<html> <head> <style></style></head> <body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'> <div>Hi Walter,</div><div> </div>Sounds like a great trip and a very complete workshop. I have a few questions...<div> </div><div>1) Were the teachers to go back and train other teachers at their schools? (the Triple T format... Teachers Training Teachers)</div><div> </div><div>2) Were the teachers' expenses covered? </div><div> </div><div>3) Did the teachers receive a stipend? Certificate?</div><div> </div><div>Caryl</div><div> </div><div> <div><div id="SkyDrivePlaceholder"></div>> Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2012 19:23:19 -0400 > From: walter.bender@gmail.com > To: community-news@lists.sugarlabs.org > CC: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org; sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org > Subject: [IAEP] Sugar Digest 2012-06-10 > > == Sugar Digest == > > 1. The typical trip from Lima to Chachapoyas [1], Amazonas involves > flying and bus travel. A common way point is the city of Chiclayo, on > Peru's north coast. We (myself, Melissa Henriquez (OLPC), Reuben Caron > (OLPC), Raul Hugo (Escuelab), and Alexander Moñuz (Escuelab)) had a > several hours before our bus, so we took a walk through a sea of taxi > cabs and a cacophony of car horns. It reminded me of Lima from five or > six years ago: too many cars and drivers not yet acclimated to the > culture of driving. Lima, in contrast, while still overwhelmed by too > many cars and buses, seems tranquil by comparison: the culture of > driving has caught up with the increased availability of the > technology of driving. Yet another example of Papert's observation > that change is never a technology in isolation; it always has a > cultural component. A goal of our week in Chachapoyas was to help > shape the change in the culture of learning in Amazonas as more > technology is made available to teachers and children in the region. > > The bus ride was only eight hours: better than the alternative, thirty > hours from direct Lima. Once the poorly dubbed B-movies stopped > playing on a television inconveniently placed inches from my face > stopped playing, I managed to get some sleep, despite the incessant > swaying of the bus as it snaked its way through the Andes. We arrived > at 6 Sunday morning to a sleepy town, built in the traditional style: > a grid with a central plaza. We had decided to use our one free day to > explore Kuélap, an ancient city another 2.5 hours from Chachapoyas, so > we didn't even manage a cup of coffee before heading up some even more > winding roads. > > Kuélap [2] was settled at least 1500 years ago. It is an extensive > ruin on top of a 3000-meter peak. The most characteristic artifacts > are the circular foundations of the houses, packed together in a tight > matrix. Diamond-shaped patterns, reminiscent of snake skin were > frequent sights [3]. > > When we got back to town, we discovered that coincident with our > week-long teacher-training workshop was a week-long festival, > celebrating both the revolution against Spanish rule and some ancient > traditions regarding inviting the coming solstice. It meant parades > and firecrackers at sunrise, and music each evening. The rhythm of > week was established: breakfast at 7; at the workshop by 8; an early > dinner at 7; evening sessions beginning at 8:30; and dancing from 11 > to 1 AM. The music and dancing offered an opportunity to get to know > the teachers outside of the workshop. It was also an opportunity to > observe some of the local ways. Most notable to me was the way in > which the crowds organized themselves: tight circles of 10 to 15 > people. If you took an aerial photograph of the festival, you'd see > the same circle patterns as we had just seen in Kuelap. Sometimes a > culture expresses itself in unexpected ways. > > Monday morning, we were joined by Elver Guillermo (our host), Alex > Santivanez (DIGETE), and Jorge Parra (DIGETE) (Alex and Jorge arrived > from Lima that morning). And 60 teachers from across six different > regions from Amazonas. We began the week with a question: "how do you > use XO/Sugar for learning?" It was no surprise that most teachers > answer with, "No sé." Even the few that had had some minimal > experience with the XO answered with mundane themes, such as doing > research on the Internet. We asked the same question at the end of the > week, and although I haven't seen the survey results, I am certain > that the teachers expressed a wealth of ideas around communication and > expression, math, science, and