[Its.an.education.project] untangling constructionism

[Aaron Kaplan]

On May 3, 2008, at 4:42 AM, Bill Kerr wrote:

> SJ:
> Other questions :
>    is this [also] a research project?  Is defining and carrying out  
> short- or long-term studies an integral part of it?  Is  
> collaborative participation in data gathering and analysis an  
> important part?
>    is this an outreach project?  Is reaching new audiences of all  
> ages and backgrounds with a message of [the importance of]  
> educational empowerment integral or incidental?
>
> First question: You could find a whole new strata of educators  
> would come on board, if the research project is embraced. The  
> Scratch project combines constructionist and on line collaborative  
> principles - easy to post finished scratch projects to MIT website.
>
> Second question: If you are an educator and not a developer and  
> live in the industrialised world it has been difficult to become  
> actively involved due to the reluctance to distribute OLPCs to the  
> industrialised world (for legitimate reasons). So in my school in  
> Australia I am now pushing that we buy trollies of EEEs and install  
> Scratch. That is a far from perfect solution - not sugarised - but  
> a huge improvement on taking students to
eh!, If someone sends me an EEE PC I will "do it again" (tada, I can  
hear the melody) and "port" Sugar over to it.
I am pretty sure it actually will run straight out of the box and  
that you have to simply adapt the X11 config.

Or somebody else does it.

a.


PS: hi SJ :)