[IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS

[Steve Thomas]

John,

Also if you would like support with Etoys, I would be happy to help and
live not that far from Philadelphia.
Please check out the lesson plans on etoysillinois.org

They have a wonderful set of lesson plans for K-6.

Steve Thomas

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 1:50 PM, John Tierney <jtis4stx at hotmail.com> wrote:

>  Hi John,
>
> I would say your summary is pretty well on target
> taking into account Peter's comments and the continued
> improvements he has been making with each SoaS release.
> I would be happy to have a conversation with you on Skype
> or phone and give you some ideas on how you might want to
> approach the local Universities to establish relationships in Computer
> Science and Education schools to build up a support system. I think
> you mentioned your in Philadelphia so Temple and Drexel would be
> great options as well as the other smaller schools.
>
> I have been collaborating with Dr. Kevin Brooks and his Great Fargo
> project since its inception. I met Kevin at the Computers and Writing
> Conference at Purdue in 2010, where I helped put on a Sugar  Workshop
> with Dr. Gerald Ardito, and Walter Bender who joined via Skype. In turn I
> joined Kevin and his graduate student Chris Lindgren at the University of
> Michigan at Computers&Writing 2011 for another Sugar Workshop.
>
> I think this would be a great place for you to talk about the education
> portions of the project,for the technical questions/issues and updates
> on that front the Soas list would be best.
>
> It's Great to see you trying to help out your learners in this manner.
> Let me know if I can be of assistance.
>
> Best!
> John Tierney
> Skype: jt4sugar
> #248-613-7392
>
> > From: john at johnlandis.net
> > Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:10:41 -0500
> > To: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org
> > Subject: Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS
>
> >
> > Thanks so much for the warm welcome. Particularly to Patricio,
> > Harriet, and Kevin for sharing such fascinating links.
> >
> > If it's okay, I'm going to use this list as a sounding board for my
> > thoughts as I explore Sugar. Again, if there's a better place for
> > this type of thing, please let me know!
> >
> > So far, I'm getting the impression that Sugar on A Stick is more or
> > less limited to experimental university-school partnerships, and
> > hasn't yet reached a phase of wide deployment in the hands of schools.
> > Is this an accurate assessment?
> >
> > The reason I'm interested in SOAS is that I work in the traditional
> > "computer lab" setting that is so familiar in K12 schools in the US.
> > This setting has a lot of restrictions and drawbacks. A big one is
> > that, even though the students are surrounded by computers in my lab,
> > and to varying degrees at home, they have no opportunity to take
> > ownership of these devices. They can't monkey about with the precious
> > computers that we adults see as far to precious to fully hand over to
> > children. A very basic symptom of this is that the students simply
> > can't save their work. A save dialog box on most computers is very
> > difficult to learn for the uninitiated. Add to this that all files
> > which don't make it onto a shared network or USB drive are basically
> > instantly lost given the shared nature of school computers. If the
> > kids can't do something as simple as save a piece of writing, the
> > computer is far less useful than a notebook.
> >
> > In this light, SOAS looks very appealing. The promise of handing a
> > student their own _persistant_ computer where they are free to explore
> > is exactly what I've been looking for. (to say nothing of sugar's
> > "Journal" which I think is a brilliant answer to the above problem).
> >
> > I'm curious, how do my motivations match up with how you guys think
> about sugar?
> >
> > -John
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>
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