| Time | Nick | Message |
|---|---|---|
| 10:02 | walterbender | Welcome to the first Education Team meeting |
| 10:02 | The agenda is: | |
| 10:03 | 1. introductions | |
| 10:03 | 2. discussion of goals | |
| 10:03 | 3. survey for the Uruguay teachers gathering | |
| 10:04 | mchua | http://sugarlabs.org/go/EducationTeam#Mission |
| 10:05 | walterbender | 4. decide on a regular meeting time (e.g., it is 2am in Melbourne) |
| 10:05 | #TOPIC introductions | |
| 10:06 | FGrose | Hello, Fred in Rochester, NY |
| 10:06 | walterbender | I send regrets from Tony Forster, an engineer and educator from Melbourne |
| 10:06 | caroline | Hi, Caroline Meeks, Winchester MA |
| 10:06 | jt4sugar | Hi, John Tierney Rochester,MI |
| 10:06 | manugupta | Hi, Manu Gupta from New Delhi, India |
| 10:07 | rita | hi, Rita Freudenberg, Magdeburg, Germany |
| 10:07 | walterbender | Walter: Newton, MA, USA |
| 10:07 | deepank | Hi, Deepank Gupta from New Delhi, India |
| 10:07 | walterbender | walterbender.org |
| 10:07 | http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/ | |
| 10:08 | anyone else who comes in, please feel free to say hi. | |
| 10:08 | tomeu | hi, Tomeu Vizoso, developer lurking here |
| 10:08 | garycmartin | Hiya, Gary from Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. |
| 10:08 | mchua | waves |
| 10:08 | walterbender | quick question: anyone here a classroom teacher? |
| 10:08 | mchua | Mel Chua from Boston, MA |
| 10:09 | I'm not, but I live with one on the weekends (kindergarten, aunt). | |
| 10:09 | walterbender | and I live with one too, my wife :) |
| 10:09 | erikos | walterbender: my wife as well :) |
| 10:10 | rita | I'm teaching teachers at university |
| 10:10 | walterbender | maybe a good lead in to Topic 2, goals. My number one goal for this group is to get more teachers involved |
| 10:11 | to date, we have had some feedback, but day-to-day involvement has been exceptional. | |
| 10:11 | maybe that is too much to expect | |
| 10:11 | tomeu | my girlfriend as well ;) |
| 10:11 | erikos | tomeu: you should get married then ;p |
| 10:12 | tomeu | actually teaches in a 1-to-1 setting, but high schoolers |
| 10:12 | mchua | Most teachers in the US are in class at this time, but might be able to make a weekend meeting? |
| 10:12 | tomeu | no time for that! |
| 10:12 | walterbender | or maybe, as we were just discussing in another meeting, out interface to teachers is wrong (IRC) |
| 10:12 | garycmartin | tomeu: you have time for a girlfriend, wow ;-) |
| 10:12 | tomeu | garycmartin: I'm also amazed |
| 10:12 | mchua | yeah, I was about to mention that IRC might not be the best medium. |
| 10:12 | I've seen educators using twitter a lot, in incredibly amazing ways. | |
| 10:12 | walterbender | garycmartin: teachers are very patient... my wife puts up with me :) |
| 10:13 | tomeu | mchua: what would you suggest for real time meetings? |
| 10:13 | rita | teachers are using facebook as well, writing blogs |
| 10:13 | tomeu | rita: so only async? |
| 10:13 | walterbender | rita: +1 |
| 10:14 | maybe async is OK. | |
| 10:14 | rita | tomeu, I found that out from a discussion on LinkedIn |
| 10:14 | walterbender | Bill Kerr and Tony Forster's blogs are very valuable feedback |
| 10:14 | caroline | Does Sugar have a facebook group? |
| 10:14 | tomeu | I personally like async with occasional in-person meetups, but not all people think the same |
| 10:15 | walterbender | There is a social networking site, Classroom2.0, that is exclusively education topics |
| 10:15 | Sugar has no facebook group, AFAIK | |
| 10:15 | tomeu | this week was created sugarbrazil in ning |
| 10:15 | rita | here is a link to the discusison, but sure you have to be registered to read it http://www.linkedin.com/groupA[…]1236352462687_3_2 |
| 10:15 | walterbender | Nor a presence in twitter |
| 10:16 | jt4sugar | Need to think about Virtual Forums for meetings that can be recorded and viewed later |
| 10:16 | caroline | A Classroom 2.0 group is a good idea |
| 10:16 | garycmartin | caroline: OLPC and G1G1 related facebook groups, but not noticed a Sugar spcific one. |
| 10:16 | tomeu | sugabrasil, actually |
