[IAEP] [support-gang] Journal prompts (was: Re: FW: [OLPC Bolivia] No logro aprender Sugar / I cannot learn Sugar)

[Walter Bender]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Kevin Mark <kevin.mark at verizon.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 08:16:23PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote:
> <snip>
>> >
>> > So what we seem to be left with at this point is a system which tries to
>> > force users to add comments or tags even though there is very little
>> > incentive or supportive mechanisms to actually do much with that metadata.
>>
>> One of my favorite examples of using a computer is school is a 1-to-1
>> program at a middle school in Dorchester, MA. The kids spend five
>> minutes writing at the end of *every* class, including gym. Even if
>> they never use "that metadata", the act of reflecting is important.
>>
>> We do have some tools/supportive mechanisms for using that metadata,
>> including the Portfolio activity. Have you tried it?
>
> As someone who is not versed in educational theory, I have tried to understand
> what intentions where put into Sugar. I have herd mention of Constructionism and
> Constructivism and reflection. I could imagine writing after doing something as
> a way to gain more from any activity, so that sounds like something any
> deployment should do, but I dont know the total picture of what was expected.
> And I dont know about what is or was done to convey these idea of reflection,
> the journal, the writing and collaboration as part of an ecosystem to the
> deployment educators. If this is being done, I'd like to learn about it and if
> not, then what did I miss about what is told to deployments?

The Sugar design was informed by educational theory and lots of
experience on the ground in numerous pilot programs conducted in
places as far ranging as an inner-city school in the US to a one-room
school in the hill-country of Thailand. That said, the reality of
Sugar deployments is that they are largely determined by the local
teams, which vary from top-down ministry-of-education initiatives to
bottom-up grass-roots efforts by an NGO to the initiative of an
individual classroom teacher. So there is not one voice or message.

What we try to do with Sugar is to skew the odds that certain (good)
things would happen, regardless of the details of the deployment. (In
a similar vain, the 5 principles of OLPC are meant to skew the odds
that a 1-to-1 deployment will have maximum impact.) But we cannot and
don't want to force these ideas on deployments; rather we want them to
be appropriated and transformed locally as fit the needs -- a tough
balance to achieve. More and better documentation is certainly in
order. Even better would be real examples of best practice from the
deployments themselves.

One of main ideas behind the Journal is to give the learner a place to
reflect on their work -- providing a consistent forum for that
reflection. We also envision that the Journal will be used as part of
the assessment process as entries can be incorporated into a
collection of artifacts that the learner can periodically amass and
present. (There is some good literature on portfolio assessment,
including Stefanakis Evangeline's book --
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/mi08012002.html -- which I
find a nice balance between theory and practice.)

Not every deployment has leveraged this aspect of Sugar yet, but as we
continue to improve the underlying tools, I think we'll see more use.
(By chance, when I was visiting the Caacupé deployment last year, I
happened upon a meeting at one of the schools where the parents were
being taught how to use the Journal so that they could talk with their
children about their work, so I know that at least in some places, the
Journal is being used in ways that we envisioned.) It was in response
to feedback I got at the OLPC-sponsered assessment summit a few months
back that I wrote the Portfolio activity --
http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4437 -- which I am
hoping will lower the barrier to using portfolios as a routine part of
the Sugar experience.

regards.

-walter

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-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org