Hi to everyone!<div> </div><div>I'm "new" here... I was invited by friends who are visiting Uruguay right now!...<div> </div><div>I introduce myself: BA in computer science with a graduate degree in virtual learning, working as a teacher and Coordinator of "the 1:1 model" in a private school in Uruguay. I am also volunteer member helping CEIBAL and one of the organizers of the tour "Conozco Uruguay Tour" </div> <div>I'm so glad to read you David!. </div> <div> </div><div>Hope you have a very nice day!</div> <div> </div><div>Leticia Romero.</div> <div> </div><div> </div><div> <div class="gmail_quote">2011/5/2 David Farning <<a href="mailto:dfarning@activitycentral.com">dfarning@activitycentral.com</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">The afternoon and evening sessions of the tour were a great complement to the morning session. Yes, you heard correctly, afternoon _and_ evening sessions:) Pablo has us hopping. Tomorrow morning starts a 600am. The afternoon session was again at public school 286. Rather than observe and interact with the kids in the class room, the teachers asked us to take a step back and look at the larger picture of how the laptop project affect the school and how the school affects the project. One interesting note was the emphasis they had that the laptops were educational tools. They were part of a larger tool box consisting of textbooks and other activities. While kids usually receive their laptop at 6, when they start school, it is common for kids to begin using and becoming familiar with the laptop and sugar when they are 4 years old. By the time kids enter high school they have had several years of experience. This presents a challenge for teachers as they try to catch up and keep up with the kids :) The primary technical requests were that social-calc works and that there is timeline activity. In terms of education theory, it was interesting to listen to a discussion the evolved from the timeline request. Several teachers commented that the timeline was a very valuable tool because it would give the students a place to consolidate the information they had learned over several week. Maybe it was my poor Spanish. But the conversation seemed to reflect concepts very similar to portfolios and the act of refection the journal affords. The evening session was with Flordeceibo. (<a href="http://www.flordeceibo.edu.uy/" target="_blank">http://www.flordeceibo.edu.uy/</a> ) We started the evening off with a video providing an overview of project. It is just over 2.5G so I hope that someone with some bandwidth uploads it and links to it in a blog post. Sadly, the university and Flordeceibo are not directly involved in teacher training. Teacher education happens in a parallel system similar to normal schools. The real meat of the session (for software developers) happened after the break during a feedback session. Several of the Flordeceibo members had lists of bugs they have encountered during the last few years. At that point the passion became palpable. Because of the sheer amount of feedback we invited everyone to share 'headlines' of their concerns at this session. Then, follow up Sunday morning at the first day of the hack feast. Over the last couple of months one on the most important lessons we have learn while working with ParaguayEduca is the importance of one on one and face to face sessions between developers and educators. The normal tools that open source developers use for feedback are too 'unfamiliar' to most teachers. Instead the feedback, at least initially, requires a personal relationship which builds trust and helps the developer and educator learn how to effectively communicate. As a result, we invited everyone to join the sugar camp on Sunday morning. I would like to encourage all developers to spend time talking one on one with the Flordeceibo members to turn their feedback into a format which is can be submitted as bug reports. david _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a> </blockquote></div> </div></div>