[IAEP] Computer as a tool

[David Farning]

This is outstanding!

Have you considered using Sugar or Sugar on a stick for your program?

What have been the issues preventing you from using Sugar? What
blockers still exist which would prevent you from using Sugar?

thanks
david

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 10:41 AM, K. K. Subramaniam<subbukk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday 13 Jul 2009 7:02:33 pm Caroline Meeks wrote:
>> What sort of results do you have so far?
> The new academic year has just started. In the prev one, around 75% of the
> kids learnt to handle the computer well enough to create at least one project
> in Etoys in a space of about four calendar months (which included holidays and
> term exams).  Around 25% of the children were yet to record their projects.
> Schools closed (Apr/May) before we could dig deeper into the causes.
>> Technologically: How many USB sticks failed? How many were lost/stollen?
> None reported so far. For students, the chip is their most precious
> possession.
>> Did the kids find any places to use the sticks outside of school?
> Yes. Some kids do, when they visit their relatives in the city. BTW, computers
> are not tied to the school. With personal data separated from the 'machine',
> many teachers chose to 'issue' computers to children like books, so that they
> could 'work' during evenings and holidays or participate in science contests.
>> Do you have any measure of how much content was created? Is there much
>> sharing between schools? Do you have any advice on how to facilitate sharing
>> of created content?
> Our intention was to equip students with 'infinite supplies' so that they could
> jot down their personal ideas and stories not for creating content for the
> classroom.  Teachers did not venture to 'correct' mistakes in the projects nor
> use it towards grades so students could 'tinker' with their pet ideas withour
> fear or stress. We used the number of projects recorded on the chip as a proxy
> for the effort. See
>  http://sikshana.blogspot.com/2009/04/digitally-literate-rural-students-
> enter.html
> for details.
>
> Mentors from our foundation visited schools twice a week and helped them stay
> abreast of developments in other schools.
>
> I remain vary of  'content'. I have seen too many cases of content of dubious
> value. The teachers and students are quite capable of creating their own
> content. If they need help, they contact us. That is why I stick to software
> like Stellarium, Etoys, LaTeX and Inkscape.
>
> While early results are positive enough to spur us to cover all 120 schools
> this year, I remain cautious and vigilant. A program like this has to be run
> for many years before we can establish an enduring change in the learning
> environment.
>
> Subbu
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-- 
David Farning
Sugar Labs
www.sugarlabs.org