[Its.an.education.project] Further training

[Bryan Berry]

We haven't done it at all but intend to.

For right now, we are just trying to get teachers 1) comfortable w/
using computers 2) and comfortable using them in the classroom

We didn't want to teach teachers about programming when many of them
hadn't yet used a computer in their lives and most have extremely
limited English skills. Teaching Pippy is out of the question when you
aren't literate in English. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to
translate EToys nor Scratch fully. 

We hope to expand later into using EToys and other tools like Scratch
(my favorite). The key is to have well-tested lesson plans that teachers
can start w/ and build from. We are already seeing the more innovative
teachers create their own lesson plans, teachers like Bhim and Manoj
Ghimire at Bishwamitra. We need an easy way to share lesson plans from
teachers.

To my knowledge, teaching programming exercises is part of the plan but
in due time.

My comments above are in regards to training teachers. We have no doubt
many of the kids will figure out programming on their own. In regards to
constructionism in general, we believe the kids will get it either way
so we put most of our efforts into making sure the education system in
Nepal gets it. 

we want to be disruptive but not so disruptive that we alienate the
teachers that will sustain this project in the long term. w/out the
support of teachers, there won't be any electricity at the school, the
School server won't be maintained, the XO's won't be maintained, and the
local parent associations won't support this project.

On Sun, 2008-05-04 at 22:18 -0700, Edward Cherlin wrote:
> To what extent have you taught the Nepalese teachers about using
> programming exercises in lessons? This can be done in many ways, and I
> have some knowledge of the literature and researchers in this area.
> Others in the OLPC community presumably know more than I do about it.
> 
> The basic technique for introducing programming is to have programs
> that are interesting to use, but simple enough so that children can
> make small changes to get interesting behavior. This is known to work
> in third grade, and I conjecture that we can move it to earlier grades
> using appropriate cases. In fact, I believe that pre-literate children
> could be introduced to iconic graphical programming systems based on
> appropriate research. Does anybody know of research on such a system?
> 
-- 
Bryan W. Berry
Systems Engineer
OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org