[sugar] Narrative

[Bryan Berry]

>Michael Stone wrote:
>Bryan Berry wholly captured my attention tonight when he said (in
>summary):

   "Sugar offers an excellent mode for discovery but no excellent way to
   manipulate narratives. Both discovery and narrative are essential for
   learning." [1]
   
>This statement seems to me both indisputable and damning; if true, it
>strikes to the core of the claim that Sugar is appropriate for
learning.


There is something I would like to add. Folks from rich countries (like
myself) underestimate the importance of narratives b/c we are surrounded
by libraries, online tutorials in our native language, extensive
versions of wikipedia in our language, etc. There's a real drought of
narratives for poor countries.

For example, the library at our pilot school Vishwamitra has about 20-30
books in it for 600 kids. Our pilot school, Bashuki, has something like
10 books. There are roughly 3 small public libraries in Kathmandu, 2 of
which are at foreign embassies. There is a Nepali language wikipedia but
it is very small in size.

If you are interested learning more about what is happening at Nepal's
pilot schools, check out this formative evaluation: 
http://blog.olenepal.org/index.php/archives/321


-- 
Bryan W. Berry
Technology Director
OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org