[Sugar-devel] Education on the XO

[Tony Anderson]

Bryan has started a very interesting discussion about what is needed for 
the XO to support education. I would like to add my two cents worth.

We are learning (gaining new experience) every day that we are alive. 
The traditional difference in education is that it is organized 
learning. Teaching a topic means to provide an organized tour of an area 
of knowledge covering what every student should know or be aware of.

The XO's primary tool for education, as opposed to learning experiences, 
is Moodle. The problem is that Moodle for the XO is a tool which is 
ready and waiting to be used (all dressed up and no where to go).

My vision is that there is a repository (website) which contains free 
(CC or similar) courses covering the core curriculum for K-8. The 
website needs to be supported by a community of developers (course 
creators) and moderators (folks who volunteer to assist teachers and 
students who are participating). This repository should also contain 
'elective' courses following the model of Oregon's Saturday Academy
(http://www.saturdayacademy.org/).

A Moodle course is divided into sections (topics, weeks, ...). Each 
section has one or more 'activities' (a word which is very heavily 
overloaded). Essentially an 'activity' here is something the course 
creator asks the students to do or experience (e.g. read an exposition 
on the topic in a wiki page, listen to some music, create an e-toy 
project, answer some questions, ...). Moodle provides the teacher with a 
wealth of information on the progress of each student.

This organization suggests that course developers could start a new 
course or add sections to an existing course or add activities to an 
existing section. It also suggests that teachers in a local community 
could 'cut and paste' a course from these elements, adding or modifying 
as needed.

The moderators would be new element. In the case of the Saturday Academy 
courses, they could be the 'teacher' working with a 'cohort' of enrolled 
students, who could be anywhere in the world. In the case of 'core' 
courses, they could provide help to the classroom teacher as well as 
helping to mentor students at the invitation of the teacher. For 
example, a class in Rwanda studying English could ask a moderator who is 
a native English speaker to meet with them at a specified time to tell 
them a story or host a chat. The teacher could ask the moderator to 
review student submissions (recorded audio or written material) for 
appropriate pronunciation or use of the language.

The primary problem with Moodle at the moment is that there are is not a 
body of grade school courses available to illustrate how to build them 
or to provoke the community to 'make it better'. Unfortunately, at the 
moment, many people in the community do not consider the schoolserver to 
be essential, existing Moodle courses are primarily aimed at the 
university or pre-university level, and most of these are behind 
proprietary walls.

Tony