[IAEP] [ANNOUNCE] FourthGradeMath at lists.sugarlabs.org

[Frederick Grose]

I may have missed the announcement of this new list at lists.sugarlabs.org,
 http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/fourthgrademath

On 14 March 2009, I posted this to the list:

I'm Frederick Grose (FGrose), a facilitator for the OLPC Rochester, NY
grassroots group [1] and the RIT Honors Seminar, Developing for the OLPC XO,
[2] which has adopted *some portion* of the 4th-Grade Math project. [3]

This mailing list and project has attracted good attention, and so, the
desires for many, yet-to-be-fulfilled needs are converging here.

Some background on its short history is available here. [4]

The RIT Honors Seminar held its introductory session on Friday 13 March
2009, [5] and will be a learning space for a number of goals described by
Professor Stephen Jacobs here. [6, 7] Community involvement is one of those
goals, so we will work to integrate those willing to mentor students in the
seminar.  There is lots of potential for spawning learning collaborations.

Professor Eric Grace is a New York State USA certified K-12 educator, and
will provide direct guidance to the seminar on teaching & learning issues,
but needn't work alone, for certainly, additional educator engagement is a
primary goal of the Sugar Labs Education Team. [8]  One might consider the
4th-Grade Math project a practical, distributed effort at advancing the
overarching educational goals of iaep.

Others should add to the list of goals, and we all should consider ways to
effectively collaborate on the needs.

Those who are eager to start coding, or designing, or documenting, or ...
may read the list archive, [9] for ideas, and ping others for specifics, or
just begin, and share their efforts to attract collaborators.

Greg Dekoenigsberg and Karlie Robinson are Fedora Ambassadors and are
founders and leading diplomats for the 4th Grade Math project.  The
Ambassadors are custodians of the
OLPC North American Developers Program for 6 months. [10]  Karlie's presence
in Rochester has been catalytic for the effort.

Thank you for your interest and contributions!  May the collaborations grow
and deepen!

       --Fred


[1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Rochester,_NY
[2] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/RIT_honors_seminar,_developing_for_the_OLPC_XO
[3] http://sugarlabs.org/go/Math4
[4] http://sugarlabs.org/go/Math4/RIT
[5]
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/RIT_honors_seminar,_developing_for_the_OLPC_XO/13_March_2009
[6]
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/fourthgrademath/2009-March/000023.html
[7]
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/fourthgrademath/2009-March/000058.html
[8] http://sugarlabs.org/go/Education_Team
[9] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/fourthgrademath/
[10]
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-olpc-list/2009-February/msg00033.html

On 20 March 2009, I posted this:

Professors Stephen Jacobs and Eric Grace held the 2nd of 10 weekly
sessions for the
RIT Honors Seminar, Developing for the OLPC XO,
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/RIT_honors_seminar,_developing_for_the_OLPC_XO.

The 19 students present received, and checked out the XO laptop and
got a bit more oriented
to the seminar plans.  Weeks 1 - 5 will focus on research and
brainstorming on the project domain.
Weeks 6 - 10 will consist of prototype building and breaking.

Slightly edited session notes from the irc.freenode.net #fedora-olpc
channel are at,
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/RIT_honors_seminar%2C_developing_for_the_OLPC_XO/20_March_2009.
(They are a bit sparse, due to the content and my inexperience.)

With only 3 weeks left for the research and preliminary brainstorming
design phase of the seminar,
we hope that the those interested will latch onto student posts and
ideas as they appear online.
Students also are expected to find online collaborators.

Please make an effort to join irc.freenode.net #fedora-olpc next at
10:00 - 11:50 EDT (14:00 - 15:50 UTC)
 on Friday 27 March 2009.  (I'll post a Google Calendar invitation to
the group, for those that keep electronic
calendars.)  The seminar will reserve some time for individual and
collective irc communications.

The professors may post a more detailed agenda in the coming week to
help narrow the time for you tune in.

Thanks for volunteering!