John,<div><br></div><div>Also if you would like support with Etoys, I would be happy to help and live not that far from Philadelphia. </div><div>Please check out the lesson plans on <a href="http://etoysillinois.org">etoysillinois.org</a></div> <div><br></div><div>They have a wonderful set of lesson plans for K-6.</div><div><br></div><div>Steve Thomas<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 1:50 PM, John Tierney <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jtis4stx@hotmail.com" target="_blank">jtis4stx@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div><div dir="ltr"> <div dir="ltr">Hi John,<br><br>I would say your summary is pretty well on target <br>taking into account Peter's comments and the continued <br>improvements he has been making with each SoaS release. <br>I would be happy to have a conversation with you on Skype <br> or phone and give you some ideas on how you might want to <br>approach the local Universities to establish relationships in Computer <br>Science and Education schools to build up a support system. I think<br>you mentioned your in Philadelphia so Temple and Drexel would be <br> great options as well as the other smaller schools.<br><br>I have been collaborating with Dr. Kevin Brooks and his Great Fargo <br>project since its inception. I met Kevin at the Computers and Writing <br>Conference at Purdue in 2010, where I helped put on a Sugar Workshop <br> with Dr. Gerald Ardito, and Walter Bender who joined via Skype. In turn I <br>joined Kevin and his graduate student Chris Lindgren at the University of <br>Michigan at Computers&Writing 2011 for another Sugar Workshop.<br> <br>I think this would be a great place for you to talk about the education <br>portions of the project,for the technical questions/issues and updates <br>on that front the Soas list would be best.<br><br>It's Great to see you trying to help out your learners in this manner.<br> Let me know if I can be of assistance.<br><br>Best!<br>John Tierney<br>Skype: jt4sugar<br>#<a href="tel:248-613-7392" value="+12486137392" target="_blank">248-613-7392</a><br><br><div><div></div>> From: <a href="mailto:john@johnlandis.net" target="_blank">john@johnlandis.net</a><br> > Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:10:41 -0500<br>> To: <a href="mailto:iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br>> Subject: Re: [IAEP] Introduction: teacher interested in SOAS<div><div> <br>> <br>> Thanks so much for the warm welcome. Particularly to Patricio,<br>> Harriet, and Kevin for sharing such fascinating links.<br>> <br>> If it's okay, I'm going to use this list as a sounding board for my<br> > thoughts as I explore Sugar. Again, if there's a better place for<br>> this type of thing, please let me know!<br>> <br>> So far, I'm getting the impression that Sugar on A Stick is more or<br>> less limited to experimental university-school partnerships, and<br> > hasn't yet reached a phase of wide deployment in the hands of schools.<br>> Is this an accurate assessment?<br>> <br>> The reason I'm interested in SOAS is that I work in the traditional<br>> "computer lab" setting that is so familiar in K12 schools in the US.<br> > This setting has a lot of restrictions and drawbacks. A big one is<br>> that, even though the students are surrounded by computers in my lab,<br>> and to varying degrees at home, they have no opportunity to take<br> > ownership of these devices. They can't monkey about with the precious<br>> computers that we adults see as far to precious to fully hand over to<br>> children. A very basic symptom of this is that the students simply<br> > can't save their work. A save dialog box on most computers is very<br>> difficult to learn for the uninitiated. Add to this that all files<br>> which don't make it onto a shared network or USB drive are basically<br> > instantly lost given the shared nature of school computers. If the<br>> kids can't do something as simple as save a piece of writing, the<br>> computer is far less useful than a notebook.<br>> <br>> In this light, SOAS looks very appealing. The promise of handing a<br> > student their own _persistant_ computer where they are free to explore<br>> is exactly what I've been looking for. (to say nothing of sugar's<br>> "Journal" which I think is a brilliant answer to the above problem).<br> > <br>> I'm curious, how do my motivations match up with how you guys think about sugar?<br>> <br>> -John<br>> _______________________________________________<br>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)<br> > <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br>> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a><br></div> </div></div></div> </div></div> <br>_______________________________________________<br> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)<br> <a href="mailto:IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org</a><br> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div>