the arts. We also asked the teachers if > and where they hung out on-line. Almost all of them were Facebook > users, so Raul set up a Facebook group, > [http://www.facebook.com/groups/370964266297045/ Amazonas XO], for > them to use as a forum for sharing experiences. > > At the end of a day using Write, Record, Fototoons, Memorize, Mind > Maps (Labyrinth) and Paint, we introduced the teachers to Portfolio, > and they created their first reflections on the week. That evening, I > reviewed the variety of Sugar activities available and introduced the > Sugar concept of the "gear": the invitation of create your own variant > of an activity. I also showed them a new Sugar activity I wrote Sunday > night after visiting Kuelap: Amazonas Tortuga [4], a variant on Turtle > Confusion that uses images from the region. A long day "drinking from > a fire hose." Time for some music and dancing. A party in a different > barrio each night. > > On Day Two, we did sessions of Turtle Art and Scratch. Melissa and > split the groups into two. My first group of Turtlistas made rapid > progress from pretending to be a turtle in the courtyard of the > school, dragging a piece of chalk when "pen down", to mastering Stacks > (Accions) and Boxes (Cajas). The second group, which had been working > in Scratch for three hours, struggled with the programming concepts of > Turtle Art. On the other hand, Melissa reported that the group that > had used Turtle Art soared in Scratch class, much more will to > explore. We still need controls: Scratch followed by Scratch and > Turtle Art followed by Turtle Art, but it seems that using Turtle Art > before Scratch helps Scratch proficiency while using Scratch before > Turtle Art impedes Turtle Art proficiency. It is worth looking more > deeply into this. > > The evening class was dedicated to programming. We began by looking > into a bug in Labyrinth encountered by the teachers that day. I showed > them how to access the Log activity and look for errors in the log. We > discussed the error message, a ValueError and took note of the file > name and line number. Next, I introduced View Source. We found the > line in the code responsible for the error, and I discussed the > reasons for the error: simple_scale wants integer rather than float > input. We also discussed casting floats to ints as a potential > solution. Next: we used the Duplicate function of View Source to make > a clone of Labyrinth in which to apply our patch. Using JAMEdit to > edit the file, we were able to fix the bug. Finally, I showed them the > bug-tracking system and walked them through the process of writing a > ticket. By that time, it was late and the concert had begun, so I only > quickly reviewed the merits of Free Software -- I imagine we would > still be on hold with the Microsoft call center -- and described the > process of using git -- and commit messages -- to manage software > development. > > Wednesday morning, Melissa, Raul, and Alex demonstrated sensors on the > XO, in Scratch, Turtle Art, and with WeDo. Alex and I built a WeDo > project using found materials in Turtle Art, while Raul showed how to > make sensors to use with the XO mic-in. Much of the rest of the day > was dedicated to technical issues: servers, updates, etc. Reuben and > Jorge walked the teachers through these topics and then issued a > screwdriver to each teacher, who used it to disassemble and reassemble > their laptops. Not casualties. A second portfolio was created and > uploaded to the School Server before heading out to the festival. We > partied with the teachers from UGEL Rodríguez de Mendoza. > > Thursday, Alex and Melissa focused on curriculum development with > Sugar. Alex described a process by which one could develop a > curriculum unit and the teacher, broken into groups, designed > curricula around the themes of communication and math. Thursday night, > Raul, Alex, Elver and I stayed late to help teachers with their > projects. One problem was posed by a teacher who wanted to write a > program for inputting numbers and rendering them different colors > based on magnitude. We got into an interesting discussion about how to > represent the concept of magnitude as it relates to place when writing > numbers. For example, to write the number, 123 from left to right, > first you right 1, then you write 2, but that immediately changes the > meaning of the 1. It is suddenly a ten. Writing 3 means that the 1 > becomes 100 and the 2 becomes 20. While programming this in Turtle Art > is not difficult, it was an interesting exercise, because