Education Team

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Mission

The mission of the education team is to explain why Sugar is an ideal platform for learning, and to provide guidance and feedback to those who are working on how Sugar enhances learning.

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We are said to be responsible for setting the Educational goals for the Sugar Community, but this says both too much and too little. In the long run, the children have to set their educational goals, rather than those whom the accidents of history and politics have put in power. Here are some things we can do:

• Start the very large and wide-ranging discussion about appropriate education theory (based on scientific study of children and adults, such as schoolteachers);
• Start the discussion about appropriate education practice, based on scientific study of what works under various circumstances for what purposes;
• Start the discussion about appropriate uses of computers in education, including software design, textbook redesign, and other content, and about what computers are good for in general;
• Mediate between these desiderata and what is possible on the available and imminent hardware platforms, given the current and projected state of connectivity, rural electricity, the other issues and obstacles of poverty, and the current state of Sugar;
• Share lots of examples of what works (and what doesn't)—along with a discussion of how and why.

Goals

Concretely, we want to reach three target audiences:

1. existing OLPC deployments
2. potential Sugar on a Stick deployments (classroom teachers, parents, community centers)
3. potential non-OLPC netbook deployments (classroom teachers, parents)

Means

• Start the discussion on what goals children have, and their families, and their communities. (and accept that, even if it goes against the rest, especially if the rest is theory)

I put this here because it is an addition, but I feel it should be the first bullet point Yamaplos 18:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Moved to new Means subsection --Walter 16:15, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

• Survey teachers in existing deployments (We are putting together a survey. Please add your questions

Meetings

We held an inaugural Education Team meeting on Friday, 6 March, at 15 UTC (10 EST) on irc.freenode.net #sugar-meeting but we realize that the meeting time was not ideal, especially for teachers. Please add your preferred meeting time to the list we are accumulating.

06 March 2009

• Log of the 2009-03-06 meeting
• Summary of the 2009-03-06 meeting

See also

• Theory and practice
• Lesson-plan resources
• Education bibliography
• Marvin Minksy essays
• Learning evolves – Bill Kerr
• Creating textbooks