Re: [IAEP] educational brew
Indeed...I agree Albert I think working out that sequence, its dependencies, and lesson resources, would be a great goal The only practical issue with this is it takes so much time ...that I still can't see its that likely here or in any educational system ...the discipline and time (and money) resources to slow down enough to do the architecture (working out the sequence and implementing it) for that sort of approach properly is the issue ...so everything tends to be done in a more fragmented way Its like a reset is needed - take half a dozen maths and IT types and deconstruct maths learning sequences and curriculum resources like this (over say a year) (there are various research based maths continua and sequences that would make this possible) ...then take a few dedicated programmers who could implement all this into a lesson framework that kept track of pathways and progress If it could be done, I think this would be a very useful resource - 80% of the game in my view I also think we need some more open ended tools - etoys, Scratch, Logo, geogebra, like- for exploring and building models ...and maybe illustrating and playing with concepts from the 'makefile sequence' - 20% of the game All this is loosely on the radar in some commercial places, but still perhaps not as deeply reset as is needed, and its not open source I'd also like to see the maths content get more computer inflected - not just use computers to deliver old content, but modify the content - eg different ways to construct, say polygons, or find primes, or whatever the nominal maths is ...the discipline or learning a programming language could run parallel to learning maths...but that also requires a something of a reset in curriculum in how IT and maths relate... which seems even more unlikely, unfortunately ..maybe I'm wrong Papert's complaint about the state of 'school maths' getting ossified in one historical state really would require maths content to change like this ...and the education system hasn't yet signed on to that, as far as I can see ..computing as productive child's play for learning maths (via say Logo - or maybe Mathematica today) isn't really in view anymore.. (this would shift the 80/20 balance - could allow say 50-50) Re the direct instruction vs constructivism/constructionism thing - I think that one can teach 'directly' in a way that still respects that students have to 'construct' their own understanding ... Most 'direct instruction' maths lesson (indeed most maths lessons everywhere - according to various international video studies) have portions of direct instruction, and portions of students attempting to work more or less independently to apply some of that to 'problems' - which is at least some concession to the need to 'make your own connections' even after you've been 'told' (there is an Australian novel 'all the green year' where the main character praises his new teacher - 'she taught simultaneous equations so well I felt I had discovered the art myself' - which reconciles the two approaches ..and seems a feasible comment to me) If maths learning is always limited to that level it no doubt risks getting too closed and mimetic, (eg may create a culture of maths as simply right answers to closed textbook questions) - but there is still a little nod to constructivism in the need to attempt various problems and work out understanding on one's own - while there is still the bigger challenge of feeling maths as more open and productive - maybe representing learning in another form - say writing a program to model or explore it - is a good way to stretch beyond those limits ... its this I remember from my own schooling as one of the few times that all that math learning really felt creative to me - and why I feel we have left something out of the mix in schools today, even though there are countless more computers around ... even the top end of maths learning in school does not push much creative modelling etc in this sense One thing I liked about the 'drawing on the right side of the brain' approach is that it respects the need to load up your mind with conscious material - to wrestle with it and tackle it - and then also to walk away and turn things over ...ie the role of 'the unconscious' in pondering and delivering insights and solving problems - Poincare like - is not well respected in school I think direct instruction needs to keep this in mind - the grappling with difficult things and coming back to it - constructing understanding - is partly how we learn - not just consciously reciting modelled processes more in the learning stew Rob -Original Message- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep- boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Albert Cahalan Sent: Wednesday, 6 May 2009 5:02 AM To: ka...@kathyandcalvin.com; iaep Subject: Re: [IAEP] educational brew Kathy Pusztavari writes: You could set up '4th grade math for Massachusetts
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
