[IAEP] Teachers ask programmers / Maestros preguntan a Programadores

[Sameer Verma]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Iain Brown Douglas
<iain at browndouglas.plus.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-11-29 at 05:55 -0200, Carlos Rabassa wrote:
>
>> This could open the competition to write applications to every
>> programmer in the world who has the required knowledge.
>>
>>
>> Teachers with ideas for good educational applications could write them
>> themselves or find a programmer willing to do it.  The teacher could
>> select the programmer without restricting the choice to those willing
>> to work as unpaid volunteers under the rules of SugarLabs.
>>
> How can Sugar address this point and its misapprehension that Sugar
> looks like a closed shop? It was good to see a reply from Bert
> Freudenberg, that paid contributors are welcome.
>
> It would be good to hear it shouted loud that (for example) if a school
> were to commission someone to produce work suitable for the Sugar
> Activity Library, both the school and the writer would be credited.
>
> Carlos writes eloquently and with nice metaphor about the world in which
> he works.
>
> I think part of the content of his message tries to address the lack of
> response to his earlier message, Subject - Where may developers meet
> educators?
>
> As a generous community Sugar does well at harnessing individuals who
> can do some of their best work alone at 3am. How does Sugar go about
> giving support to service users?
>
> One small idea, could Sugar provide teachers with an area to upload and
> share lesson plans? This is a major chore, and in a subject anywhere
> near the edge of ones experience, harder still. When a lesson plan has
> been copied from elsewhere, it does not mean the children will hear it
> twice!
>

This is something a bunch of us are working on (cc'ing them). In OLPC
Jamaica, we started to build a forms-based interface where the lesson
plans could be uploaded not as Word documents, but as text, etc.
filled out in forms so that someone else may come by and "clone" an
existing lesson plan and modify as needed. Unfortunately our main
driving force behind this is no longer in Jamaica (she moved) so
things have become a bit slow.

This also came up at the recent OLPC San Francisco Community Summit as
well. There are a few challenges, but nothing unsurmountable. I agree
that lesson plans are a major challenge in any school environment.

cheers,
Sameer

> To Carlos I would say ask again:
> Where may developers meet educators?
>
> The education of an individual is a massive undertaking, it is built
> with small blocks, like the cat which I too enjoyed, and with other
> blocks with which it is sometimes difficult to work.
>
> Iain Brown Douglas
> Parent and Grandparent.
>
>>
>> Carlos Rabassa
>> Volunteer
>> Plan Ceibal Support Network
>> Montevideo, Uruguay
>> www.tiny.cc/AprendoILearn
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
>



-- 
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Professor, Information Systems
San Francisco State University
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://olpcsf.org/