<html><head><style type="text/css"></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Hi Ed, I couldn't agree more. But the reason that there are so many non-reading-non-writing children and adults is that there are not enough adults around who understand how to do all this (imagine how wonderful it would be if all adults just understand what Montessori was really trying to do and how). My essaylet was aimed at the very difficult problem of how much and many of the gaps created by inadequate mentoring in all areas could be bridged by above threshold computer mentors. I think the answer is "some very important ones, but not all", and I'm advocating a "grand challenge" effort to make the mentors which can fill some of these important gaps. Cheers, Alan </div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">From: Edward Cherlin <echerlin@gmail.com> To: Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu@sugarlabs.org> Cc: Alan Kay <alan.nemo@yahoo.com>; K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk@gmail.com>; iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org Sent: Friday, July 3, 2009 9:43:11 PM Subject: Reading (was Re: [IAEP] changes in outlook with Sugar On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Tomeu Vizoso<<a ymailto="mailto:tomeu@sugarlabs.org" href="mailto:tomeu@sugarlabs.org">tomeu@sugarlabs.org</a>> wrote: > On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 13:49, Alan Kay<<a ymailto="mailto:alan.nemo@yahoo.com" href="mailto:alan.nemo@yahoo.com">alan..nemo@yahoo.com</a>> wrote: > [snip] >> >> But, if I were trying to make things happen with IAEP, I would try to do >> just a few main things, and one of them would be to make a >> program/user-interface which could do a great job of teaching a child to >> read and write their native language without requiring any more from the >> adults around them than a little encouragement. I don't think that we need such a brilliant piece of software to achieve this. There is much in the Montessori tradition about the appropriate preparation for reading, which commonly results in an "explosion" into reading in a day or at most a week per child. The book Teacher, by Silvia Ashton-Warner, has the best description I know of this process, in a context that is particularly relevant to our work, a Maori/English school in New Zealand. For writing and other skills, the portfolio method seems to have enormous power, providing sufficient structure to help the students get started, and sufficient freedom to allow them to continue onward with no ceiling. Portfolios have gained considerable traction in the adult world, where they are recommended over resumes for job-seekers. >> Part of the desired changes >> in outlook could be made part of the stories and other materials that the >> kid would encounter along the way (and part of the big change in outlook >> that we are a part of is fluent reading of non-story materials in general >> and about outlook changing ideas in particular). Ashton-Warner's insight: We have to begin with the words that have the most meaning to the child. After words for familiar objects and members of the family, the word that she found to have the greatest power was "frighten", which she took care not to introduce too soon.. Properly-prepared children burst out with whatever frightens them most at home, in nature, or wherever, and can learn those words immediately and permanently on the first reading. She is quite disdainful of stock first-grade readers. > Do you have already any vision about how to make that happen? I have > seen lately several people interested in working on better tools for > reading, may be a very interesting opportunity. We have to think about a course of reading that captures the child's imagination. That is not inherently hard to do, but requires customization to the individual child's interests. Or rather, it requires sufficient resources to allow the child to customize the path. (In my youth, that meant checking the ads in the back of every book I read, and browsing in the library. We can easily adapt this to the online experience. Nowadays, I use Goodreads occasionally to see what my friends are reading.) It also means engaging children in writing their own stories and passing them around to read. But first, we have to get the child to sufficient fluency of reading so that the mechanics are not a barrier to enjoyment. Among other things, this means making provision for dyslexia, which Nicholas Negroponte can tell us about, and for emotional problems, which Ashton-Warner describes. Boredom is the greatest obstacle I know of, whether because of poorly chosen content or failure to achieve fluency. We have a starting point for achieving fluency naturally in the karaoke-colored TTS speech engine under development. We need to provide it as a resource to all Activities that deal in text. We definitely want it to be able to read stories to the children. We also should use it to create a singalong program stocked with folk songs of the culture, because Same-Language-Subtitled Bollywood musicals and TV singalongs have proven to be the best literacy program in India, and indeed anywhere in the world. Singing engages parts of the brain that are not involved in reading text, and makes singing both more enjoyable and more memorable than reading text. Rhyme and meter are also important aids to memory and to enjoyment. Thus I suggest a pervasive integration of reading and music, starting with song, and proceeding to reading and then writing, and at the same time to musical performance and composition. There are several models to draw on for each part. Zoltan Kodaly's music education program for Hungary, for example, or the Dutch and Danish practice of teaching every child to play a wooden recorder. (According to Montessori principles, this will work much better than plastic. I don't know whether there is research to back up that claim, but I can tell you from decades of experience that wooden recorders just sound better than plastic ones. Always.) You get kindergarten classes that sound like church organs on a 4' flute stop. I am sure that there are traditional methods that we could take advantage of, used in countries where song and in some cases dance are inherent in the culture, as in Wales and some parts of South Africa, among others. I have taught pre-school multilingual music classes, using methods taught to me by Julie Wong of Music Around the World. Coming back to the portfolio method, we want to have children write, draw, take pictures, compose, and perform music, all as naturally as speaking, and be able to bring them all together to make a point or explain a subject, or just to show something that is important to the child. Then we want the Journal to have the capacity of a Dynabook, to record and preserve all of the child's work all throughout school. How much storage would you want, Alan? Then I can calculate when Moore's law will give us that. Not too many years from now, I would say. > Regards, > > Tomeu > >> Best wishes, >> >> Alan -- Silent Thunder (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) is my name And Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, The Truth my destination. <a target="_blank" href="http://earthtreasury.org/worknet">http://earthtreasury.org/worknet</a> (Edward Mokurai Cherlin) </div></div></div> </body></html>