Costello, Rob R writes: most teachers that i know want to know that any 'innovation' 'addresses the curriculum' ... but this won't overturn the inertia in traditional curriculum content To a teacher, is curriculum the raw state/national standard or is it instead the content of the particular textbook that the school uses? In any case, you're up against a compatibility issue. Students will transfer, sometimes during the school year, and hopefully graduate. An oddball school does a disservice to the students. for example i can see no maths curriculum in the world (i've been looking at lots of them in detail recently) that is doing much more than including a few references to recursion or iteration... (there was more 'programming' in my year 12 course in 1985) Which other math would you eliminate to make room for this, and what will happen to the students if they transfer or graduate without knowing that other math? BTW, though I like computer science too, this stuff isn't that useful. i also fully agree with Kathy that personalisation can mean software intelligently adapts the sequence of lessons... i've seen that in action as well I've been thinking about this. It's really valuable, though not so easy to implement. Let's take 4th grade math as an example: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Math4Team/Resources/Curriculum_Chart Suppose you wrote up lessons for all those. You'd get a lot of overlap with the California standard, the Iowa standard, etc. The overlap becomes severe if you add the rest of the grades. Imagine having lessons to cover all standards. To benefit from a given lesson, one must master any prerequisites. This should remind you of building software with the make program or perhaps installing software from RPM packages. Leaving aside the minor issue of review, there is no point to presenting students with old lessons. Leaving aside the minor issue of testing out, there is no point to presenting students with lessons that they have not prepared for. You could set up 4th grade math for Massachusetts as a list of things to master. It's quite similar to setting up a Makefile with a target that exists purely to have a list of prerequisites. This target becomes a goal to reach. Once the goal is chosen, the software supplies lessons as required to reach it. When more than one lesson would be appropriate, allowing student choice could help to keep the student in a good mood for learning. Sadly, a real-world system would also need to provide distraction for the students who are at risk for completing the grade before the end of the year. Traditional schools don't tolerate that well. i know traditional curriculum can get suffocating and dry .. Of course, dealing with suffocating and dry stuff is a valuable life skill. :-/ Sitting down to slog through something boring is not easy for many people. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: The other thing I should have said about rob's post but didn't was that I pretty much agree with all of it as a description of the reality we face, ie. my experiences of being an innovative teacher are similar enough to what rob describes as to make it pointless to quibble about the differences my support for the continuation of widespread unreasonable behaviour (in the xo tradition) is based on acceptance of that reality In my experience, the homeschool community provides a nice space for meaningfully unreasonable behavior. Especially unschoolers. Also, consider research restrictions. It takes from several months to half a year in my county to get all the necessary permissions for an educational study in public schools, whereas it only takes the internal IRB approval to work with homescholers. Families and local communities should not be overlooked as powerful agents of change. -- Cheers, MariaD Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath our email group http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
I think that is a great point, Maria. The homeschool community, especially in the US (that I know of), are great at field testing things. They are a resource that should not be overlooked as they are able to make use of new innovation quicker and are unable to afford to be as picky. They tend to make use of free quality programs off the internet. -Kathy -Original Message- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Maria Droujkova Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 4:43 AM To: Bill Kerr Cc: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; Costello,Rob R Subject: Re: [IAEP] educational brew On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:35 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: The other thing I should have said about rob's post but didn't was that I pretty much agree with all of it as a description of the reality we face, ie. my experiences of being an innovative teacher are similar enough to what rob describes as to make it pointless to quibble about the differences my support for the continuation of widespread unreasonable behaviour (in the xo tradition) is based on acceptance of that reality In my experience, the homeschool community provides a nice space for meaningfully unreasonable behavior. Especially unschoolers. Also, consider research restrictions. It takes from several months to half a year in my county to get all the necessary permissions for an educational study in public schools, whereas it only takes the internal IRB approval to work with homescholers. Families and local communities should not be overlooked as powerful agents of change. -- Cheers, MariaD Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath our email group http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
