[IAEP] Lesson Plans for Sugar (was: Re: [support-gang] The last XO)

[Yama Ploskonka]

Nice renaming of the subject line

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Martin Dengler <martin at martindengler.com>wrote:

>
> Does a taxonomy of lesson plans exist on Curriki or elsewhere?
>

Not that I know of, but it's a great-minds-alike concept.
AT OLE we are trying to put something like that together, I am copying our
people, maybe, maybe if we all pull in the same direction... ! ! !


> PS - One barrier I see to getting more lesson plans is that a)
> teachers often don't have time to write up lesson plans particular to
> Sugar; and b) I (and perhaps other OLPC/Sugar contributers) don't
> think I know what teachers mean by "Lesson Plan".  I presume "Lesson
> Plan" is more than just "list of things I'm going to have the class
> _do_", but a) if it's not, let's say that; and b) anyway, let's build
> a corpus of "lesson plan templates" so that interested people can
> write a lesson plan for teachers [in their target deployment/region's
> template format], rather than forcing the teacher to do it.
>

There are a few more nuances.  In my exempli gratia (pardon my French),
Uruguay, teachers are required to complete certain learning contents, as set
in a curriculum, but they have entire liberty (something they are *very*
touchy about) in *how* they cover those.  Giving them a solution they have
to use mandatorily will assure they clam up for good.

here's the whole caboodle ( at 10 Mb, PDF, too big to be used on the XO :-(
)
http://www.cep.edu.uy/archivos/programaescolar/Programa_Escolar.pdf
They say this is the most recent one, but I thought the current one was the
one with the frontal-nwde guy on the cover...

some background documents
http://www.cep.edu.uy/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=664&Itemid=307

Anyway, thereabouts in the month of  October, 4th grade teachers are
expected to teach, as part of Knowledge of Nature, Geography, on
El Paisaje en el Uruguay. (Uruguay landscape/ecosystems)
- El bioma de pradera. (pairie biome [ecosystem] nobody except schools use
the word biome :-))
- El relieve, el clima, la fauna, la flora; sus relaciones con la actividad
económica y cultural.
topography, weather, wildlife, plants, relationship existing with economic
and cultural activity

How can we manage to have that, *fully packed*, so we simply say, hey! 4th
grade teachers!, just use this, it's all there, no pain! ???

And then do the same for each of a couple hundred line items for 4th grade,
and likewise for each other school grade.  Then, let's see how much of it we
can re-use for Paraguay or Perú, same language but assuredly different
curricular plans.  Then, we get to the fancy, translating, *and* culturaly
localizing for each African country and beyond

The right way is to say, whoa! that's too much (about $800.000 USD worth, my
back of the envelope says) and start fundraising and not do anything until
we have the funds to do it right

The wrong way is to grab one of those lines in the curricular plans, and
start working.  Then take another one.
Maybe the wrong way is the best way...

Part of why this is the wrong way, is that we need to avoid repeating stuff
already available, like for example here:
http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=51&Itemid=115


Worried about the language issues? (you should be)

Then look, there's some English learning that is to happen in 4th grade.
Remember, most teachers in developing countries did not have any opportunity
to learn English, and now they are supposed to teach it (and you wonder why
I sound so funny)  This is everything required for the 4th grade year:

Telling about past events.
Describing actions in the past, finding out what happened, explaining how
something happened (cause – effect).
Describing a historical event giving dates, expressing sequential order
Making future plans (going to).
Making comparisons.

Maybe something could be done there?

In Nepal teachers asked to be helped first with English and Math.  As OLE
Nepal delivers, there is obviously a positive rapport getting built, the
teachers feel they are getting help they can use, the developers get to do
something that ends up being used.

http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/how_to_make_opensour.html
deserves a visit

For example, a developer who wants their activity to be
> used/downloaded could write some lesson plans and use it to drum up

interest.
>

oh yes!

>
> Perhaps even having lesson plans could become a requirement for
> Fructose applications (or a distro's "favorited-by-default"
> applications).
>

I second that.  BTW, it's working for Intel, they have a bunch of demos on
skoool.com, and if you have the guts, enjoy this video, it's just beyond
anything imaginable  (anyone that says I am suggesting we do anything like
this gets coal this Christmas!)  I am putting this just because Halloween is
near.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYkfmAf_jdU
BTW, what is *your* favorite butterfly?

and this is training for teachers on using the XO
http://www.cep.edu.uy/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=173&Itemid=413
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