[IAEP] State of Soas?

[Caroline Meeks]

>
>
> At this point I would have to recommend not referring SoaS as
> classroom ready.   The classroom is an extremely demanding
> environment:
> 1. One teacher - 25 squirmy kids.
> 2. Almost no system administration resources.
> 3. Little formal SoaS teacher training available.
> 4. Very distinct, often testable, learning objectives of a given class
> period.
>
> In a classroom environment, the system must be rock solid!


Great list! Lets keep this insight. I'd just change "teacher training" to
"teacher support".  In an ideal world we don't train for a few days and send
people off alone, we have ongoing support  for teacher learning communities.

Also we need to distinish between Sugar on a Stick, working with existing
equiptment which is very much in Beta, and Sugar as the operating system for
a 1-1 laptop program in an elementary school.  Although, far from where we
want it to be, I think an arguement can be made that Sugar is the most
widely used solution worldwide for this use case.  If a school or district
is persuing a well planned, deliberate 1-1 program on any type of new
netbook or laptop, for Sugar's target age range, Sugar should defitely be
one of the options they evaluate.

>
> david


A related topic is: Is Sugar on a Stick "Summer Program" ready?

The Sweet:

   1. Summer programs are less formal and often have an agenda to expose
   kids to a wide range of new experiences
   2. Many summer programs take place in schools and after school centers
   that have a computer lab
   3. Summer programs are often staffed with teens who maybe quite computer
   literate
   4. Summer programs start in the end of June or so in the US and go to mid
   august.  Sugar would not need to be ready day 1.

The Sour:

   1. People are still reporting frustration creating sticks - Will this be
   significantly lower by July 1?
   2. Do we have access to project idea resources for camp staff once they
   get it working? If we had Scratch on the stick we'd have a big Yes to this
   question. Scratch is widely used in out of school programs.
   3. Can we support voluteers and camp staff as they strugle with their
   hardware?
   4. Are we organizationally ok with the fact that some people will try and
   fail and be upset about it? Do we think we will get more success then
   failure? Will it be worth it?


>
> > Thanks,
> > Christoph
> >
> > --
> > Christoph Derndorfer
> > co-editor, olpcnews
> > url: www.olpcnews.com
> > e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> > IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
> >
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/attachments/20090425/36ad55a8/attachment-0001.htm