 2011. I like the upcoming multi-selection and the adding of support for ~/document in the Journal Sugar is getting support from folks in Nepal, from Ceibal, from Activity Cental and other places and that is great! -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux ==.| http://kevix.myopenid.com......| | : :' : The Universal OS....| mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/.| | `. `' http://www.debian.org/.| http://counter.li.org [#238656]| |___`-____Unless I ask to be CCd,.assume I am subscribed._________| Where's th' DAFFY DUCK EXHIBIT?? _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
