[OLPC_Boston] CFS Deployment (Help needed!) (finally)

[Mel Chua]

Today we had our first weekly loop team check in with the sixth grade 
teachers at CFS: Rob (English/History), Vicky (Math/Science), Sally 
(Spanish) and the Head of School, Peter. I was subbing in for Mack and 
Katelyn, who are the regular loop team from Harvard. They were out of 
town for Spring break.

So, here's what's up. We will need help for some of these upcoming 
dates. To sign up for any of these dates, go to 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cambridge_Friends_School#Volunteer_Sign-Up_Dates 
(email to list if help is needed).

Tomorrow, March 26th, the server team will come to set up the XS. Note 
that no volunteers are needed, but Yifan/XS team should email Kyoko to 
let her know what time you guys are coming. She'll be on campus during 
the regular school day, which ends at 3:30. Please post notes. The first 
thing that the teachers will use on the server is Moodle.

Xy, no need to come in Thursday or Friday. Teachers would prefer that 
the students have their laptops for a week or so before the student tech 
teams get trained. Let's schedule this after April 1st when they already 
have their laptops.

Between now and April 1st, Rob and Vicky will write laptop use contracts 
with their students. They've basically got it covered, so no work is 
needed here. We'll remind them to post their contracts to this mailing 
list so that other pilots will be able to use them later on.

Ah, the moment we've all been waiting for. Kids get their laptops on 
April 1st! And for this, we need volunteers. Specifically, volunteers 
are needed from 10:00-11:30AM on that day to introduce the project and 
the XO's to the students. We can only take a small number of volunteers, 
so here's what I'd like to do. Basically, a room filled with confused 
children, teachers, AND demonstrators would not be good. Previous XO 
demo experience is mandatory, and at least one of the members of the 
loop team and one member from the Olin tech team should be there. We can 
take 4-8 people. You'll be explaining the program and the laptops to the 
kids and have about an hour of free exploration time to get them used to 
software, activities, mesh networks, etc. Anyone who wants to come 
should sign up by Sunday, 11:59PM. I'll pick the final batch on Monday 
and go on from there. (Any better way to execute this will be very much 
welcomed.)

Monday, April 6th: In-class volunteers needed from 8:30-10:30 and 10:30 
to noon. No prior experience needed, but you should be able to bring an 
XO. Borrowing one is fine. You would be acting as models of someone who 
uses the laptops to do cool extra explorations during/after class. You'd 
  be acting as a visiting student in class, and would periodically share 
with the rest of the class how you are using the XO to get more out of 
the lesson. It's a fuzzy description, but we'll follow-up with the 
interested people to make sure they'll be all set before that Monday.

Wednesday, April 8th: From 8:30-10:15AM, we need people to do the same 
"visiting student" thing as will be done on Monday, April 6th. We also 
need people to work with the students during Independent Learning Block 
from 10:15-11:25, when they'll have free time to explore anything they 
want with the laptops or otherwise. (Xy, this may be a good time to 
train student tech teams, if it's a good time for you.)

Aside from these highly improvised be-there-and-be-awesome events, there 
are some curriculum units coming up that we'd like material developed 
for. Rob, Vicky, and Sally should be sending more about their lesson 
plans to this list. Here's what we have so far.

-Vicky would like to do a geometry walk and use the laptops while 
walking around outside to record and measure (and maybe map) geometric 
shapes that they encounter (tall flag poles, building structures, rocks, 
etc.)
-About two weeks from now, Vicky will also be doing a unit on muscle and 
neurological diseases. The kids will be writing case studies. If you 
know something about these things and would like to geek out with the 
kids on this topic, that would rock. We still need some ideas on how to 
integrate the XO's into this.
-Rob isn't really sure how to use the XO's in his class yet. He's 
thinking that he can use Moodle on the school server to create resource 
photo galleries of historical objects and artifacts (ie. mystery objects 
for the class to discuss and investigate). We should have a better idea 
of this after the improv. sessions on April 6 & 8. He'd also like to use 
Metropolis (Sim City) to do a lesson on how civilizations are built, but 
he doesn't know how to work with this version of Sim City and how 
tweakable it is. It would be great if someone could work with him on 
trying out ideas for lesson plans using Metropolis.
-Sally would like her Spanish students to keep audio journals throughout 
the year. "Hard drive" space is limited. *slightly desperate tone* Ideas 
for workarounds?

Email to list if you're interested/have ideas/have comments/have 
questions/have feedback. The next report will be the weekly summary on 
Friday.

This email was graciously typed by Melanie, Mel's cousin because Mel has 
RSI. Thank you, Melanie! (No problem!)

--Mel