[math4] 3. Personal Letter to Educators (Karlie Robinson)

[Karlie Robinson]

Inline

Eric Grace wrote:
> I will probably be a good resource for advocating and connecting our 
> efforts to local school districts and have been developing some of my 
> contacts in both RCSD, Sodus School District, and local non-profit 
> organizations.
>
> We could strategically plan a regional dissemination of OLPC efforts 
> or just shotgun requests and see what takes.  Either or both 
> approaches are fine with me to start.

I do have my notes posted from EdTech day in Ithaca [1], and I'd be 
happy to take the show on the road - especially close to home (easier to 
schedule around if I'm not gone all day - ya know?!)

>
> Each school district's interests and negotiations will differ, but it 
> would be good to identify our goals, efforts, outcomes, and potential 
> costs involved.  

Right now, we should focus on finding educators and coders who want to 
give time to get an XO.  We don't usually have such generous terms to 
offer volunteers so we should take advantage of Dave's pallet of XO's 
before they're gone.

Especially K-12 Educators - see my reasons below. 

> We can use the XO's as is & test any new developments we want to get 
> feedback.  I see three different models to pitch each with 
> specific/individual Policies, Procedures, & Plan/Framework development 
> needed for:
>
> 1. "XO Lab on a Cart" -
>
> 2. "XO Lab After School Program" -
>
> 3. "XO School Lab" -
>
>
> Thoughts & feedback?

The issue of getting all the schools on board with XO's will be like 
moving a mountain.  Not that it can't be done, but the progress could be 
very slow.  We can grease the wheels if XOs are popping up all over the 
place.  Teaching via the XO much less abstract when educators have had a 
chance to manipulate the machine with their own hands. 

The biggest barrier to US Schools going with XO roll outs is that the 
machines aren't a consumer product.  As such, the schools need to think 
about how they can meet the 5 core principles [2] of the OLPC Project. 

In my opinion, the biggest barriers are 1 and 3, Child Ownership and 
Saturation. 

The good news is that Sugar is becoming more independent of the XO 
itself schools will be able to use the software in anyway they choose. 
(Sugar on a stick and the upstream integration with Fedora will make any 
PC a Sugar factory)  With that said, your ideas will become the ideas 
that bridge traditional EdTech with 1:1 computing. 

~Karlie
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Webpath/EdTech - ODP file is in 
the links at the bottom
[2] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Core_principles/lang-en