You could set up '4th grade math for Massachusetts' as a list of things to master. It's quite similar to setting up a Makefile with a target that exists purely to have a list of prerequisites. Albert - that is exactly what I was referring to. A set of curriculum to get you started but a good teacher could then go in and adapt the files or make file for their standards (or find a local nerd to help). I referred to Turtle Typing. Being a linux numbskull, I accidentally ran the MAKEFILE and found out that it seeds your lessons. Honestly, I had heard of MAKEFILE but I didn't know what it did. I threw those lessons into a temp folder and replaced them all with my lessons. I'm pretty good at cut and paste so the 5 lessons became 30 lessons and I only got started! The lessons were .lesson files written in python format so you have to figure out what format and data the file needs to run the program the way you want. I'll have to be honest, when I saw Turtle Typing - that is when I figured out how powerful activities can be for sugar. I was able to use sugar to actually do something important that - honestly - no other program could do. Teach typing at a level my son could actually succeed. I might be slow but I get there eventually. -Kathy -Original Message- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Albert Cahalan Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 2:04 AM To: ka...@kathyandcalvin.com; costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au; Bill Kerr; iaep Subject: Re: [IAEP] educational brew Costello, Rob R writes: most teachers that i know want to know that any 'innovation' 'addresses the curriculum' ... but this won't overturn the inertia in traditional curriculum content To a teacher, is curriculum the raw state/national standard or is it instead the content of the particular textbook that the school uses? In any case, you're up against a compatibility issue. Students will transfer, sometimes during the school year, and hopefully graduate. An oddball school does a disservice to the students. for example i can see no maths curriculum in the world (i've been looking at lots of them in detail recently) that is doing much more than including a few references to recursion or iteration... (there was more 'programming' in my year 12 course in 1985) Which other math would you eliminate to make room for this, and what will happen to the students if they transfer or graduate without knowing that other math? BTW, though I like computer science too, this stuff isn't that useful. i also fully agree with Kathy that personalisation can mean software intelligently adapts the sequence of lessons... i've seen that in action as well I've been thinking about this. It's really valuable, though not so easy to implement. Let's take 4th grade math as an example: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Math4Team/Resources/Curriculum_Chart Suppose you wrote up lessons for all those. You'd get a lot of overlap with the California standard, the Iowa standard, etc. The overlap becomes severe if you add the rest of the grades. Imagine having lessons to cover all standards. To benefit from a given lesson, one must master any prerequisites. This should remind you of building software with the make program or perhaps installing software from RPM packages. Leaving aside the minor issue of review, there is no point to presenting students with old lessons. Leaving aside the minor issue of testing out, there is no point to presenting students with lessons that they have not prepared for. You could set up 4th grade math for Massachusetts as a list of things to master. It's quite similar to setting up a Makefile with a target that exists purely to have a list of prerequisites. This target becomes a goal to reach. Once the goal is chosen, the software supplies lessons as required to reach it. When more than one lesson would be appropriate, allowing student choice could help to keep the student in a good mood for learning. Sadly, a real-world system would also need to provide distraction for the students who are at risk for completing the grade before the end of the year. Traditional schools don't tolerate that well. i know traditional curriculum can get suffocating and dry .. Of course, dealing with suffocating and dry stuff is a valuable life skill. :-/ Sitting down to slog through something boring is not easy for many people. ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 5:03 AM, Albert Cahalan acaha...@gmail.com wrote: To benefit from a given lesson, one must master any prerequisites. The good news is that as time goes on, people (slowly) develop ways to help kids acquire prerequisites within learning new topics. For example, you can build lessons about proportionality on multiplication, which you can build on addition, which you can build on counting. Alternatively, you can work with unfair sharing, growth/shadows/perspective and other similarity, or intensive unit (e.g. speed) metaphors directly, incorporating development of multiplicative reasoning and its coordination with additive reasoning into this work. As the culture progresses, math gets more and more packed, prerequisites and all. I found Bill's non-universals summary to be quite useful in thinking about these issues, especially the similarities over differences part http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals As we figure out to help kids work with similarities in deeper ways, and as we uncover better metaphors for similarities, prerequisites get subsumed into other topics. -- Cheers, MariaD Make math your own, to make your own math. http://www.naturalmath.com social math site http://groups.google.com/group/naturalmath our email group http://www.phenixsolutions.com empowering our innovations ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] educational brew
