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Line 5: − + − So I wrote the [[Activities/Yupana|Yupana activity]]. The beads are organized in columns, where the units (1s) column is farthest to the right; tens (10s) is second from the right; hundreds (100s) is third from the right, etc. When you click on a dot, it will reverse its state (color), and either add or subtract value from that column.+ − Digging a bit deeper, I came across [http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/decodingquipumaths.htm], which had alternative interpretations of how the Yupana works. In this version, the base is 20, and rows with multiple dots are counted as 2s.+ − But none of these explanations were very satisfying. It seems that there is too much information in the structure that is being ignored. I came up with yet another interpretation, where the factor of each bead is based on the number of beads in its containing box, e.g., each bead in the top row, x1; in the second row, x2; in the third row, x3; and in the bottom row, x5.+ − John Watlington suggested yet another interpretation: x1, x2, x5, and x20.+ − Finally, I decided that the best thing to do is to challenge the user to come up with their own interpretation.+ − The [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4533 Yupana activity] is available for download from the Sugar Activity Library.+ − The [http://git.sugarlabs.org/yupana source code] is available on the Sugar Labs Gitorious server. + + − 2. Agustin Zubiaga Sanchez, a youthful, up-and-coming developer from Uruguay, has released a very nice graphing utility. You can download SimpleGraph from [http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4534/].+ − === In the community === − 3. There will be an eduJAM! in the week of May 7-12 in Montevideo. Details to follow.+ − 4. The week following eduJAM! will be a Squeakfest, also in Montevideo (May 16-18).+ − 5. Simon Schampijer announced the release of Sugar 0.95.4 (available from [http://download.sugarlabs.org/sources/sucrose/glucose/sugar-toolkit-gtk3/sugar-toolkit-gtk3-0.95.3.tar.bz2]). Many of the new features planned for Sugar 0.96 have landed in this release, including GTK-3 support. Developers should please begin testing.+ Line 39:
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Sugar Labs/Current Events (view source)
Revision as of 15:11, 11 February 2012
, 15:11, 11 February 2012→Sugar Digest
== Sugar Digest ==
== Sugar Digest ==
1. Over the weekend, there was a [http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/2012-February/009989.html discussion of the Yupana]--the Incan abacus--on the Sur mailing list. I was interested because when I originally wrote the [[Activities/Abacus|Abacus]] activity, I did some investigation into the Yupana, but was not able to find any definitive description of how it works. Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn recommended [http://www.que.es/moda/videos/yupana-calculadora-inca-metodo-ensenanza-15039.html], which was helpful. Even more helpful was [http://cursa.ihmc.us/rid=1J2NH8QTM-2912G6-PZ5/Yupana como herramienta pedagogica.pdf], recommended by Fernando Da Rosa.
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, educator researchers.
I apparently pushed the wrong button with an education researcher who "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 backpeddled slightly:
: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.
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 serious and has been developing a number of mechanism to dig beneath the surface. In addition to satifying 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 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 ===
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 ===
=== Tech Talk ===
6. Gonzalo Odiard has gone through the open tickets on bugs.sugarlabs.org and indentified 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].
=== Sugar Labs ===
=== Sugar Labs ===
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File:2012-Jan-28-Feb-3-som.jpg|2012 Jan 28th - Feb 3rd (36 emails)
File:2012-Jan-28-Feb-3-som.jpg|2012 Jan 28th - Feb 3rd (36 emails) [4]
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