[squeakland] Artifacts in ObjectCatalog

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

Hi Kathleen and all,

On 05/31/2010 06:01 AM, kharness at illinois.edu wrote:
> Kim,
> I came across Lockhart's Lament last year; it is very good. Math education is a chaotic arena and at this point I don't think it is a good place for Etoys. They have somehow pulverized the joy mathematicians find in their subject and are just offering dry husks to children.
>
> When a school is ready to add computer science, that is where we fit. That means for many school buildings just one teacher, like for music, art, and phys ed. So a district like Unit 4 with ten elementary schools would not have to in-service 500 classroom teachers to teach Etoys, but rather just find ten teachers who could/would. Just ten teachers reach 5000 students; very efficient and very effective. Sadly, we are still searching for those districts.
>
> Have you read the Ravitch book yet? It is too bad she didn't foresee the consequences of the policies she so ably advocated and now renounces. At least she has the courage to say she was wrong. Education is slow to change and the testing industry will not go quietly.
>
> Our group here is working to have a curriculum ready for the time when people realize they need one. You know, of course, there is a difference of kind between an assortment of experiences/projects and a curriculum. This summer we are working on a set of materials for HS computer science and we will see what teachers think of them in our August workshop. The prerequisites require that they already know one programming language and are already teaching CS. We are looking forward to some interesting discussions with them; their knowledge and experience will be invaluable to us.
>    

This remembers me about the article by David Cavallo "Changes in 
Learning environments", about large scale changes in institutional 
educative systems. We (me and some students) are trying our approach to 
this problem using social software (Cyn.in) as a glue for communities of 
practice on our subjects of study. We have some interesting results and 
practices, but they don't last in time (one of the problems cited by 
Cavallo). So we're going in other direction from quantitative to 
qualitative. So the idea is to work with a small group of people who 
"belongs at the end" even when the academic semester is finished and 
wants to change educational systems. The idea is to work with "leverage 
places" (places where minimal force creates maximal change, following 
Peter Drucker's ideas). Here is a presentation about that "travel" with 
my students and the learnings about education that we have after it, 
that I made in TEDxPassion Bogotá  (in Spanish, but I know that some 
people here reads and speaks it):

Nómadas Digitales, aprendizaje y la cultura alternativa 
http://prezi.com/7sp0ejyi7lpw/

For me the question now is how we keep connected the communities of 
practices that share ideas about this innovative practices and changes 
for the better in education.

> ---------------------------------
> Call for Applications!
>
> CS4HS:  Summer Workshop for Computer Science teachers!  Generous stipends!
> Supported by Google and the University of Illinois, this workshop is aimed at teachers who are looking for exciting content for teaching beginning programming at the high-school or middle-school level.
> Join us as we explore the Etoys programming language as a platform for attracting students into the field of computing.
>
> Dates: August 3-5
> Location: University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)
> Details and Application: cs4hs.mste.illinois.edu
> --------------------------------------------
> Thanks for the cheerful note.
> Regards,
> Kathleen
>
>    


¿Seems really interesting. It's only for Unite States CS teachers ?

Cheers,

Offray