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==Sugar Digest==
==Sugar Digest==
1. Over the past month I have had the pleasure of visiting Sugar/OLPC deployments in Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Peru. Each has been different from the next, but all share a common goal of bringing the opportunity for learning to the children of their communities. I've gotten to spend time with the local deployment teams, teachers, trainers, technicians, government officials, children, and even some parents. Sugar, GNU/Linux and OLPC volunteers and community members has also been present everywhere I have gone.
1. Twitter-style: Hello from [http://www.squeakland.org/squeakfest Squeakfest] in Wilmington, North Carolina. We just had a demonstration of some Etoys projects done by 7th graders; pretty amazing. One student, when asked what she does to keep from getting frustrated said: "Damn computer." But she is an accomplished problem solver.
This is the first conference I have been to in years where the majority of presentors are ''not'' using PowerPoint. Naturally, by-in-large, they are using Etoys for their talks.
It is great to see how teachers have incorportated the tool into their curriculum and the realities of school: even the kids built "quizes" into their projects. But most of the learning is guided discovery.
In Peru, I spent time at the ministry of education, giving them an update on the latest from Sugar Labs and discussing with them a strategy for upgrading their XO 1.0 computers while phasing in XO 1.5 machines as well as Sugar on a Stick. The highlight of the trip was a day-long seminar with 1000 teachers from schools in the Lima region. (These teachers will be working with Sugar in the next phase of the Peru deployment.) I gave two presentations: a morning talk on Sugar and pedagogy and an after-lunch demonstration of Sugar (we ate chifa). I had a very good reception, but I was out-staged by the presentation by Sdenka Salas, a teacher from Puno, a city on the shore of Lake Titikaka. Sdenka, as you may recall, wrote a book about Sugar for teachers, ''La Laptop XO en el Aula''. She also hosted Sebastian Silva at a recent Sugar Camp in Puno that made major inroads into translating Sugar into Quechua and Aymara. As usual, I gave my presentation using Turtle Art. Sdenka used Etoys for her talk. Needless to say, the teachers were blown away by seeing the accomplishments of one of their own. It was breathtaking. Victor Castillo ended the meeting with a call for more regional autonomy and sharing among them – a great direction.
In many cases, kids use Etoys from a USB drive, so they could take their work home and turn in their homework.
Bert Freudenberg showed an eloquent way to make animations in Etoys. I am inspired to finally add animation to my sprite library (the one I use for all of my activities: Turtle Art, Abacus, Visual Match, etc.) "Simply" a matter of adding paths and a timer. Yeah right.
Avigail Snir, a teacher from Illinois showed a great example of exploring the modeling of gravity based on a simple basketball simulation. A remarkable thing was her use of a "book" to show the progress of her thinking along the path to discovery – the closest to a "lab notebook" as I have seen with Etoys (or any other learning program, for that matter). Lots more at [http://www.etoysillinois.org/].
Mahnaz Moallem talked about the challenges of making a transition from a well-defined, one best answer, discourage making mistakes classroom into an ill-defined, many answers, making mistakes and developing problem-solving skills classroom. She and her colleagues use extensive use of scaffolding and guiding to help kids stay motivated. Etoys "Flaps" are used for documenting what the kids have done. The consensus among North Carolina teachers at the conference is that there is terrible constraint in the schools in terms of tightly-scheduled problem-based requirements imposed on the teachers.
Chandra Roughton posed a tough question: "Is this a model or is it [just] a visualization?" Etoys teachers think and do and demand a lot of each other and their students. What a breath of fresh air.
===In the community===
2. There is a new and improved website describing teacher resources (in Spanish) here: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Recursos_en_espanol
3. There will be a [[Turtle_Art_Day_2010|Turtle Art Day]] at the Arlington Career Center in Arlington Virginia on 7 August.
===Sugar Labs===
===Sugar Labs===
Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few week of discussion on the IAEP mailing list.
Gary Martin has generated SOMs from the past few weeks of discussion on the IAEP mailing list.
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File:2010-July-3-9-som.jpg|2010 July 3rd-9th (38 emails)
File:2010-July-10-16-som.jpg|2010 July 10th-16th (66 emails)
File:2010-July-17-23-som.jpg|2010 July 17th-23rd (36 emails)
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