| 10:16 | rita | yes, and on LinkedIn there is a ISTE group |
| 10:16 | mchua | tomeu, I would suggest using twitter for a primary "keep in touch" channel, a mailing list for announcements, and then an "if you need to chat with someone in person, use this chatroom <url to browser-irc>" - I get the feeling that teachers are so ridiculously busy that expecting them to show up simultaneously each week might be a stretch |
| 10:16 | walterbender | but we need to make sure that there is someone responible to each channel |
| 10:16 | mchua | but I'm not actually a teacher, so ignore at will |
| 10:16 | tomeu | any educator here that knows portuguese is welcome to join http://sugarbrasil.ning.com/ |
| 10:17 | walterbender | and http://etoysbrasil.ning.com/ |
| 10:17 | FGrose | VOIP like Skype would be more approachable for a smallish group for occasional meetings (that include a text chat) |
| 10:17 | tomeu | mchua: olpc-sur seems to work somewhat, but is difficult to say if would work for all teachers in uruguay equally well |
| 10:18 | but was a bit fun at the start when people had to explain what was netiquette, etc | |
| 10:18 | walterbender | one question for the survey is what channels do they use to communicate? |
| 10:18 | mchua | anyway, maybe we can make a list of these options and present it to the teachers we know and ask what they'd prefer. |
| 10:18 | tomeu | yup |
| 10:18 | walterbender | let me set the TOPIC to #2 |
| 10:19 | mchua | walterbender beats me to everything. :) which ones they use, or which ones they'd be willing to learn to use. |
| 10:19 | whee! | |
| 10:19 | walterbender | #TOPIC goals (and means, as we have been discussing) |
| 10:19 | the communication should be goal driven | |
| 10:20 | exchanging ideas, stories, recipies | |
| 10:20 | code | |
| 10:20 | FGrose | needs |
| 10:20 | walterbender | yes...ideas for improvement with the developers |
| 10:20 | there have been a few examples to date: sqrt in turtle art | |
| 10:21 | labyrinth | |
| 10:21 | portfolio | |
| 10:21 | and a few examples of things happening complete in the field | |
| 10:21 | 3-4 activities in Uruguay | |
| 10:21 | caroline | I need concrete lessons and what we should teach teachers and kids if we have them for a few hours. |
| 10:22 | garycmartin | raises his hand for labyrinth - I need to release some more tweaks |
| 10:22 | walterbender | let's perhaps compile a list: (1) a generic workshop plan? |
| 10:22 | tomeu | garycmartin: want me to announce in olpc-sur? |
| 10:23 | caroline | I have a goal of getting in front of a couple groups of kids and/or parents+teachers this spring and using Sugar for some sort of lesson. |
| 10:23 | garycmartin | tomeu: can I ping you on that when ready. I'd like it vaguly kid friendly first. |
| 10:23 | walterbender | there is lots of material out there but it is hard to find unless you know where to look... |
| 10:23 | cjb | the http://lists.sugarlabs.org/arc[…]/fourthgrademath/ folks seem like a good example of developers who could really use some feedback from educators as they develop |
| 10:24 | jt4sugar | Set up email accounts for each activity and have Uruguay Teachers send lessons they have done with each |
| 10:24 | tomeu | garycmartin: ok, though teachers we re already using the very early versions with some success |
| 10:24 | rita | we are working on materials for an introductora etoys course |
| 10:25 | mchua | caroline, Sandra's crew at Olin wants to work on exactly that sort of thing (it's taking a long time for stuff at CFS to get set up and ready for them to do that, though). will ping you in pm about redeploying that team in your direction. |
| 10:26 | walterbender | jt4sugar: interesting idea: but until the volume is higher, maybe all of it gets routed back into IAEP? |
| 10:26 | garycmartin | tomeu: yes, I guess it's fine for curious teachers, but I plan on making the UI much more intuitive. |
| 10:26 | tomeu | ok |
| 10:26 | walterbender | jt4sugar: with a tag line, e.g. [LABYRINTH] in the subject? |
| 10:26 | jt4sugar | I think you specifically target them through deployment team there |
| 10:27 | tomeu | likes jt4sugar's idea |
