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Line 5: − 1. ''"Papert, of course, is well-known as the proponent of "constructionism," an educational theory which holds that students learn best by doing—often with little guidance from teachers."''+ − Perhaps I overreacted to a recent article about OLPC in which Seymour Papert was cast in the role of "anti-teacher." I've worked with Seymour for more than 30 years and never once heard him disparage teaching or teachers. And nothing in the "Constructionist" doctrine suggests that teachers are not an important part of the learning ecology. That said, Papert is a believer in the human capacity for learning, where the role of a teacher is primarily to guide rather than instruct. And yet the mischaracterization of Constructionism and Papert persists, not only in the press, but in the writing of those who should know better, education researchers.+ − + − + − It is debilitating to all of our efforts that an educational researcher with such a shallow understanding of Papert is being widely quoted as an expert on one-to-one computing. But it gets worse still. The data that are being cited regarding the use of Sugar are terribly flawed. For example, rough estimates of what activities were used most often tells us next to nothing about what is being learned. And those data are interpreted in ways that are blind to the learning that may be happening. For example, to summarily dismiss activities—such as chatting—as "less sophisticated (and presumably less valuable) uses of the computer" is to miss the point entirely. When a primary goal is literacy, engagement in an activity that so directly encourages children to read and write is a plus. Alas, the old saw, "we value what we measure instead of measure what we value", sums up the situation.+ − Meanwhile, the OLPC/Sugar Learning Team takes assessment very seriously and has been developing a number of mechanisms to dig beneath the surface. In addition to satisfying the needs of stakeholders and academics, we are also trying to develop metrics that serve the learner and the teacher. Hopefully our efforts will go some ways to shining a light on what is actually happening in the communities using Sugar—the good and the bad—so that we can learn and improve. In the meantime, we will have to withstand a storm of misinformation and distortion.+ − 2. [http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2012 Google Summer of Code (GSoC)] is gearing up for 2012. It is a nice opportunity to get some new developers on board. As a community, we need to get ourselves organized: specifically, over the next few weeks, we need to identify potential projects that might attract interns to apply to Sugar Labs. I've set up [[Summer_of_Code/2012|a page in the wiki for aggregating project ideas]]. Anyone in the community is welcome to make suggestions regarding a project that you think would make Sugar a better platform. (Projects that are relatively self-contained tend to be better for GSoC since their is a finite window in which to work on it.)+ − If you are interesting in being a mentor, please contact [[User:Walter]]. Also, please encourage any talented university students you may know to apply to the program. Applications are not due until late March, but it is best to start the conversation sooner than later. (Note that applications submitted to Google must be made in English, but mentoring can happen in any language, e.g., Spanish. We will gladly help potential applicants with their proposals even if English is their first language.)+ − === In the community ===+ − 3. There will be a OLPC/Sugar documentation sprint from April 6-10 at the OLPC headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Please contact Adam Holt if you are interested in participating, either in person or on line.+ − 4. There will be an eduJAM! in the week of May 7-12 in Montevideo. Details to follow.+ − 5. The week following eduJAM! will be a Squeakfest, also in Montevideo (May 16-18).+ − − === Tech Talk === − 6. Gonzalo Odiard has gone through the open tickets on bugs.sugarlabs.org and identified easy tasks for those interested in getting started as a Sugar developer. Bugs and enhancements with an "easy-hack" tag refer to tickets we think can be solved by a "newbie" hacker. The list is [http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/query?status=accepted&status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&group=component&order=priority&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&keywords=~easy-hack here].+ Line 38:
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Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 03:26, 23 February 2012
, 03:26, 23 February 2012→Sugar Digest
== Sugar Digest ==
== Sugar Digest ==
Quote of the week: Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. -- John Cotton Dana
1. Sugar in Sri Lanka? In late 2007 I had had some meetings with the Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United States about launching an OLPC program. But I lost touch after I left OLPC to start Sugar Labs. I had heard that at least some small number of laptops had gone to Sri Lanka, but I wasn't aware of any detail. But tonight I saw an article written by Dharma Sri Abeyratne in the Sri Lanka News describing an on-going project that sounds quite interesting: "The Colombo University Information Technology Faculty and open source software developers have supported the software developing process. Over 850 software programmes relating to the curriculum from year one to five is issued with the laptops." I can only assume they are talking about Sugar. Over 850 software programs? Are these Sugar activities? Many would be new to me. Does anyone know whom to contact to find out more about what they are doing at Colombo University?
