[Sugar-devel] The quest for data

[Dr. Gerald Ardito]

Agreed.


On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 6:02 PM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 6:33 AM, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:37 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 3:26 AM, Martin Dluhos <martin at gnu.org> wrote:
> >>>> On 7.1.2014 01:49, Sameer Verma wrote:
> >>>>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Martin Dluhos <martin at gnu.org>
> wrote:
> >>>>>> For visualization, I have explored using LibreOffice and SOFA, but
> neither of
> >>>>>> those were flexible to allow for customization of the output beyond
> some a few
> >>>>>> rudimentary options, so I started looking at various Javascript
> libraries, which
> >>>>>> are much more powerful. Currently, I am experimenting with Google
> Charts, which
> >>>>>> I found the easiest to get started with. If I run into limitations
> with Google
> >>>>>> Charts in the future, others on my list are InfoVIS Toolkit
> >>>>>> (http://philogb.github.io/jit) and HighCharts (
> http://highcharts.com). Then,
> >>>>>> there is also D3.js, but that's a bigger animal.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Keep in mind that if you want to visualize at the school's local
> >>>>> XS[CE] you may have to rely on a local js method instead of an online
> >>>>> library.
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes, that's a very good point.  Originally, I was only thinking about
> collecting
> >>>> and visualizing the information centrally, but there is no reason why
> it
> >>>> couldn't be viewed by teachers and school administrators on the
> schoolserver
> >>>> itself. Thanks for the warning.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> In fact, my guess would be that what the teachers and principal want
> >>> to see at the school will be different from what OLE Nepal and the
> >>> government would want to see, with interesting overlaps.
> >>
> >> You left out one important constituent: the learner. Ultimately we are
> >> responsible for making learning visible to the learner. Claudia and I
> >> touched on this topic in the attached paper.
> >>
> >
> > Thanks for the paper. While we did point out to Portfolio and Analyze
> > Journal activities in our session at OLPC SF Summit in 2013, I didn't
> > include it in the scope of the blog post. I'll go back and update it
> > when I get a chance.
> >
> >> Just to place all my cards on the table, as much as I hate to suggest
> >> we head down this route, I think we really need to instrument
> >> activities themselves (and build analyses of activity output) if we
> >> want to provide meaningful statistics about learning. We've done some
> >> of this with Turtle Blocks, even capturing the mistakes the learner
> >> makes along the way. We are lacking in decent visualizations of these
> >> data, however.
> >>
> >
> > I haven't had a chance to read the paper in depth (which I intend to
> > do this afternoon), but how much of this approach would be shareable
> > across activities? Or would the depth of analysis be on a per activity
> > basis? If the latter, then I'd imagine it would be simpler for
> > something like the Moon activity than the TurtleBlocks activity.
> >
> >> Meanwhile, I remain convinced that the portfolio is our best tool.
> >>
> >
> > I think the approaches differ in scope and purpose. In the RFPs I've
> > been involved in, the funding agencies and/or the decision makers
> > either request or outright require "dashboard style" features to
> > report frequency of use, time of day, and in some cases even GPS-based
> > location in addition to theft-deterrence, remote provisioning, etc.
> > The same goes for going back to an agency to get renewed funding or to
> > raise funds for a new site expansion. In a way, the scope of the
> > "learner<->teacher" bubble is significantly different from that of the
> > "principal<->minister of edu". One is driven by learning and pedagogy,
> > while the other is driven by administration. Accordingly, the reports
> > they want to see are also different. While the measurements from the
> > Activity may be distilled into coarser indicators for the MoE, I think
> > it is important to keep the entire scope in mind.
>
> Don't get me wrong: satisfying the needs of funders, administrators,
> etc. is important too. They have metrics that they value and we should
> gather those data too. My earlier post was just to suggest ultimately
> we need to consider the learner and how making learning visible can be
> of use. That theme seemed to be missing from the earlier discussion.
>
> >
> > I am mindful of the "garbage in, garbage out" problem. In building
> > this pipeline (which is where my skills are) I hope that the data that
> > goes into this pipeline is representative of what is measured at the
> > child's end. I am glad that you and Claudia are the experts on that
> > end :-)
> >
> > cheers,
> > Sameer
> >
> >> regards.
> >>
> >> -walter
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> cheers,
> >>> Sameer
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> >>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Walter Bender
> >> Sugar Labs
> >> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
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