[OLPC_Boston] Notes from XO/Sugar impact study convo

[Mel Chua]

John Tierney (calling in remotely), Evangeline Harris Stefanakis, and 
myself had a great conversation on Monday, and I'm posting the notes 
from our conversation with permission. (There are some details that 
can't be public yet, but should be pretty soonish.)

Enjoy, comment, and feedback is welcome as always. ;) Note that I 
haven't done my action items in the notes yet, I hope to get to them 
tomorrow night (I'm pretty hosed right now) but pinging me on things 
that might concern you is totally welcomed.

-Mel

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Problem: We don't know how well we're doing helping kids learn; we need 
to measure the impact of our work.
Proposal: Evangeline and her students will do a study  of the impact of 
XOs/Sugar on local Boston-area pilots.

This is particularly timely in terms of looking for funding because the 
new administration is actively looking for alternative methods of 
assessing student learning (says Evangeline).

Priorities of pilot/study, in order

1. Provide a good educational experience for the children participating 
in the pilot
2. Serve the teachers, administrators, and volunteers (including parents 
and Sugar developers) facilitating the pilot by giving them feedback on 
the project's ongoing impact on the children
3. Be a good learning experience for the graduate students assisting 
with the study
4. Disseminate good, solid results on the impact of XOs/Sugar to a wider 
(national, if not global) audience.

Funding for the study will be needed due to institutional requirements. 
This can be viewed as a plus, as funded research will give both the 
study and the thing-being-studied (grassroots deployments, XOs, and 
Sugar) further legitimacy.

Concerns on demographics: CFS is not the target demographic that we want 
to reach eventually (there is a much greater need in low-income public 
schools, for instance). Mel explained that given the resources situation 
when the "we should do a local pilot" conversation started some months 
ago, tackling anything beyond a small-scale trial at a supportive school 
was seen as overly ambitious back then, but with increased local 
activity and interest now, we *should* look for at least one comparison 
public school.

Fletcher/Maynard, in Cambridge with a 99% minority population, was 
suggested. Since CFS is doing 6th grade saturation, F/M doing 6th grade 
saturation would provide a nice comparison sample.

* Evangeline will talk with Robin Harris, F/M's principal, to see if the 
school was interested.
* Mel will find an university chapter to work with F/M as their loop 
team; first place to check will be with the BU team.
* Caroline Meeks may also be a good person to ask about the local Sugar 
(non-XO) pilots and the feasibility of expanding the study to those 
schools as well.

Timeline for deployment is Jan/Feb 2009 (at CFS, with workshops in 
January and physical XOs being handed to children in February).

* Mel will see if local engineering students might be interested in 
doing tech development work on Sugar/XOs for the pilots and this study 
specifically - making modifications needed for researchers to carry out 
their work. The main concern is whether Sugar gathers the data needed 
already, or if it can be made into more of a portfolio-capturing tool.