[squeakland] education meeting notes

Fri Sep 4 05:26:09 EDT 2009

Hi all,

to let you know what we did talk about on our meeting yesterday here are 
the notes:

http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/2009/09/03/education+team+meeting+September%2C+3

Greetings,
Rita

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1. Upcoming events (conferences, who plans to attend? who would like to 
submit a paper? what about the panel at SXSW) A list of conferences is 
at the wiki here http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Conferences^

for CUE conference: contact Mulholland Middle school
NECC: Kathleen Harness plans to go and present, Tim plans to got, has 
high priority
Constructionism: we will submit a paper, let us know when you would like 
to co-write. Focus: what is special about Etoys? What can be done with 
Etoys but not with other construcionist tools like Alice, Scratch, Logo 
etc. We should start brainstorming that on the mailing list, put the 
results on the wiki
Northern Virginia Home Education Conference: Randy will ask friends 
about this conference, we will find out more about home schooling 
community and how to get involved, which conferences to attend etc.

2. start organizing next Squeakfest - what do you think we should/could 
do early?
Date for next year Squeakfest should be scheduled, Tim will take care of 
that.
As soon as the date is fixed we shoudl send announcements to local 
schools and advertise it. Cherry proposed: How about a Squeak Fare? 
Where the kids from NC can show off/demo their work?

3. Template for courseware. Randy used Kathleens template with one of 
his projects, we can talk if that will be the template to describe the 
courseware. If so, we could start writing the other courseware 
components ...

Randy did use the template. We will talk to Kathleen Harness about his 
ideas. Tim proposed to send Randys project to Bruno and Marta to get 
feedback. We talked about which standards to use in the project description.
Cherry did ask which standards we use:
NETS for students: 
http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForStudents/2007Standards/NETS_for_Students_2007.htm^ 

We will look up UNESCO and other sources to find more international 
standards (ask people from Plan Ceibal, OLPC etc.)
http://www.education-world.com/standards/^
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=51850&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html^ 
<http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=51850&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html>

4. OLPC book sprint next week in Washington 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Class_Acts#Needs^

Plans are that Rita and Bruno from Brazl will participate. Rita will 
contact Carlos about that to get one more chapter about use of Etoys on 
the XO.

5. Consider whether we should bundle DrGeo II with this month's Etoys 
release, perhaps as a main item in the Supply Bin. The software team is 
generally in favor of it.

The education team also likes the idea. Tim told us about release dates: 
Etoys 4.0 ... Sep 16th; Etoys 4.1 ... Feb 21st; Etoys 4.2 ... July 21st; 
Etoys 4.3 ... Dec 21st; Etoys 4.4 ... June 21st

6. showcase categorization

regions and subjects are ok. Randy suggested instead of ages: concrete 
learning, transitional learning, abstract learning
All categories should allow multiselection, because there are 
cross-subject projects, projects suitable for all age groups, even 
projects from participants from different countries. Tim will talk with 
the software team about that.
Tim asked about ranking projects? Will be done manually by the education 
team, rank will not not be shown, it's just a sorting criterion. Will we 
have tagging? Rita would like to have it on the public showcase, not on 
the official one. We will talk about that when we can see the showcaes 
and try things out.
Comments for projects will be enabled, but moderated.

7. update on John Stout's Nigerian project.

Randy believes it has great possibilities for broader application.

His idea: "I believe we can go beyond developing courseware just for 
Nigeria and create a general introductory set of lessons that help 
students learn to use those tools in etoys that are useful in working 
with GIS information to better understand their country, help solve some 
of its problems and become skilled in using GIS data. They can use those 
tools to work with data on their country's resources, economics, 
politics, social systems, environment, climate, etc. If we use gobal GIS 
data in the courseware, the units could be a starting point for learners 
in any country are they could develop a better understanding of their 
country from a global perspective. This has the potential to produce 
some very skilled and productive citizens that could make valuable 
contributions to their country's future. Does anyone know if there are 
any OLPC projects with this focus using etoys? If not, I believe we 
should consider this approach. I would appreciate any comments. 

Randy did some more sample projects for John Stout, just with Etoys, no 
Squeak programming needed yet. Cherry told us about an exhibition in 
Santa Barbara museum about water contingencies all over the world. Could 
be a partner for us? Here's the project that she mentioned during the 
meeting:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-124^

8. Talk about any changes we want in the Etoys gallery of projects . . . 
might be nice to include projects from other sources such as 
EtoysIllinois and USeIT. What would you remove? What would you replace 
it with?

The projects meant are these which come with Etoys. Next release is Spe 
16th, so which projects wpould you like to see? We will ask people who 
presented great projects at Squeakfest, would like to have not just 
english projects, but at least one multi-language project: daemon 
castle. Who will help us translate it? We then talked about where to put 
DrGeo and started talking about names of categories in the object 
catalogue. That will be something to talk about for release in Feb.

Next meeting next week, doodle to find a date.

-- 
Rita Freudenberg
Squeakland Foundation
http://www.squeakland.org