i think Kathy is really on to something here ..taps some things i've been turning over and thinking of sending to the list my day job is now working for company that designs educational maths software i don't have time to do anything much here - for sugar - but i will offer these observations in the hope they might help - will use maths as example ..probably applies to greater or lessor extent to other curriculum areas most teachers that i know want to know that any 'innovation' 'addresses the curriculum' i now think its risky to try to push a cool concept that doesn't do that ...new media has to 'look like' the old media, at least to some extent, for a time, and then smuggle in some of its new capabilities ...to misquote something Alan Kay said somewhere ...and he might have quoted it from somewhere i still think that Papert is a genius and i love his writing, but i have come to think his approach to constructionism is too polarised ... he seems to think nothing good can come out of 'school maths' (ie that its procedural learning based approach amounts to 'feeding kids the menu') and the whole thing should be redone (eg with a Logo flavour) thats an appealing thought to people like me ...probably to many here ...since it seems there is a comparable or greater level of learning and analytical process in tinkering with more self directed programming, designing your own models etc, but this won't overturn the inertia in traditional curriculum content for example i can see no maths curriculum in the world (i've been looking at lots of them in detail recently) that is doing much more than including a few references to recursion or iteration...(there was more 'programming' in my year 12 course in 1985) the crowd i work for are successful because they have done what Kathy describes - built up a strong sequence of activities that address traditional maths learning .. now reworking that for different curricula Bryan Berry in his comments from Nepal also talks about this - the need for content that clearly addresses the curriculum ... also a stronger basic framework for planning generic lessons or chunks of curriculum (so they leaned on moodle and integrated flash ...but he talks of a html5 / js 'education on rails' sort of template that has 'fill in' sections for lesson plans, assessment etc) personally, i tend to baulk at the cookie cutter aspect of this (and it needs to be customisable or will strike mismatch with local approaches and models) I would have suggested just going down the scratch / etoys / logo / gamemaker sort of line if i'd been advising at the time (and maybe pippy but I couldn't get it to run and the code samples look a bit complex for beginners) ...- that is, i would have been more in the 'provide interesting tools and see what happens' camp - and i now think it would not have got traction...its an acquired taste that is too unfamiliar to reach critical mass, even if the devices are physically present it never did transform my class room either, unless i kept experimenting with new ways to use and model the tools ...Alan Kay talks of road testing and refining good lessons with a few teachers over extended periods - thats great . but you have to face the kids for the rest of the week and year somehow as well ... so something more standard will have to go in there in the meantime while we all develop the examplar lessons of how etoys can be used to teach science etc i see a lot of productive thrashing out of more technical aspects and communication here (how many on that wiki for example :) - but not much on which theory of instructional design is really held to, and how it really influences the design of the software at the risk of dragging practical developers into a theoretical discussion, i would suggest sugar needs to more clearly nail down its educational position... and then some structures like lesson templates .. which will inevitably be limited in some ways i know without developers nothing happens .. but without a clear educational vision it seems to me that the end point development vision may also be unclear ... maybe a group of people with both interests needs to look at that (probably not me, and yes, possible democracy issue) ie i don't think the technical agenda in itself cannot lead that discussion .. letting it just evolve - eg a smorgas board of possible learning objects - most recently circuits etc - is interesting ...but i think would benefit from a consistent educational model behind it ...its not much good hanging various offerings out there suggestively for teachers and kids to use (there are a lot of examples of governments spending a fortune producing 'learning objects' in the hope that teachers will sequence them together for kids.. by and large it has not been a productive path...) the problem is that those seeking and making these things are not your typical time pressued teachers -
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 17:42, Costello, Rob R
costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au wrote:
at the risk of dragging practical developers into a theoretical discussion,
i would suggest sugar needs to more clearly nail down its educational
position... and then some structures like lesson templates .. which will
inevitably be limited in some ways
I was hoping that this decision would be taken at the activity,
content and deployment levels and that the Sugar platform itself
wouldn't need to take a position that excludes the others.
Not about being agnostic about learning but about providing a
superset of what each approach requires so more people can come play
together regardless of their beliefs.
Regards,
Tomeu
i know without developers nothing happens .. but without a clear educational
vision it seems to me that the end point development vision may also be
unclear ... maybe a group of people with both interests needs to look at
that (probably not me, and yes, possible democracy issue)
ie i don't think the technical agenda in itself cannot lead that discussion
..
letting it just evolve - eg a smorgas board of possible learning objects -
most recently circuits etc - is interesting ...but i think would benefit
from a consistent educational model behind it ...its not much good hanging
various offerings out there suggestively for teachers and kids to use (there
are a lot of examples of governments spending a fortune producing 'learning
objects' in the hope that teachers will sequence them together for kids.. by
and large it has not been a productive path...)
