[Its.an.education.project] First week at Nepal's Test Schools

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Bryan

Thanks for the update from OLPC Nepal

Some thoughts on engaging learners "Bashuki is undoubtedly the more challenging one... even the lure of the cute laptops were not enough to entice the students to school" based on my experience teaching a low achievement migrant group in a developed country.

I see the higher order thinking and problem solving of Etoys as one of the best activities on the OLPC though I understand you may have not started on that yet. If you are unsure about teacher acceptance of etoys, you could schedule etoys as a lunchtime fun activity with an emphasis on playful learning. (though I have had problems with teacher acceptance, the parents have always been 100% supportive)

This lesson plan is based on GameMaker on a Windows platform but should be directly applicable to Etoys as the two activities are very similar. Even programming games which is highly motivating for engaged learners takes quite a lot of effort from the teacher with disengaged students.

Using a completed game (eg street racer or 1945 in GameMaker) break the class into teams to see which team gets the highest score. Next get the students to hack the game so they can cheat a higher score, allow 5 minutes. Encourage collaboration in teams. Then play again. Allow a second cycle, by now some teams will be getting scores that go into arithmetic overflow.

You can also give them various versions of a broken game and give them the challenge of debugging.

These activities are scaffolding for disengaged learners, with the goal of having the students eventually engaged in independent project based learning with etoys.

Tony