[Olpc-open] [Grassroots-l] Update on XOs in Uruguay

[Bryan Berry]

>Thanks for the comments. Your blog is awesome!

Thanks! You will see a lot more blog posts from our excellent teacher
trainers Kamana and Bipul. They are very much steeped in constructivist
theory from Piaget and Vygotsky. I also hope to get one of the teachers
at the pilot school blogging.

I think the blogging tool would be fantastic. It's not on the top of my
list but it would be very useful.

You are right about not making too many assumptions about what the kids
and teachers need. Blogging may end up being a higher need -
***ESPECIALLY*** if you make it easy to upload pictures.

Here are my top requirements based on 4 days of teacher training. They
may change when we start the actual pilot on April 13th

1. Need graphical way to add and remove activities, something like
Synaptic Package Manager on Ubuntu
2. Need graphical way to change nickname and Jabber server. Those are
two local values that I expect to change most frequently

Less urgent:

1. We need awesome English games that are competitive.
2. we need to make it easier to archive and share pictures. We had
trouble sharing pictures during the teacher training.

Teachers Rajan Chand and Neema Lama asked for better English games
again and again http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/212

Learning good English grammar is critical to writing an intelligible
e-mail, chat conversation, etc. It's also usually pretty boring to
learn. We need a game that is competitive and constructivist that nails
down basic grammar. Neema suggested a "Cliffhanger" style game where you
have to spell words correctly or fix a broken sentence to make it up a
mountain. If we could somehow make it multi-player across the mesh that
would be awesome.

Keep up the great work Greg and talk to on the Support call on Saturday!