the problem is that those seeking and making these things are not your
typical time pressued teachers - whose IT skills and technical background
are not, by and large, in the same league as developers (and developers do
not always have a feel for the classroom).. relatively few teachers will
seek it out if there is not a series of coherent lessons nearby
[the model of what to make - platform (scratch, etoys, etc) or more limited
demo is also had to pin down - at what level do you extend / adapt /
restart ]
these somewhat conserative (modest? balanced?) conclusions are hard lessons
for me ..since i was one of the ones who was still programming in the small
hours when teaching (which is to say the more open ended stuff appeals to
me) - and i always hope that something like geogebra or scratch will bridge
the gap between being easy to customise and flexible in application ...maybe
something will
i also fully agree with Kathy that personalisation can mean software
intelligently adapts the sequence of lessons... i've seen that in action as
well
i also think the nice open ended stuff needs to be in there...but needs to
function as extension and example and context ... not the main approach for
most kids .. much as i think the approach adds the 'working mathematically'
aspect that all the content needs and supports
have discussed this with Bill before .. and while he doesn't necessarily
agree with my figures (i think does with broad concept), but for the sake of
provoking discussion, i would say 80% of the learning game can be
instructionist sequences of learning
20% can then be the more open ended constructionist approach
my own preferences go the other way, so its against the grain for me to come
to that conclusion ...but i think its a more viable and realistic approach
to take
i know traditional curriculum can get suffocating and dry ..but the answer
is not to throw it out or pretend its not a reality that is still there
Bryan says he would aim at 'content first' next time - i can now see the
logic of this
not just access to wikipedia ...but recognisable sequences of lesson
materials
for what its worth i also think the curriki.org approach is interesting -
lots of content being donated from everywhere - but my feeling is its going
to be a problem having so much in there without some consistent format or
approach.. that is someone needs to pull it together
a work of art has to choose some limitations.. i gather the XO hardware has
done this ... and no doubt the software developers who have laboured
heroically have done so as well... i just think curriculum design needs to
be more in the mix, IMHO
may be wrong ..and discount my view down as i don't think i can input much
time required to significantly contribute to any of this (and my
background is not linux flavoured) ...but i would still suggest considering
the view of an educator looking at ICT enabled learning ..
{i;ve done laptop trials with kids in MS environments as well - and in my
view they can make a difference in enabling a self directed approach to
part of the curriculum (less than 20% of the course in most settings) - but
i don't think in themselvs would much compensate for lack of formal
curriculum or teacher skills (so unless there is a clear matching of content
to local needs - something that looks more like
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
in part this is a discussion about what works in the educational marketplace and what is cutting edge and pushes education forward, the latter will usually be a minority and difficult or nearly impossible to implement position “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists (quoted by Ian Piumarta in a paperhttp://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdfadvocating widespread unreasonable behaviour) given that the initial plan of selling millions of xos direct to governments did not eventuate - and that the xo spawned commercial netbooks - then the marketplace pressures are impossible to avoid, idealism meets capitalist reality - a hard problem to solve On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:12 AM, Costello, Rob R costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au wrote: i think Kathy is really on to something here ..taps some things i've been turning over and thinking of sending to the list my day job is now working for company that designs educational maths software i don't have time to do anything much here - for sugar - but i will offer these observations in the hope they might help - will use maths as example ..probably applies to greater or lessor extent to other curriculum areas most teachers that i know want to know that any 'innovation' 'addresses the curriculum' i now think its risky to try to push a cool concept that doesn't do that ...new media has to 'look like' the old media, at least to some extent, for a time, and then smuggle in some of its new capabilities ...to misquote something Alan Kay said somewhere ...and he might have quoted it from somewhere i still think that Papert is a genius and i love his writing, but i have come to think his approach to constructionism is too polarised ... he seems to think nothing good can come out of 'school maths' (ie that its procedural learning based approach amounts to 'feeding kids the menu') and the whole thing should be redone (eg with a Logo flavour) thats an appealing thought to people like me ...probably to many here ...since it seems there is a comparable or greater level of learning and analytical process in tinkering with more self directed programming, designing your own models etc, but this won't overturn the inertia in traditional curriculum content for example i can see no maths curriculum in the world (i've been looking at lots of them in detail recently) that is doing much more than including a few references to recursion or iteration...(there was more 'programming' in my year 12 course in 1985) the crowd i work for are successful because they have done what Kathy describes - built up a strong sequence of activities that address traditional maths learning .. now reworking that for different curricula Bryan Berry in his comments from Nepal also talks about this - the need for content that clearly addresses the curriculum ... also a stronger basic framework for planning generic lessons or chunks of curriculum (so they leaned on moodle and integrated flash ...but he talks of a html5 / js 'education on rails' sort of template that has 'fill in' sections for lesson plans, assessment etc) personally, i tend to baulk at the cookie cutter aspect of this (and it needs to be customisable or will strike mismatch with local approaches and models) I would have suggested just going down the scratch / etoys / logo / gamemaker sort of line if i'd been advising at the time (and maybe pippy but I couldn't get it to run and the code samples look a bit complex for beginners) ...