[OLPC-Philippines] Greetings from IGDA Manila

Marc Robinsone Nicolas Caballero marc.robinsone at gmail.com
Fri Apr 9 08:37:45 EDT 2010


Hey everyone.

Cherry thanks for keeping in the loop.

Based on the email history, it seems that there's huge collaboration
interest in improving the website.

Anyhow, just keep me informed. I'll stick around for everybody's feedback.


Cheers,

Marc C.

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Cherry Withers <cwithers at ekindling.org>wrote:

> Ryan,
>
> Hahaha. I SO hear you on the lack of content on our site. We are still
> composed of volunteers right now so and we are constantly trying to look for
> warm bodies to address even the basics. I did the initial design of the page
> (no web design background whatsoever...I had to learn Adobe CS3) and was
> just trying to make something work. We've now made a link with Open Source
> Philippines and I've essentially handed it off to their website guru Marc to
> work on the back-end of things. He is also on a volunteer basis as well. But
> hey, if you can lend us a hand on the area of content for our site...we're
> happy to take it.
>
> Hoping to fill our website with works by kids participating in these two
> eKindling projects (both from pilot kids in Lubang and the Muscovado project
> with APC) some day. I will try to get something from APC. I think they do
> have limited space as well and you might want to bring your own laptop with
> SoaS (Sugar on a Stick). Maybe Ray can chime in on this discussion.
>
> Thanks,
> Cherry
>
> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 11:57 PM, Ryan Sumo <endlessthirteen at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi Cherry,
>>
>> eKindling project sounds great!  Do you have any material I can forward to
>> people, like a poster online or something with a schedule?  It'd make it a
>> lot easier for me to spread out to people.  I found the ekindling website<http://www.ekindling.org/news>btw, which lookshttp://
>> mail.google.com/a/ekindling.org/#inbox/127e0c02683c0863 great but could
>> do with a little more content. :)
>>
>> Thanks again!
>>
>> Ryan Sumo
>> freelance artist/IGDA Manila chairperson
>> portfolio - http://ryansumo.carbonmade.com/
>> blog - http://geekofalltrades.wordpress.com/
>> IGDA Manila forum - http://tinyurl.com/igdamanila
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Cherry Withers <cwithers at ekindling.org>
>> *To:* OLPC Philippines/Pilipinas grassroots <
>> olpc-philippines at lists.laptop.org>
>> *Sent:* Friday, April 9, 2010 2:35:23 PM
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: [OLPC-Philippines] Greetings from IGDA Manila
>>
>> I agree with everything that you said Carlos. There are a lot of education
>> content out there to be had. Some are even developed by non-profits like:
>> http://www.e-learningforkids.org/index.html or Innovations for Learning.
>>
>> What I meant by contextualizing for the Philippine's is to have games that
>> highlight our culture and our people -> looking within and projecting
>> outwards. These can of course be available in English (what better way to
>> show off Philippines than having it in a more global language). I have seen
>> too many games for kids that have too westernized context that I will be
>> hard pressed to show when we do remote deployments (I have a hard time
>> recommending games with apples, pizza and a house with at least two cars in
>> the garage). But it goes beyond that, if we get kids to look at their
>> environment and its resources we may be able to gear them towards creating
>> solutions for our own country.
>>
>> In Sugar's defense, it is a young platform and the whole OLPC initiative
>> also have roots from constructivist learning which is more projects based.
>> That's probably why most of the initial activities are geared towards that.
>> It is the idea that the child can use their creativity and natural
>> tendencies to explore and be able to participate in the creation of learning
>> as opposed to be just consumers of learning. What is lacking in most games
>> today are that the learning is just one-way. There's hardly any provisions
>> for the child's voice to be heard. I agree, we need to convert our stories
>> into e-book format. We need more stories told and read by many and like you
>> said not rely on big publishers for content that are often made and
>> distributed poorly and scarcely.
>>
>> Ryan, the eKindling project with Asia Pacific College is actually for a
>> content creation contest. High School students from 4 different schools are
>> going to create content for elementary students (for this run it will be for
>> 4th graders as this will also support the Lubang Pilot) with the use of
>> Etoys and Sugar on a Stick. This can be anywhere from creating dynamic
>> e-books to games that address items in Philippine's Curriculum. Since we're
>> all about creating sparks, we're trying to start early. I think it's a great
>> initiative to get kids involved with education and outreach very early on.
>> The training will be for HS teachers. Hope you can make it.
>>
>> Carlos, do you have anything that we can use for our Pilot in Lubang? We
>> are using XO 1.5 for this pilot so flash-like content should run much better
>> on those. Does your group develop content that runs in gnash as well?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Cherry
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Carlos Nazareno <object404 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> >I concur with
>>> > Carlos there's not enough content that's in Philippine's context.
>>> > More needs to be done on that front.
>>>
>>> Not just in the Philippine context, but the global context.
>>>
>>> IMHO the weak point of OLPC support is developing educational content
>>> itself. Most  of the concentration is on the laptops and the engine
>>> running on the OS and how to make software for the system -- not
>>> enough developing educational content, modules & curriculum itself.
>>>
>>> It's true that curriculum needs to be customized for each area of
>>> deployment/country locality, but there's global standards of education
>>> (especially since the project came out of an ivy-league school which
>>> is one pinnacle benchmark for educational standards). MIT has open
>>> courseware, and there's lot of courseware available around the web
>>> from top universities, but most of them are for college+ level.
>>>
>>> Also, here's the thing: we're an English-speaking country, our three
>>> official languages according to the Philippine constitution is
>>> Filipino, Spanish & English, so technically & constitutionally,
>>> English is a native  language for  the Philippines. One of the biggest
>>> problems in our public education system is the quality of content
>>> being taught (the problem being compounded by bad textbooks being
>>> distributed to public schools with a lot of factual errors & poor
>>> quality control and under-trained teachers on low salaries).
>>>
>>> We already speak English. IMHO if OLPC or other international
>>> education foundations made high quality open courseware in English of
>>> global international standards targeted at gradeschool & high school
>>> level, more than half the battle is already won.
>>>
>>> A problem with that is that it goes against schools as businesses ->
>>> curriculum is something that a little guarded among schools and the
>>> very, very, very big business of the entire textbook publishing
>>> industry itself (the price of textbooks is so high that in Ateneo High
>>> School, as students, we just rent our textbooks from the school during
>>> the schoolyear and then return them to the school administration at
>>> the end of the year, minus fees out of our pocket for damaged,
>>> vandalized or lost books).
>>>
>>> -Naz
>>>
>>> --
>>> carlos nazareno
>>> http://twitter.com/object404
>>> http://www.object404.com
>>> --
>>> interactive media specialist
>>> zen graffiti studios
>>> http://www.zengraffiti.com
>>> --
>>> "if you don't like the way the world is running,
>>> then change it instead of just complaining."
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> OLPC-Philippines mailing list
>>> OLPC-Philippines at lists.laptop.org
>>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-philippines
>>>
>>
>>
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