[IAEP] Future Direction

[Tony Anderson]

Thanks for this.

In an after school environment, this strategy should work very well. It 
means that someone must be the firestarter, perhaps at a pre-school 
training session.

I am not sure about how this could be accomplished where after-school 
programs are not feasible. At some of the schools I support, the 
teachers and students live too far from the school to stay after the 
normal day is over. These schools start later to enable students to have 
time to reach it in daylight and close early to give the students time 
to return home. In Lesotho, we observed students who walked three hours 
to and three hours back from school every day.

I am trying to develop some introductory 'lessons' to act as the 
firestarter in Python, but it is very difficult to do effectively.

Tony


On 03/05/2015 08:18 PM, iaep-request at lists.sugarlabs.org wrote:
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2015 12:13:46 +0000 (UTC)
> From: Alan Kay<alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
> To: Sora Edwards-Thro<sora at unleashkids.org>, 	Gonzalo Odiard
> 	<godiard at sugarlabs.org>
> Cc: IAEP SugarLabs<iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>,	Tim Falconer
> 	<timothy at immuexa.com>,	"support-gang at laptop.org"
> 	<support-gang at laptop.org>
> Subject: Re: [IAEP] Future Direction
> Message-ID:
> 	<1578652867.4886132.1425557626158.JavaMail.yahoo at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Hi
>
> I agree with your first paragraph (although I don't know of really discoverable programming systems -- even Scratch has lots of conventions that are hard to discover). But I do agree that 5-10% of an population is better matched up to a given topic, and that the rest need more help of different kinds.
> But there are good materials for learning Etoys, especially in Spanish, and especially for teachers.
>
> The last part I don't agree with because it contains a misconception about how to teach Etoys, and especially programming, to children and adults.
>
> We found -- via many attempts -- that 1 on 1 -- then branching out -- works much much better than trying to teach a group. The "Drive a Car" project was invented to be the introduction, and it can be taught 1 on 1 in about 20 minutes. Now we have two teachers of "Drive a Car". Then 4 etc. It is worth taking the 100 minutes to carry this out. The reason for this approach is found in your first paragraph, and the key is the 1 on 1 which allows the time needed for specific learnings and questions about the project.
> Once a class has gotten going, then should eventually be the "first teachers" for the next class, and now the whole new class can be handled in ~30 minutes for the first exercise. This use of "peer teaching" works in other areas also, but it is particularly effective in technique learning. It is not used nearly enough (many pro teachers feel a loss of authority, and that is more important to them that in how well the children are learning).
> Cheers
> Alan