it forced > the teacher to think about how we represent numbers. > > Friday was a day for show-and-tell. In the morning, the teachers made > presentations of their curriculum plans. In the afternoon, Alex > arranged a project fair, where each teacher chose one project to show > off to their peers. Finally, a third portfolio for the week. Then > photos, lots of them, and goodbyes. I had an opportunity to discuss > our progress with several officials from the region over coffee Friday > morning. They seemed both encouraged by the progress made by the > teachers and the sentiment that the next workshop should be led by > people from the region, not just attended by people from the region. > An important step towards appropriation. > > Before getting on the overnight bus back to Chiclayo, Jorge gave me a > file with images of Peruvian Soles, so I was able write a Soles plug > in for Turtle Art [5] on the overnight bus ride. (Again, I could not > sleep due to the movie playing inches from my face.) Raul, who was > sitting a few rows back from me, joined a shared Turtle Art session > and we stumbled upon a new use for a well-worn activity: chat. By > sharing text with the Show block (and as of TurtleBlocks-144 [6], > text-to-speech with the Speak block), you can engage in an interactive > chat or forum, which includes sharing of pictures and graphics. What > fun. > > There had been the threat of a delay due to landslide, but the road > was cleared and we arrived back in Chiclayo at 6AM. We walked a few > blocks to a restaurant know for its fresh ceviche where we enjoyed the > food and sights. Then back to Lima, where I gave a trip report to a > gathering at Escuelab. (I used the Portfolio tool to make an annotated > slide show, which I projected from an XO.) Then back to the airport in > time to see the Boston Celtics lose Game 7 to the Miami Heat. A flight > to Miami, a quick connection to Boston, and home again. > > 2. While I was in Lima, I got another chance to meet with Irma Alvarez > and Aymar Ccopacatty. I gave Irma an XO on which to test her Quecha > translations. Her translations of Turtle Art landed while was in > Chachapoyas, which was nice to be able to report to the teachers > there. > > With help from Reuben we guided her through the process of installing > language packs [7]: > > 1. with Browse, download the .sh of the language you wish to install; > 2. copy the file from the Journal to ~/Documents by drag and drop > in the Journal view; > 3. From terminal, > cd ~/Documents > sh ??_lang_pack_v2.sh > where ?? should be replaced by the language code of the file you > downloaded; > 4. Restart Sugar. > > 3. Peter Robinson announced Sugar on a Stick 7 (Quandong). > > Many thanks to Peter and the Sugar and Fedora communities. > > From Peter's email: > > Some of the key new features of this release include: > * Based on Fedora 17 and it's new features > * Massively improved x86 Mac support > * Sugar 0.96 with initial support for GTK3 Activities and many other > improvements > * Return of Browse, now based on WebKit > * The long awaited return of Read and inclusion of GetBooks > * Enhanced hardware support with the 3.3 kernel > * An increase in default Activities by nearly 50% > > The release name, Quandong, continues the tradition of naming releases > by types of fruit. The Quandong or Native Peach is a native Australian > bushfood. > > You can download the release from [8]. It can also be installed as > part of a standard Fedora 17 install and is shipped as part of the > official Fedora installer DVD and the Fedora Multi Spin Live DVD. It > can also be installed from the GUI package tool within a running > Fedora install or by command line: > > sudo yum install @sugar-desktop > > === Sugar Labs === > > Visit our planet [9] for more updates about Sugar and Sugar deployments. > > ---- > > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chachapoyas,_Peru > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuelap > [3] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/Building_ruins_of_Kuelap.jpg > [4] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4585/ > [5] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/images/5/52/Soles.tar.gz > [6] http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4027 > [7] http://translate.sugarlabs.org/langpacks/ > [8] http://spins.fedoraproject.org/soas/ > [9] http://planet.sugarlabs.org > > -walter > > -- > Walter Bender > Sugar Labs > http://www.sugarlabs.org > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep </div></div> </div></body> </html>