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Line 7: − + − + − + − I missed the opening remarks, but was able to attend the panel discussions: one about implementations and one about “lessons and challenges.”+ − It seems that still too many people see ICT as a goal of rather than a means to learning, but it was nonetheless great to get a clearer picture of the various projects in the region. + − Miguel Brechner, director of LATU and the force behind [http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/ Project CEIBAL] in Uruguay, gave a passionate talk about all that they have accomplished. The bottom line: It is possible, so what are the rest of you waiting for? Among Miguel's “Lessons from Uruguay” was a detailed break down of the total cost of ownership across four years: US$ 276 per child per year. This includes the cost of the laptop, connectivity—every child in Uruguay gets free Internet access ($31/child/year), servers, spares, maintenance, logistics, delivery, operating costs, et al. Uruguay has already distributed 380,000 laptops to more than 2000 schools and trained more than 18,000 teachers. They have 500 support teachers and 1500 support volunteers helping with training and deployment. In terms of evaluation, there has been little opportunity to report any longitudinal assessments of impact of the deployments, which are relatively recent, but the early indicators are worth noting:+ − * The teachers are driving the change;+ − * There is an increase in attendance; − * There is an increase in overall motivation; − * There is more motivation to do homework; − * There is less time spent watching television; − * There is an increase in parental involvement; − * There is more motivation to go to school; − * There is an increase in self-esteem; − * There is an increase in interest in learning; − * There is a dramatic drop in repeated grades; − * There is an increase in the basic skills to use a computer; − * There is an increased trend toward collaboration and sharing. − 220,000 homes now have computers through Project CEIBAL. Computer penetration in the the poorest households exceeds the national average.+ − Jorge Pedreira, deputy minster of educational Portugal described Magalhães, which is being deployed nationwide in Portugal. It is a project of inclusion that is leaning heavily on telcom industry partnerships to provide subsidized laptops and connectivity. There is an emphasis on ICT training and school administration enhancements through ICT. For the elementary-aged students, there is a local spin of the Classmate PC. They have reached 370,000 students with a dual-boot machine: Windows XP and Caixa Mágica. (Sugar runs on their hardware—I made sure to show the deputy minister at the coffee break.) Their strategy is: ICT changes education and thus society, and this project is a way to get ICT into the classroom . Pedreira made the point that we need to assess assessment as the children have new competencies that are not part of the standard metrics.+ − Alicia Banuelos, Rector at La Punta University described the San Luis Digital Project in San Luis, Argentina. San Luis is a wealthy province—wealthy enough to self-fund a comprehensive program that includes connectivity and computing throughout the community. For the younger children, they have instituted 1-to-1 computing, also using Classmate PCs (~7000 computers) running Windows XP. She reported some improvements in language and math scores—she emphasized that the improvement was in both rural and urban schools. She also mentioned that every child is learning chess. Not sure how that impacts the control, but watch out Viswanathan Anand.+ − The final project review was by Alayde Maria Pinto Digiovanni, Superintendent of education in the State of Paraná, Brazil. Their program is classroom focused: no laptops, but large displays in every classroom. They use exclusively free software and free text books—which has caused lots of friction with the publishers.+ − === Help wanted === + + + + + + − 2. Simon Schampijer and our amazing release team are in the final phase of the [[0.86/Roadmap#Schedule|0.86 release cycle]] for more details—the release is scheduled for Friday. Please test and please report any issues you find. The BugSquad is still available to triage bugs.+ − Note that we are now hosting our bug tracker at http://bugs.sugarlabs.org.+ + + − === In the community === + + − 3. [http://softwarefreedomday.org Software Freedom Day] is 19 September. There are celebrations from [http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/Boston_Software_Freedom_Day Boston] to [http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/SFD_Bogota Bogota] to [http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/melb Melbourne].+ − + + + + + + + − 5. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-September-5-11-som.jpg|SOM]]).+
Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 19:05, 21 September 2009
, 19:05, 21 September 2009→What's new
=== Sugar Digest ===
=== Sugar Digest ===
1. At the urging of Yama Ploskonka, I went to Washington, DC to the Interamerican Development Bank (IADB) to attend a [http://www.iadb.org/news/detail.cfm?Language=English&id=5654 seminar], “Reinventing the Classroom: Social and Educational Impact of the Incorporation of Technologies” as part of an ICT for education program.
