Preamble

"Worldwide people are testing and improving Sugar on a Stick. With the help of people like you, trying it and telling us what problems and suggestions you have, we plan to having this in the first classrooms this fall and in the first schools schoolwide in the Spring. This is an all volunteer effort and your help, even now when we still have a lot of bugs, is really important."


Please add your questions for teachers here

jt4sugar: Ask the teachers in Uraguay to tell us how they would get other teachers involved


In questions, we should try to separate the concepts of

  • access to computers,
  • electronic content,
  • the specific features of the XO hardware,
  • the operating system Sugar,
  • the Activities, and
  • internet access.

Thoughts on the OLPC five core principles—

  • Child Ownership,
  • Low Ages,
  • Saturation,
  • Connection, and
  • Free and Open Source.

How important are they in the context of your community?

The OLPC can be customised for the local language. How far has this proceeded? How important is it? What are the problems? What are the perspectives of different stakeholder groups? (In South America, to what extent has Spanish displaced local language?)

How can ICT in general and Sugar in particular be appropriated to meet local needs? Are there any anecdotes of appropriation?

How might ICT education in general and Sugar in particular change relationships between people in your country, for example gender access to technology, relationships between children and adults, urban and village? How might kinship relationships be enhanced or weakened?

See also http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Oceania/Evaluation



We should get feedback on the Journal, View Source, and Collaboration...


For a self administered test can have 10-20 questions maximum? For a conference with 600 teachers with OLPC experience could we ask more questions of a smaller group?

Select questions from the list below, need to cut back to a much much smaller number:
(when drafting questions consider carefully whether to say OLPC program OLPC, XO, OLPC software, XO software Sugar etc)

What year level do you mainly teach? P, 1, 2 ....12, other

Learners access to computers is important because computers can be a tool to think with, they facilitate problem solving and deep thinking. disagree 12345 agree

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

Learners access to computers is important because they need to learn how to use programs such as word processors to participate in a technological world (disagree 12345 more)

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

// these questions or similar evaluate the teacher's position on instructivism/constructivism for correlation with other responses

It is important that computers provide an easy entry for first time users (disagree 12345 agree)

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

It is important that computers support more complicated tasks as a users competence grows (disagree 12345 agree)

As a result of OLPC I now believe this less 12345 more

// these questions or similar evaluate the teacher's position on low entry/high ceiling for correlation with other responses, relevant to Journal and show source

My students' 3 favourite Activities are?

The 3 best learning Activities are?

How satisfied have your students been with the XO? 12345

How satisfied have you been with the XO? 12345

How satisfied have parents and the community been with the XO? 12345

The XO would be better if it ran Microsoft Windows? 12345

Rate the importance of (unimportant 12345 important)

  • Child Ownership,
  • Low Ages,
  • Saturation,
  • Connection, and
  • Free and Open Source

How important are:
Have your students used:
How satisfied are you with:

  • Journal,
  • View Source, and
  • Collaboration

The XO has resulted in (disagree 12345 agree)(from link)
0.Reduced absenteeism
1.Greater engagement by children
2.Empowerment of teachers
3.Increased esteem of teachers
4.Reduced need of discipline
5.Less disruption by students
6.Increase in self esteem by students
7.Increased “connection” with the world (other cultures, languages, ideas)
8.Increased involvement by parents
9.School becomes the centre of the community
10.Development of a sharing culture (child to child, school to community, teacher to parent)
11.Better results than with Computer Labs