[IAEP] OLPC at UW Madison - was Re: Study with Scratch?

[Caroline Meeks]

Hi Sandy and Andrea,

There are so many layers here I'm not sure who is working with the 4th/5th
graders....  Do your 4th/5th graders have access to computers at home?

We maybe working on similar use cases and trying to solve them with a "Sugar
on a Stick" solution.

You guys already have Sugar on a USB working.  Probably the other thing
you'll need is to send the kids home with a "boot helper" CD that allows the
USB to effectively boot off of any machine that is setup to boot from a CD.
This is most computers, whereas some older computers do not support USB Boot
and parents may not be enthusiastic about kids playing with the BIOS of
their home computers.

If this matches your use case You can follow and I hope contribute to the
project here.

http://www.sugarlabs.org/go/DeploymentTeam/School_Key

Let me know how it goes. I'm interested in finding out how robust the cheap
USBs are or if they get corrupted easily when subject to real world use.

Caroline





>>>> >>
>>>> >> To give you some background: I'm a faculty member in the Computer
>>>> >> Sciences department and have been experimenting lately with teaching
>>>> >> 4th/5th graders computer programming with Scratch from MIT.  This
>>>> >> semester, we've been running an afterschool club with 14 kids (6
>>>> >> girls, 8 boys) at Shorewood Elementary.    There are a few details
>>>> >> here: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dusseau/catapult.html<http://www.cs.wisc.edu/%7Edusseau/catapult.html>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> So far, we've been running Scratch on $500 Dell laptops that I've
>>>> been
>>>> >> carting around (the kids do not get to take them home).
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Given that Scratch also runs on the XO, I thought this might set up
>>>> an
>>>> >> opportunity for a good comparison study between using traditional
>>>> >> laptops (our control group) and the XO.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> I haven't played around with the XO much yet, but it seems to me that
>>>> >> it is disappointingly slow for running Scratch.  I am curious as to
>>>> >> whether the slowness would bother the kids or not.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> One idea for this semester (the club is about  half-way done for this
>>>> >> semester) is to have some (or all) of the kids switch to using an XO
>>>> >> for the remaining weeks and we could compare the experiences.
>>>> >> Certainly, the draw of being able to take the XO home (if that is
>>>> >> allowed) and work on their Scratch projects outside of the club
>>>> (which
>>>> >> very few are currently doing), might make up for the XO's slowness.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> If the XO results from this semester are promising, we could then be
>>>> >> more methodical next semester and give 1/2 the kids XOs and 1/2 my
>>>> >> $500 laptops and compare their experiences (and final projects).
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Thoughts?
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Thanks,
>>>> >> Andrea
>>>> >>
>>>> >> ---
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>>>> >> To unsubscribe click here:
>>>> >>
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>>>> >>
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>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >
>>>> > --
>>>> > Sandra Shaw Courter, PhD
>>>> > Director, Engineering Learning Center
>>>> > Professor, Engineering Professional Development
>>>> > University of Wisconsin - Madison
>>>> > Engineering Centers Building, room M1012
>>>> > 1550 Engineering Drive
>>>> > Madison, WI 53706
>>>> > 608-265-9767 phone
>>>> > 608-265-9768 fax
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>
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-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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