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

[Kevin Mark]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 08:17:30AM -0400, Walter Bender wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Kevin Mark <kevin.mark at verizon.net> wrote:
<snip>
 >
> > 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.
> 
As someone who has followed since G1G1, this is what I learned.

> 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.

I am happy that the (ceibal, realness, olpcSF, etc) summits in the last few
years have happened to allow folks to compare their efforts and hope it
continues.

> 
> 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.

Its great that things are improving and that deployments are learning to take
advantage of the tools that Sugar has! This year and next should see a lot of
improvement after EduJam 2011. I like the upcoming multi-selection and the
adding of support for ~/document in the Journal
Sugar is getting support from folks in Nepal, from Ceibal, from Activity Cental
and other places and that is great!

-- 
|  .''`.  == Debian GNU/Linux ==.| http://kevix.myopenid.com......|
| : :' :     The Universal OS....| mysite.verizon.net/kevin.mark/.|
| `. `'   http://www.debian.org/.| http://counter.li.org [#238656]|
|___`-____Unless I ask to be CCd,.assume I am subscribed._________|

Where's th' DAFFY DUCK EXHIBIT??