- that is, i would have been more in the 'provide interesting tools and see what happens' camp - and i now think it would not have got traction...its an acquired taste that is too unfamiliar to reach critical mass, even if the devices are physically present it never did transform my class room either, unless i kept experimenting with new ways to use and model the tools ...Alan Kay talks of road testing and refining good lessons with a few teachers over extended periods - thats great . but you have to face the kids for the rest of the week and year somehow as well ... so something more standard will have to go in there in the meantime while we all develop the examplar lessons of how etoys can be used to teach science etc i see a lot of productive thrashing out of more technical aspects and communication here (how many on that wiki for example :) - but not much on which theory of instructional design is really held to, and how it really influences the design of the software at the risk of dragging practical developers into a theoretical discussion, i would suggest sugar needs to more clearly nail down its educational position... and then some structures like lesson templates .. which will inevitably be limited in some ways i know without developers
Re: [IAEP] educational brew
The other thing I should have said about rob's post but didn't was that I pretty much agree with all of it as a description of the reality we face, ie. my experiences of being an innovative teacher are similar enough to what rob describes as to make it pointless to quibble about the differences my support for the continuation of widespread unreasonable behaviour (in the xo tradition) is based on acceptance of that reality On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Bill Kerr billk...@gmail.com wrote: in part this is a discussion about what works in the educational marketplace and what is cutting edge and pushes education forward, the latter will usually be a minority and difficult or nearly impossible to implement position “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists (quoted by Ian Piumarta in a paperhttp://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2006001a_colaswp.pdfadvocating widespread unreasonable behaviour) given that the initial plan of selling millions of xos direct to governments did not eventuate - and that the xo spawned commercial netbooks - then the marketplace pressures are impossible to avoid, idealism meets capitalist reality - a hard problem to solve On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 1:12 AM, Costello, Rob R costello.ro...@edumail.vic.gov.au wrote: i think Kathy is really on to something here ..taps some things i've been turning over and thinking of sending to the list my day job is now working for company that designs educational maths software i don't have time to do anything much here - for sugar - but i will offer these observations in the hope they might help - will use maths as example ..probably applies to greater or lessor extent to other curriculum areas most teachers that i know want to know that any 'innovation' 'addresses the curriculum' i now think its risky to try to push a cool concept that doesn't do that ...new media has to 'look like' the old media, at least to some extent, for a time, and then smuggle in some of its new capabilities ...to misquote something Alan Kay said somewhere ...and he might have quoted it from somewhere i still think that Papert is a genius and i love his writing, but i have come to think his approach to constructionism is too polarised ... he seems to think nothing good can come out of 'school maths' (ie that its procedural learning based approach amounts to 'feeding kids the menu') and the whole thing should be redone (eg with a Logo flavour) thats an appealing thought to people like me ...probably to many here ...since it seems there is a comparable or greater level of learning and analytical process in tinkering with more self directed programming, designing your own models etc, but this won't overturn the inertia in traditional curriculum content for example i can see no maths curriculum in the world (i've been looking at lots of them in detail recently) that is doing much more than including a few references to recursion or iteration...(there was more 'programming' in my year 12 course in 1985) the crowd i work for are successful because they have done what Kathy describes - built up a strong sequence of activities that address traditional maths learning .. now reworking that for different curricula Bryan Berry in his comments from Nepal also talks about this - the need for content that clearly addresses the curriculum ... also a stronger basic framework for planning generic lessons or chunks of curriculum (so they leaned on moodle and integrated flash ...but he talks of a html5 / js 'education on rails' sort of template that has 'fill in' sections for lesson plans, assessment etc) personally, i tend to baulk at the cookie cutter aspect of this (and it needs to be customisable or will strike mismatch with local approaches and models) I would have suggested just going down the scratch / etoys / logo / gamemaker sort of line if i'd been advising at the time (and maybe pippy but I couldn't get it to run and the code samples look a bit complex for beginners) ...- that is, i would have been more in the 'provide interesting tools and see what happens' camp - and i now think it would not have got traction...its an acquired taste that is too unfamiliar to reach critical mass, even if the devices are physically present it never did transform my class room either, unless i kept experimenting with new ways to use and model the tools ...Alan Kay talks of road testing and refining good lessons with a few teachers over extended periods - thats great . but you have to face the kids for the rest of the week and year somehow as well ... so something more standard will have to go in there in the meantime while we all develop the examplar lessons of how etoys can be used to teach science etc i see a lot of productive
