Web Wiki Activities Download Blog Lists Chats Meetings Schools Bugs Patches Git API Translate Buildbot People Donate

Gardner Pilot Academy

From Sugar Labs

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Gardner Pilot Academy

Boston Public Schools - Allston - http://www.rabbitnet.net/gpa/ (not working as of 2010-03-10)

GPA is partnering with Solution Grove and Sugar Labs to pilot Sugar on a Stick.

The Gardner Pilot Academy is the flagship full-service community school within the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The school's vision is to educate the minds and develop the characters of all students in partnership with families and community. To achieve this GPA provides high quality teaching along with a range of social, emotional and enrichment programs delivered by means of partnerships with an array of community organizations and individuals. Over the past twelve years, GPA has developed strong associations with four universities, several health and mental health agencies, the YMCA, and various organizations teaching visual and performing arts. As one of just 20 pilot schools in the BPS, GPA is exempt from district mandates. Therefore, GPA has autonomy in the areas of budget and personnel, along with the freedom to implement innovative curricula, assessments, and interventions.

Located in a culturally and linguistically varied section of Boston, the GPA serves quite a diverse student population. GPA's 336 students and their families speak more than 13 languages ranging from Spanish to Khmer (all of which are supported by Sugar). Demographically, 15.2% are African American, 59.1% are Hispanic, 10.7% are White and 13.1% are Asian. Over 85% of the students meet the federal poverty guidelines for participation in the Free or Reduced Price Lunch Program. The majority of GPA's students fall within a group of students considered to be academically at risk.

GPA is located only a few blocks from Harvard Business School and so is convenient for project development participants who may be students at one of Boston’s many universities.

The school currently has a single computer lab with older computers running Windows 2000. We will be soliciting donations of used equipment from local business to supplement these existing resources. Sugar can be used at all elementary levels and curriculum areas.

What we learned about what we need to do to improve Sugar on a Stick Next Steps

Current computers at GPA

There are two teachers in the school especially interested in starting with Sugar:

Prep for the Fall

Classes Start Sept 10th.

We are putting computers into the 4th grade classroom on Sept 4th. This is our first experience preparing donated computers for Sugar on a Stick use. We will use the wiki to record our experiences so its easier for the next deployment.

What do we want to ask for?

ToDo

The Summer Program

Classes run from July 6 to Aug 17th from 8:30 am to 5pm. The lead teachers over the summer work 10am to 5pm during the school year so we will have good continuity. Here is a calendar with GPA events.

They will not be using the mac laptop cart and the summer teachers do not have macbooks.

We will be using the computer lab and we will be talking to the school about putting more computer into classrooms and other locations.

2nd Grade

Next Tuesday we will work with the 2nd Graders on their science and social studies. The theme of the week is responsibility and the environment. They will be learning about their community and preping for a cleanup of the local Charles River.

The goal of the first project will be to label a map of where they do the clean up with what they find during their cleanup.

After kids get their keys and boot up, enter their name and colors we will have them go to Turtle Art. We will prepare maps and preload them on the sticks and show them how to bring them into Turtle Art. Then we'll show them how to have the turtle label them. Next week, after their cleanup they can label what they find on the clean-up.

Map: http://screencast.com/t/kLcW3O7Tyb4

3rd Grade

We are hoping that the kids can create a US version of the Uruguay geography/facts game. Any ideas on how to make that easy to do? The vision is they will learn things in class then make them into questions to put into the game. We will meet with the third grade on Thursday afternoons.

Class notes

Looking for Summer Volunteers and Work-Study Students

We are currently looking for committed volunteers and work-study students for the Summer. We have some funding for Work Study so if you know any eligible students please let us know.

Ideally we would like a team of 3 people, each working around 20 hours per week, consisting of a technical person, a person with education experience and a marketing person.

Project Goals

For the GPA School:

Our goals for the Sugar Project are:

More Detailed Sub Goals

From our Balanced Score Card:

The Student Learning Section is copied here:

Standard Curriculum

Notes on Curriculum from conversation with Assistant principal.