| 10:27 | caroline | I do too, and we can always forward emails different places as volume grows or shrinks |
| 10:27 | walterbender | maybe someone with better Mailman chops than me can set this up? |
| 10:27 | jt4sugar | If you do it for each country-Localization and language translation will be easier |
| 10:28 | garycmartin | walterbender: regarding maths I've been tinkering with a solution based on PDFs. You can make very simple click through math/quiz games using pdf linking with normal tools. You can also add JavaScript code into PDF for some custom magic. |
| 10:28 | walterbender | jt4sugar: may by language group at first... I'd like to see more communication between Uruguay and Peru, for example |
| 10:28 | garycmartin | walterbender: I'm basing 'levels' off of Greg's recent blogs on maths. |
| 10:29 | walterbender | garycmartin: I am working a group in Peru on a simple framework that uses ISMAP-like ideas for simple authoring of games |
| 10:29 | tomeu | garycmartin: cool, you should send email to the 4thgrade ml to give it some life |
| 10:29 | walterbender | can we agree to take as an action item to set up these lists? |
| 10:30 | garycmartin | walterbender: using such PDFs works already in read, so sharing, and page resuming is already good. |
| 10:30 | walterbender | and work out the details off line? |
| 10:31 | garycmartin raises in interesting point in terms of what we can be doing as a group: developing more generic frameworks that are useful to the teacher | |
| 10:31 | garycmartin | tomeu: there's a ML for that, wow I'll never remember ;-) |
| 10:32 | mchua | wait, sorry, what were the goals we had for teacher participation? I'm getting lost with all the talk about tools. |
| 10:32 | garycmartin | walterbender: PDF is a crossplatform solution, I'd also want to make a pdf template activity for Sugar, so that content becomes a 1st class object activity. |
| 10:33 | walterbender | mchua: I am thinking in terms of a framework in which a teacher can easily author and share materials |
| 10:33 | jt4sugar | I think we should all go out and speak with 3-5 Teachers and just ask them how we can help them |
| 10:34 | walterbender | jt4sugar: we are (hopefully) gong to survey 600 teachers next week |
| 10:34 | jt4sugar | walterbender: understand |
| 10:35 | FGrose | http://www.mail-archive.com/ia[…]org/msg02644.html has a reference to DART that worth reviewing |
| 10:36 | jt4sugar | walterbender: Along with survey can you ask them for a blueprint for other teachers to use |
| 10:37 | walterbender | jt4sugar: the survey is the next topic... |
| 10:37 | just to reign in the discussion, do we have consensus on the goals of the education team? | |
| 10:37 | http://sugarlabs.org/go/EducationTeam | |
| 10:38 | we seem to have jumped into a discussion of means, which is fine (and more fun) | |
| 10:40 | maybe for next time, everyone can bring 1-2 means to the discussion that we can discuss in order: what, why, how, by whom | |
| 10:40 | mchua | consensus on mission, but not goals - I agree that Edu team should "explain why Sugar is an ideal platform for learning, and to provide guidance and feedback to those who are working on how Sugar enhances learning," but we're missing "and here's the concrete target we'll try to hit first in order to do that" |
| 10:40 | walterbender | mchua: good point: we don't have and goals or targets. |
| 10:41 | it does seem like we can set three obvious target audiences for our goals: | |
| 10:42 | (1) OLPC deployments; (2) Sugar on a Stick deployments; (3) non-OLPC netbook deployments | |
| 10:42 | mchua | that way we can then go and ask teachers how can we reach those goals in the way most useful to them. |
| 10:42 | and (4) teachers interested in doing (1),(2), or (3) but who haven't yet gotten started? | |
| 10:43 | walterbender | #1 is teachers, mostly on Latin America; #2 is teachers and parens everywhere; #3 maybe more targeted, Magellan as an example |
| 10:43 | mchua: I think your #4 overlaps with #2 | |
| 10:44 | tomeu | will be interesting to get to work with teachers in portugal when they get sugar in a few months |
