[OLPC-SF] Pilot update from the field

[Cherry Withers]

Thanks Christoph! Forwarding this to our team members in the Philippines. I
unfortunately do not have an XO otherwise I would give you
a quick feedback on whether it's a good fit for us. Been awhile since I've
tried SoaS but will give it a shot again.

My quick opinion though just from the description is that it might be too
close to being a worksheet/drill sheet substitute, but it's a whole lot of
assumption from my part. So far our teachers in Lubang are excited about
getting the kids to explore and produce learning artifacts which is a big
deviation from their methodology that they've been doing in the past so we
want to keep encouraging that. In our past survey, class time seems to be
taken up by too much worksheet/ drill time especially in Math.

One of the things that may help with a Math activity for us, especially come
September when they are going to learn fractions would be some sort of
"electronic" manipulative akin to Cuisenaire rods? Where they can visually
see and manipulate different artifacts to intuitively learn fractions. You
may already have thought of this on this activity.

@Mitch, would you be able to go over this activity with our Math teacher
before you leave this week?

@Tessa, could you possibly test this out to see if it fits with our 4th
grade curriculum particularly come September?

Thanks again!
---Cherry

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Christoph Derndorfer <
e0425826 at student.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

> Hi Cherry,
>
> the topic of lack of activities for learning / practicing Mathematics
> has come up repeatedly over the past few years.
>
> Here in Austria some people at Graz University of Technology in
> collaboration with the teachers of the Austrian OLPC pilot project have
> been working on an activity called "ReckonPrimer" for practicing basic
> Maths in the past year. It's still a bit crude in terms of the usability
> and has a couple of other issues but it's generally well thought out and
> quite popular with the pupils here in Austria.
>
> You can download the .xo file (which isn't based on the very latest
> code!) at http://www.ist.tugraz.at/projects/isac/rp/ReckonPrimer-6.xo,
> find more information about the project at
> http://www.ist.tugraz.at/projects/isac/rp/ or access the code at
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/rp
>
> In case you do try it out or have teachers use it I'd be very interested
> in your feedback as the project will be continued once university starts
> again in October and I'm currently in somewhat of a brain-storming
> period for this.
>
> Thanks,
> Christoph
>
> Am 16.07.2010 21:49, schrieb Cherry Withers:
> > 5) Concern was raised for lack of activities for Math. Come September
> > they need to be covering Fractions.
>
> --
> Christoph Derndorfer
> co-editor, www.olpcnews.com
> e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com
>
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