I apparently pushed the wrong button with an education researcher "who dismissed Papert's self-learning constructionism largely as a 'myth.'" I have several issues with the characterization, not the least of which is the use of the modifier, "self-learning". The same researcher back-peddled slightly:
2. I was in Peru last week and had an opportunity to meet with the new head of the DIGETE program there. Sandro Marcone has a passion for learning that is immediately evident. I am encouraged that good things will happen in Peru under his leadership. One topic we discussed was more community engagement. As part of the plan for one laptop per child in Peru going forward is more of an emphasis on regional responsibility for the project. This is synergistic with the community efforts in Puno and will hopefully resonate in more regions as well. Kiko Momayorga hosted a gathering at Escuelab to discuss community engagement more deeply. It was a chance for me to meet Anita Say Chan, Juan Camilo Lema, and Neyder Achahuanco Apaza (Laura Vargas and Sebastian Silva were there virtually from Bogata, where they were celebrating their daughter's first birthday). I also had a chance to meet with 300+ teachers attending a workshop organized by Hernan Pachas. They were very engaged, even though our meeting was at the very end of a long week. They seemed very excited by some of the new directions we have been pushing Sugar -- most of them are still running Sugar 0.84. They seemed particularly taken by the work we have done in enhancing the tools for reflection, including the Portfolio activity. It looks like 2012 will be the year we really see things pick up in Peru.
:I agree that Papert does not generally talk about cutting teachers out of the loop entirely, though he does discuss learning about differential gears on his own and discovering more about mathematics from them than he learned in most of his mathematics classes. So the sentence "Papert, of course, is well-known as the proponent of 'constructionism,' an educational theory which holds that students learn best by doing—often with little guidance from teachers" could be misleading in that it doesn't fully articulate the "teachers as co-learners" aspect that Papert discusses in his writings, although it does convey Papert's view that teachers should take a back seat to children's interests and that some children may be inspired to learn on their own.
3. A quick reminder: Google Summer of Code (GSoC) [http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2012] is gearing up for 2012. It is a nice opportunity to get some new developers on board. As a community, we need to get ourselves organized: specifically, over the next few weeks, '''we need to identify potential projects that might attract interns to apply to Sugar Labs.''' I've set up [[Summer_of_Code/2012|a page in the wiki]] for aggregating project ideas. Anyone in the community is welcome to make suggestions regarding a project that you think would make Sugar a better platform. (Projects that are relatively self-contained tend to be better for GSoC since their is a finite window in which to work on it.)
If you are interesting in being a mentor, please contact me. Also, please encourage any talented university students you may know to apply to the program. Applications are not due until late March, but it is best to start the conversation sooner than later. (Note that applications submitted to Google must be made in English, but mentoring can happen in any language, e.g., Spanish. We will gladly help potential applicants with their proposals even if English is their first language.)
=== In the community ===
4. We celebrated International Mother Language Day on February 21 [http://www.un.org/en/events/motherlanguageday/]. Chris Leonard reports that Daniska Navin, a frequent contributor to the Translation Team, used the celebration as an opportunity to help recruit translators for FOSS projects and Sugar in particular.[http://bit.ly/Az2WXm]
5. There will be a OLPC/Sugar documentation sprint from April 6-10 at the OLPC headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Please contact Adam Holt if you are interested in participating, either in person or on line.
6. There will be an eduJAM! in the week of May 7-12 in Montevideo. Details to follow.
7. The week following eduJAM! will be a Squeakfest, also in Montevideo (May 16-18).
=== Tech Talk ===
8. The ever determined and talented Daniel Drake has released a new school server image, XS-0.7 Ometepe [http://dev.laptop.org/xs/OLPC-School-Server-0.7-i386.iso]. Ometepe [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ometepe] is an island in the center of Nicaragua that is being saturated with OLPC laptops by the Zamora Foundation this week. Daniel made a new release of the server to deploy as part of this effort. Details regarding installation can be found at [http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Installing_Software_0.7].
9. Stefan Unterhauser and Bernie Innocenti have updated our servers as part of a move to a new co-location site (The MIT Media Lab is graciously hosting our servers now). Stefan reported earlier this week: "Looks like all services are back again ... pootle took a while longer :)" Many thanks to Stefan, Bernie, and the NecSys group at the Media Lab. Plus a tip of the hat to Joichi Ito, who gave us the green light.
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===
<gallery>
<gallery>
File:2012-Jan-28-Feb-3-som.jpg|2012 Jan 28th - Feb 3rd (36 emails)
File:2012-Feb-11-17-som.jpg|2012 Feb 11th-17th (38 emails)
File:2012-Feb-4-10-som.jpg|2012 Feb 4th-10th (51 emails)
</gallery>
</gallery>
Visit our [http://planet.sugarlabs.org planet] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.
Visit our planet [http://planet.sugarlabs.org] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments.
== Community News archive ==
== Community News archive ==