Marketing Team/Events/Olin Play Session

On April 17th I will meet for about 2 hours at Olin with a group of Olin students and others who are interested in volunteering for Sugar Labs and learning more about Sugar. On April 18th, Sugar Labs will have Sugar available in the computer lab at the Waltham YMCA as part of Healthy Kids Day. The goal of this session is to work on ways of deepening the learning experience during informal unstructured exploration of Sugar and Sugar Activities.

Specifically, the goal is to generate artifacts for Sugar Activities that will help adults facilitate children in learning as they explore with the Activity in an informal context.

The exercises in this meeting plan were inspired by the Dative Driven Dialogue book by Wellman and Lipton (2004).

Start - Introductions (10 minutes)
Explain the scenario we are preparing for. 5 minutes

We will demoing Sugar at “Healthy Kids Day” at the Waltham YMCA the following day. The purpose of this meeting is to prepare for this event and other events where we introduce Sugar to parents and kids.

Brainstorm and Pass
Activating and Engaging Stage

Do a quick Brainstorm and Pass as a warm up for the group and to “Activate and Engage” the group. 15 minutes

Topic: What are potential positive outcomes and learning goals for the Healthy Kids Day event.


 * 1) Pick a Recorder
 * 2) Start to the Right of the Recorder
 * 3) Each person can give one idea or pass

3 Minutes of Brainstorming.

Exploration and Facilitation Experiences
Exploring and Discovering Stage

Next break into pairs/groups of 3. We will need an even number of small groups so some “Pairs” may have 3 people.

Each Pair will have 10 minutes to explore a Sugar activity together.

Pair then Pair up. One pair plays the role of Sugar explorers (they are on the computers) the other plays the role of the adult facilitators.

The explorers now use the activity that the facilitators have just explored in the previous section. The facilitators can make comments and guide the explorers. They should also take notes about what they see the explorers doing and learning.(10 Minutes)

Switch roles. (10 minutes)

Round the Room and Back Again Transition to Organizing and Integrating

Before break have everyone write down one thing that they did, or a facilitator who was working with them did, that seemed deepen the learning experience.

Leave your paper and pencil at your seat and go around the room listening to other ideas and taking a break.

Go back to whole group.

Write down all the other peoples examples of things facilitators did that you can remember.

Go around the room collecting one ideas.

Next write down next to each idea, in what is learned and/or what domain the learning is in.

Activity, Learning and Facilitation Web
Organizing and Integrating Stage

We will make facilitators Guides based on the Idea, Category and Web exercise.

Center box is Activity Name Circles are learning domains the Web details are things a facilitator might say to facilitate that learning.

The whole group should discuss if there are themes we saw from the Round the Room and Back around Learning Domains. Such as “how to use the activity” and if there are ones that we want to give serious consideration to.

Do a sample chart on “Sugar” as a whole.

Break back into the groups of 4 and create two Facilitator Webs, one for each activity they worked with.

Walk Around Time
Walk around and see other people’s posters.

Home Work
There are two homework assignments for the group to split up.


 * 1) Create tickets and write feedback to the activity programmers
 * 2) Write up hints for adults help kids with the activity and post them on activities.sugarlabs.org