[IAEP] Fwd: [sugar] Narrative

[Seth Woodworth]

Wow, I'm really really glad to see this kind of conversation happening.
This kind of reflection is exactly what is going to make sugar the defacto
education platform.


I think that two things are needed for children to create narratives; tools
as has already have been discussed (I suggest Audacity for audio editing,
already packaged, need to be improved).  Secondly I would like to see the
ability to upstream.


Ideally I would like the school server to host blogs, edublog, or some other
method of wysiwyg publishing of websites.  We have talked a lot about the XO
allowing people to communicate up and out about the troubles they face in
these countries[1], to make us aware of how we can help/teach (or not as the
events warrent).


There aren't academic formal education studies about how OLPC/Sugar is
improving education.  If anecetdotal is all that exists, let's use it to
engage our community, to encourage volunteerism.


Free software == awesome
Free software that you can see helping people  *>*  awesome



[1] http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/high-on-a-hill/post.htm?id=63006514&t=tag


--Seth

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 2:06 PM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org>
> wrote:
> > This takes us back to the collaboration server discussions from last
> week.
> >
> > Rather than attempting to organizing content it may be preferable to
> improve
> > the tools which help users self organize into communities.
> >
> > Last night I got into a discussion about the value of the Neighborhood
> view
> > with my 2nd grade niece:)  She was pretty befuddled as to why she had to
> > chose between belkin_019, linksys_1, meshview_11,....  From her
> perspective
> > it made more sense to click on 'Mrs. Kings class' if she wanted to do her
> > homework, or 'After school fun' if she wanted to talk with her friends.
> >
> > While the idea of APs and mesh networks is important to us as geeks and
> > developers.  From a user point of view the idea of virtual communities or
> > rooms seems clearer.
> >
> > Maybe it is my misunderstanding of the nature of a jabber sever.  A IRC
> > server is pretty useless until the users can self select into channels.
> >
> > Possibly, the idea of manipulating narratives could be best handled by
> > helping communities develop which can discover, share, and reflect on
> > _their_own_ stories.
> >
> > thanks
> > david
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 11:39 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> We need to add an its.an.education.project alias to this list...
> >>
> >> -walter
> >>
> >> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >> From: Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> >> Date: Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 12:29 PM
> >> Subject: Re: [sugar] Narrative
> >> To: Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu>
> >> Cc: Bryan Berry <bryan.berry at gmail.com>, bens at alum.mit.edu, sugar
> >> <sugar at lists.laptop.org>, "its. an. education. project"
> >> <its.an.education.project at lists.sugarlabs.org>
> >>
> >>
> >> Each of us seems to have interpreted Michael's note differently, so
> >> perhaps some more clarity of definitions is in order. In any case, my
> >> focus was on the assertion that there are  "no excellent way to
> >> manipulate narratives" within Sugar. Excellence is the standard we
> >> should be striving for and I do agree we have a ways to go in terms of
> >> developing tools for "manipulating" "narratives" within Sugar. But it
> >> seems a funny dichotomy: manipulating narratives vs. modes for
> >> discovery.
> >>
> >> When I think about Sugar, I think about its providing a scaffolding
> >> for discovering, expressing, critiquing, and reflecting. Manipulating
> >> narrative seems to cut across all of these area (as does
> >> collaboration). We have a browser--the "discovery" platform du
> >> jour--but also an ebook reader and media player, and various tools for
> >> collecting and inspecting data (e.g, Measure and Distance). In terms
> >> of expression, we have a wide variety of tools, including word
> >> processing, rich media, programming, etc. Tools for critique and
> >> reflection seems the least developed thus far: we have chat and we
> >> have sharing and simple debugging tools, and we have the Journal, but
> >> we don't yet support (natively) much in the way of organizing data to
> >> make an analysis or argument. Is this the role Bryan expects Moodle to
> >> play? If so, I don't really see how.  There are beginnings of tools
> >> such as spreadsheets, mindmaps, etc. being "Sugarized". What else
> >> should we add to this list? There is also a powerful presentation
> >> toolkit built into Etoys--is it the lack of PowerPoint that Bryan is
> >> missing?--but it is not very easy to find. Perhaps something more
> >> wiki-like or HTML-based would be better. Having it available off-line
> >> is probably as important as accessing an on-line system, such as is
> >> already available in Moodle and in general on any GNU/Linux (or even
> >> Windows) server. In terms of organizing school itself, Moodle and its
> >> like certainly have an important role to play. Sugar is not intended
> >> to be all things, but part of a learning ecosystem.
> >>
> >> There is certainly a paucity of lesson plans developed around Sugar:
> >> how does one best leverage this collection of tools for learning. And
> >> undoubtedly, a dearth of content readily packaged and categorized. But
> >> I don't see these as fundamental design flaws in Sugar as much as a
> >> place where more effort needs to be invested. Sugar is reaching a
> >> point of maturity where such investments make sense.
> >>
> >> In any case, I'd love to hear Michael's "interesting ideas".
> >>
> >> -walter
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Walter Bender
> >> Sugar Labs
> >> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> >> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> >> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
> >
> >
>
>
> I like your niece's model of the neighborhood view--maybe we can have
> some way of generating aliases for the various APs based upon which
> Jabber server you are on; the Jabber servers themselves could have
> nicknames too, based on their intended constituency. But it skirts the
> question of what tools communities use to organize content and
> generate their narratives.
>
> -walter
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
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