[Olpc-open] XO experience in the classroom - Carol Lerche's daughter

Fri Apr 4 22:18:52 EDT 2008

Hello everyone,

My name is Robin Lerche, and I am a kindergarten teacher at a charter school
in the South Bronx (I'm using my mom's e-mail to be able to write to this
list). This is my first year as a head teacher, so I am still getting a feel
for things, but as of right now, things are going very well. My mom, Carol,
bought four XOs to have in my class as a center, and for the past week she
has been in my class teaching my kids how to use them. I thought I would
write about how it went. Let me just give a little rundown of the kids in my
class: There are 20 5- and 6-year olds, but I think their experience could
easily be applied to a 1st grade class as well, since all of them except two
are reading on at least a first grade level, and most of them have very good
handwriting, so good fine motor skills.

First of all, let me say that they certainly are durable! Of course,
Karissa, while trying to take a picture of my reading group, dropped it on
the floor, and it was quite fine afterwards. She's not very tall, but still
:-) They were all very intrigued by the rabbit ears and the little people on
the back, and several of them incorporated the logo into their pictures
during writing time, which was cute.

They really liked the computers. They were so excited when they went to use
them, they couldn't wait until they started up to start pressing all the
buttons. Each group had four kids at a time, and my mom was constantly
supervising them so if they had any problems, she could troubleshoot. Which
happened quite a lot, as they are very impatient. Their main problem was
that they didn't want to wait for the programs to come up; when it didn't
pop up immediately, they would click on something else to try it, which of
course made it start even slower, and so they got very frustrated and my mom
had to close out everything before they would be able to try again. They
loved taking pictures of everything, but some of them had trouble getting
the mouse to sit well enough on the little button to take the picture,
especially when they were trying to do it semi-upside down so that the
subject of the picture was looking at the screen and the taker was not (it
would be great if the picture was taken no matter where on the screen you
clicked). However, they all got very into the chat feature, though there was
really only one group that was patient enough to learn the orientation of
the keyboard in order to write messages. The other ones just got excited
when they made something come up on the other screen, and pretending to
"type" really fast (one of my kids kept saying, "Oh look, I got e-mail!"). A
few of them figured out how to do the puzzle, and they liked messing around
with Paint for a few minutes, but their fine motor skills weren't good
enough to get anything recognizable out of it, and they were especially
frustrated with the difficulty of switching colors. They really liked Tux
because of the sounds and the stamps; unfortunately, my mom said it didn't
work on the new release. But ultimately, even that didn't hold their
interest for that long, because they couldn't really draw pictures. They
loved the memory game and the cartoon builder, but there weren't enough
pre-built images for them to explore for long.

Some of them understood pretty well how to open the computers and get them
started, but less of them understood that they needed to close out their
applications and shut them down before they closed them. I could see that
this could be a big classroom management issue unless they were either
completely independent on the computers, or like me, the teacher had a
full-time person in the room whose job it was to troubleshoot. Sadly, since
I don't have the luxury of having such a full-time person in the classroom
(my mom does have to go home), I will not be continuing to use these in my
classroom, at least not this year. I don't think that at this age, it would
be a useful tool to have the whole class on at the same time, since they
need really concrete, hands-on methods to figure things out, rather than
more abstract things on the computer. I do think this could be a great way
to reteach concepts to a small group, especially with math concepts like
patterning if there was a program for this sort of thing. My mom also says
that a lot of the issues I experienced in class are probably going to get
better with new releases, so maybe next year we can try again! I wish I had
a full time person in the room to handle them because they really did have
fun and they will be sad to see them go.

Sincerely,
Robin

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 1:40 AM, Walter Bender <walter at laptop.org> wrote:

> I imagine it would be interesting to the devel and sugar lists to hear
> a summary of your observations in the kindergarten classroom as well.
>
> -walter
>
> 2008/4/2 Carol Lerche <cafl at msbit.com>:
> > For the hangers-on such as myself, it wouldn't be necessary to have a
> video
> > record if that's too difficult...an audio recording plus slideware might
> be
> > just fine.  (Personally, I am watching XOs be used in a kindergarten
> > tomorrow and Friday, as I have been all week, and will be greatly
> > appreciative of any record that might be feasible of these discussions.)
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 3:30 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at laptop.org>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > On undefined, Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >  I will join in for Friday afternoon over the phone., and will send
> an
> > > >  outline of my XS notes beforehand. Will we use the conferencing
> rig?
> > >
> > > I assume so; I'm checking with Kim; will send email.
> > >  --scott
> > >
> > > --
> > >  ( http://cscott.net/ )
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Devel mailing list
> > > Devel at lists.laptop.org
> > > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Always do right," said Mark Twain. "This will gratify some people and
> > astonish the rest."
> > _______________________________________________
> >  Devel mailing list
> >  Devel at lists.laptop.org
> >  http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> One Laptop per Child
> http://laptop.org
>

-- 
"Always do right," said Mark Twain. "This will gratify some people and
astonish the rest."
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