1. It was busy week: Simon, Aleksey, Sascha, and Tomeu have been working around the clock on putting the finishing touches on the new 0.86 release of Sugar while Gary has been trying to keep pace with testing and documentation. It is looking great. I kept busy too: chacing a few more bugs in Turtle Art; writing a grant proposal with help from David, David, and Caroline to the Wal-Mart foundation (seeking support to run teacher workshops and do outreach); meeting with a team from Babson who will help us develop a plan for how to present Sugar to school districts; a panel at the Harvard Kennedy School to a gathering of entrepreurs in technology and development, ‘Beyond Mobile: The Next Generation of Technology for Empowerment’; an article in [http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090918110925298 Groklaw] (with lots of help from Sean); and a presentation at Software Freedom Day.
:The stated workshop objectives were: (i) Understand development experiences and case studies of national projects for the integration of Information Technology and Communication in education systems, (ii) Discuss how these projects impact on student learning and in developing countries, and (iii) Share challenges of evaluation and monitoring initiatives at national and regional levels.
I did have a chance to do some reading: Bahktiar Mikhak posted a link to an old paper by Seymour Papert, [http://www.papert.org/articles/ComputerCriticismVsTechnocentric.html "Computer Criticism vs. Technocentric Thinking"]. He wrote it almost 30-years ago and I had last read it more than 10-years ago, but it is still relevamt today.
My objective was to catch up with people leading the various efforts in the region in order to acquaint them with what we are doing at Sugar Labs.
My favorite quote from the paper is: "The context for human development is always a culture, never an isolated technology."
Another gem: "If you ask, 'What does a LOGO practitioner need to know?' the answer goes beyond the ability to use and teach LOGO. The practitioner needs to be able to talk about LOGO, to criticize it, and to discuss other people's criticisms." .replace('LOGO','Sugar')
2. I have a bit more to report regarding last week's meeting at the Interamerican Development Bank. The afternoon discussion ended on an interesting note: what if anything should we be doing regarding curriculum development? Again Papert: "Sscience as inquiry rather than as answers". More concretely, when we first set up the teacher workshops in Peru we challenged the teachers on the first day to come up with a way to enhance something from the national curriuculum by using Sugar to be presented on the final day of the workshop. We didn't give them a curriculum--they already had that from the ministry of education. Rather, we wanted them to engage in a process of inquiry. They rose to the challenge and engaged in a collaborative discussion of discovery throughout the week-long event.
Papert's version: "Using the computer not as a 'thing in itself' that may or may not deliver benefits, but as a material that can be appropriated to do better whatever you are doing (and which will not do anything if you are not!)"
A final word from Papert: "Do Not Ask What LOGO Can Do To People, But What People Can Do With LOGO." .replace('LOGO','Sugar')
3. A few of us were on IRC Friday evening discussing with Rubén Rodríguez Pérez his effort to port Sugar to Trisquel. By the time I got to the venue for the Boston celebration of Software Freedom Day, I had gotten this email:
:Hello everybody,
:The Sugar+Trisquel beta is ready for testing, many thanks to Aleksey Lim and everyone in the #sugar and #fsfsys channels who helped us to get it. The current release is a fully free live CD based in Sugar 0.84, running on top of Trisquel-edu 2.2.1 LTS "Robur" (which is itself Hardy based). We will soon build one with Trisquel 3.0, for better hardware support.
:We are very excited with this collaboration, as it will be a new and fully libre way to distribute Sugar, and also a powerful tool to include in our educational operating system Trisquel Edu.
:Highlights:
:-Installable live CD, with MD5 self-checking utility.
:-Persistent user data in live-usb sessions, usb-creator included.
:-Boot menu with 30 selectable languages.
:-LTSP thin client support using a Trisquel Edu server.
:-Sugar style artwork, screenshots attached.
:It is a work in progress, but stable enough to be used and get some tests. The artwork is also a proof of concept and can be easily changed. We would be pleased if you send us your impressions and advices.
:Known bugs in this release:
:-No sound in flash videos
:-No network selector
:The i686 iso image can is here:
:http://devel.trisquel.info/trisquel-sugar_2.2.1-beta_i686.iso
:Enjoy!
4. Donna Benjamin reports that [http://open-edge.info Open Edge 2009]: The Australian Open Education Forum is 9 October at [http://open-edge.info/our-venue-sceggs SCEGGS] in Sydney.
:Rubén.
=== Tech Talk ===
4. Bryan Berry announces on behalf of the Karma team that KARMA 0.1 has been released. See [http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2009-September/019339.html] for details.
5. Marten Vijn announced that there is new global mirror for Sugar available at http://sugarlabs.cdn.cacheboy.net/
===Sugar Labs===
===Sugar Labs===
6. Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list (Please see [[:File:2009-Sept-12-18-som.jpg|SOM]]).
=== Community News archive ===
=== Community News archive ===