Sugar Computer Lab Lesson Plans

This section is intended to prepare lesson plans and give details on classroom interactions for the school year starting in September, 2009.

After defining lesson plans here, we can quickly extract SW features and bug fixes which will facilitate this classroom interaction.

Other lesson plan suggestions

Please add links to other lesson plans for Sugar which have worked well. We welcome any plans or ideas for any subject, grades 3,4, and 5 for use in the fall at GPA. Just add a link to your lesson plan here and we will consider if/how we can incorporate it in to the work at GPA.

Context

10 - 20 4th grade kids will come to the computer lab once a week for an hour. Each kids gets a USB stick with SoaS and all of their previous work on it. The sticks are kept by the Sugar volunteers and brought back to class each day.

Two teachers and 2 - 4 Sugar volunteers participate in the class. One Sugar volunteer leads the class as the primary teacher.

About 1/2 hour before the class begins, the Sugar volunteers insert the USB sticks and boot each computer. Connections and network neighborhood are checked to see that each boots and they can collaborate.

At the end of class kids are asked to shut down their computers and after they leave the Sugar volunteers collect the sticks.

The class starts with the kids sitting on the carpet. The Sugar teacher projects their screen on a projector and talks about the plan for the class. Typically the kids do an interim step on the computer (e.g. find your computer, start activity n, use it a little) then they go back to the carpet for more direction. Sometimes there are several interim steps and the kids go back and forth from the carpet several times.

2nd Grade Lesson Plans

Turtle Art Lesson Plans 2nd Graders:

Day 1 (7/7):

Day 2 (7/9):

Day 3 (7/14):

Day 4 (7/16):

Day 5 (7/21) (I wasn't here on this day but this is what I think happened):

Day 6 (7/23):

3rd Grade Lesson Plans

Social Studies and History

Lesson Plan 1

Lesson Plan 2

Lesson Plan 3

4th Grade

Journal

The goal of this class is to create a Journal of their work, save and share it. (need a lot more detail, creating a place now to add info as it becomes available).

5th Grade

Science Notebook (need a lot more detail, creating a place now to add info as it becomes available).

Technical Architecture

Status for the Computer Lab Boots with the boot-helper CD and connects to the internet if the broadcom drivers are installed.

Primary Activities Used

Note: please add version numbers if anyone has them.

Liabilities

Cognitive abilities

How have the students been pre tested before Sugar roll out?

If you don't have study numbers you will not get administrators or superintendants elsewhere to EVEN consider your project. Test early, test often. If Sugar is good, then it'll show in the tests...right? If it doesn't show up in the tests then Sugar, in its current form, in America, will never see too many public schools. All funding comes from test scores... courtesy of NCLB. --23:20, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Critical Path Technical Issues

rm ~/.sugar/default/owner.key*
rm ~/.sugar/default/gconf/desktop/sugar/user/*

How you can help - Technical Tickets

All GPA tagged tickets

See also Greg Smiths message on sugar-devel.

High level deployment issues are listed on Sugar on a Stick/TODO.

The following tickets will help this deployment.

Google Search on EVO D500 usb boot gives this result: http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1237587827991+28353475&threadId=1038476


Sugar Feature Requests

This link records an in process list of priorities for Sugar development with a focus on success at the Gardner Pilot Academy:
Sugar on a Stick/Goals Other feature requests by Gardner Pilot Academy are in Category:Features requested by Gardner Pilot Academy

It is extracted from this thread on the Sugar Devel List.

Please propose additional suggestions on that list. After clarifying and validating the Feature Requests, add them to the Goals page.

Also, on the pages describing features that Gardner Pilot Academy request, add [[Category:Features requested by Gardner Pilot Academy]].

Final report

See Gardner Pilot Academy/Final report

Retrieved from "http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy"
Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Sugar
Teams
Projects
Local Labs
Using the Wiki
Google Translations