[IAEP] Barbarians at the gate! (Project Nell)

[Yamandu Ploskonka]

Scott, Chris, Michael,

so good to hear from you!

so, we're not supposed to like it! :-( (reverse psych won't work with 
me, guys) :-)

Well, anything that writes about Sugar in the past or at least as 
something missing a major overhaul /does/ get my attention. Not that 
Sugar is bad, to the contrary, but that it could be (have been :-)) *so* 
much better, were it not hampered by reality-disconnected ideology...

Which, of course, doesn't mean I am sold out on NELL

(your section number, paragraph number)
(Abstract, 1)
/used by.../ IMVHO should be /distributed to/.  Very little evidence 
that Sugar is actually *used* anywhere regularly, that I know of, 
besides maybe Nepal. (y'all know this better than many...)
(1,1)
Solar has so many wrongs in Real World... Will work a piece on that.
(1,2)
note that here you have the machine /initiating/ the interaction. 
Everywhere else you seem to have it as the kid being in charge. BIG 
difference, except the passing  mention in (4,2).
For that latter, well said!
(1,2)
What if she doesn't nod? (or accept to have a story right at this second?)
Everything here seems to be built upon the assumption, which doesn't 
hold to any assessment on children-initiated learning I know of, that 
the kid will *take* to Nell, just like that and for the duration...
(1,4-5)
I love this! the machine asking for some different kind of action. Very 
powerful (actually this idea is the one I like most in the whole paper, 
and not hard to implement)
Again, unclear how pervasive is this thing about the machine asking 
things, and how will this work if the kid doesn't submit in full? 
Non-trivial, I say.
(1,6)
there's something VERY powerful here, "the book tells her ... very good 
/*at*/". (3.1,5) sort of very weakly follows up with "*inferred* 
learning style". This segue is so weak precisely in the approach that 
*I* :-) consider paramount, a major area that needs, *deserves* building 
on. Great foundation y'all are fixin' - most authors miss these issues 
at all - yet needs muscle and a sharper edge.

(2.1,1) "like *all* humans". Yes, the whole proposal relies on 
**stories** being the Grail, but, if you really mean 2.2 and abjure of 
one-size-fits-all pedagogy (which I think you are trying), then this 
needs the qualifier "most".
(I still think you got a great concept in the storybook metaphor - this 
I'm nagging out of principle)
(2.1,2)
characters ... specific .  Hmmm, makes me wonder if it would somehow 
make someone like a given subject area if they associate themselves with 
the character. What if were the kid who assigns 
subjects/areas/personalities to the characters?
then, of course, each one's own story would be different from the other 
kid's stories, but I see nothing wrong with that. Neal Stephenson and 
any SF/parallel universe lover would be proud of such a twist! it also 
fits with 2.2,3, and certainly "pervasive customization" in 4,2

traditional lesson plan... aha! Whose? would that be a one-size-fits-all 
lesson plan? (that would be very baaaad, and total loosage)
(2.1,3)
The biggest weakness of Sugar is this ideology of kid initiated 
learning. A Good (capital G) learning platform gives more guidance than 
kuddos or a contextual help (BTW, I find Power's paper tells little 
about why that particular approach).  IT-platform pedagogy guidance is a 
*major* subject of research for me, but this is not my paper, so I'll pass.

I *loooove* the handwriting bit, here and elsewhere. I always felt it 
was a crying shame the pads on the sides of the XO didn't make it beyond 
the testing stage.
(2.2)
Just this one area, well handled, could give us this time a chance to 
change the world :-). I'll look for a paper on adaptive learning I found 
somewhere, so you also get more conversant on this. It's quite obvious 
y'all know a bit or two about AI. I want to encourage your interest on 
adaptive, which I hope you will deepen on, so Nell will spearhead success.
(2.2,2 Am I the only one that shudders when hearing or seeing the word 
/Journal/? :-))
(2.3,2)
"growing intelligence"? I just did a word search of something nagging me 
in the background, and confirmed that your paper does not once use the 
word "knowledge"...  hmmm.  Is that supposed to mean anything?
(2.3,3)
Does this mean Nell will be issued to teachers also? and the teachers 
expected to *use* it? Well, good luck! I have a mind to re-read your 
paper with a marker to highlight every idea  that has been tried already 
with limited or no success (for the record: I have always been a 
supporter of using the XO for "grownup stuff", and never belittle it as 
a "children's machine" - currently I am writing a manual to use the XO 
for mighty microcontroller programming). The problem here is of getting 
the grownups buy-in. If Nicholas used the machine, it might be 
believable, some. Am I the only one who has presented at a conference 
with a paper and presentation 100% done in the XO? Dunno if even RMS did 
more than check his email. Danceswithcars, hail!
(2.3,5)
Oh! so there is such a thing as a "capable child", with giftings 
uncommon to the rest! :-)
(applause for daring to publish such a not-PC, non teachers-union 
notion, though in all fairness I might have to reach for that 
highlighter...)
(2.4,2)
get rid of the "our"
Careful about lowering the floor so bad that anything worthy of more 
just falls to the basement. I also do wonder how source code editing 
works on a handwriting interface

(3,1)
"The" would look more scientsy than "our". "We" is OK
(3.1-2)
OK, so you know about storytelling AI.  What about, say, a math module?
(3.3)
JS? hmmm, interesting. I guess it cannot be worse than Python.  Can you 
please leave LOGO and a command line easily accessible also?

(4,2)
What you mean by "pedagogical guidance" for the students (and teachers) 
needs more flesh, since its absence (חוֹשֶך) probably accounts for more of 
Sugar's plagues than keyboard issues (merely שְׁחִין), and thus an 
alternative needs to be more explicit. Again, applause for daring to 
tell some of it.

(5,2)
When you are deploy-testing it, please focus on how much it can fly by 
itself, and if at all, whether it remains interesting when novelty has 
past and further nice-bwana input and encouragement is not the primary 
mover.

I hope some of this is of any use to you guys. I really do appreciate 
your hard work, and I do dare to be somewhat sharper than usual because 
I hope you're still the tough guys I have had the honor to learn from 
and spend quality time with.
I'll follow up with the URL to that adaptive-learning piece, I thought I 
saw it in the garage recently.  As I keep learning more about what 
doesn't work and why, I become more than ever convinced that adaptive is 
the way to go, for something scalable, relevant, and a win-win, 
especially where education structure is a fail - which seems to inch 
toward also including places too close to home...

Yama


On 03/13/2012 06:07 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
> I read the following today:
>
>     "A healthy [project] is, confusingly, one at odds with itself.
>     There is a healthy part which is attempting to normalize and to
>     create predictability, and there needs to be another part that is
>     tasked with building something new that is going to disrupt and
>     eventually destroy that normality."
>     (http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/03/13/hacking_is_important.html)
>
>
> So, in this vein, I'd like to encourage Sugar-folk to read the short 
> paper Chris Ball, Michael Stone, and I just submitted (to IDC 2012) on 
> Nell, our design for XO-3 software for the reading project:
>
> http://cscott.net/Publications/OLPC/idc2012.pdf
>
> You're expected not to like it: this is supposed to be the Barbarian 
> viewpoint. ;-)  Regardless, I've love to hear feedback on what exactly 
> you didn't like, so that I can improve the arguments for the final 
> published version (assuming the paper gets accepted).  Thanks!
>  --scott
>
> -- 
>       ( http://cscott.net )
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
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