| 10:44 | walterbender | practically speaking, the only way (except as tomeu points out, there are some #3s out there) |
| 10:45 | tomeu | it will be pretty simple for them to get it on the laptops of their kids |
| 10:45 | caroline | since most #2 and #3 either don't exist or just about to get started maybe we should be focused on helping them start. |
| 10:46 | is there a way we can help new teachers and get them used to contributing to a community of practice? | |
| 10:46 | walterbender | caroline: +1 |
| 10:46 | which is back to your question of means earlier | |
| 10:46 | caroline | how do we figure out what they need to get started? |
| 10:46 | walterbender | what to do with a group of teachers if you have 2 hours? |
| 10:46 | mchua | define the community of practice we want them to join. right now we have sort of a vague "join us!" and I'm not sure if I could give a good response if someone replied "join what?" |
| 10:46 | caroline | or 4 hours or 8 hours. |
| 10:47 | walterbender | mchua: the 10000s of teachers using Sugar in their classrooms |
| 10:47 | caroline | I think we have to say to them. Here is how you get started with Sugar and then Sugar coat our CoP and hook them into it. |
| 10:47 | Teachers don't want CoP they want help getting started. | |
| 10:48 | walterbender | caroline: what CoP offers is help from other teachers, not geeks |
| 10:48 | caroline | Walter, dowe have a way of hooking the 1000s to the new 1st world people comng online in the next 6 months? |
| 10:48 | mchua | I'm going to start publishing, on Mondays, a "if you have 3 hours of time, here's something to do!" series - would that be helpful? |
| 10:49 | right now the activities are geared towards not-just-classrooms (the ones in my queue all involve testing stuff, go figure) | |
| 10:49 | walterbender | mchua: if one of the somethings is providing interesting somethings |
| 10:49 | taking on mchua's role: we have 11 minutes left | |
| 10:49 | mchua | ah, so "make $foo", not just "do $foo" |
| 10:49 | manugupta | caroline: (Teachers don't want CoP they want help getting started.) +1 |
| 10:50 | walterbender | can we switch topics to the survey? |
| 10:50 | jt4sugar | Asking Teachers in Uraguay, Paraguay, and Peru to tell us how they would get other teachers involved might help |
| 10:50 | mchua | walterbender: SIR! switching topics to the survey SIR! |
| 10:50 | walterbender | I will write up a summary of Topic 2 with the open questions. |
| 10:50 | #TOPIC 3 - the survey | |
| 10:51 | We have a great opportunity to survey 600 teachers in Uruguay next week. | |
| 10:51 | We need to come up with questions | |
| 10:51 | and instrument | |
| 10:51 | and people to execute it (in Spanish) | |
| 10:52 | mchua | what is the survey for? is there a goal for it, or any restrictions, or a list of all the stuff we already know about those teachers so we don't ask again and can design the survey better? |
| 10:53 | walterbender | the goal is to extract as much feedback as we can from these teachers who have been using Sugar for 1 year in their classrooms |
| 10:53 | jt4sugar | What activities are you using? For what purpose? Have you designed a lesson you can send us? |
| 10:53 | walterbender | everything from how would they recommend getting started |
| 10:53 | to what are the roadblocks | |
| 10:53 | to jt4sugar's questions | |
| 10:53 | mchua | ok - is there a time or length limit we should stick to, so we don't end up asking everything and putting the teachers through 12-hour interviews? ;) |
| 10:53 | FGrose | How much time will the teachers have to execute the survey? In the conference room, or later online? |
| 10:54 | walterbender | and some feedback on the 0.84-0.86 diections. |
| 10:54 | mchua | and FGrose just phrased it way better than I did. Yay! |
| 10:54 | tomeu | maybe both? |
| 10:54 | perhaps some may choose to fill it back in the class with their students? | |
| 10:54 | or some may meet with other teachers are their school and do it together? | |
| 10:54 | walterbender | I think we should have the survey available on-line so that we can let the teachers know about it during the week-long workshop and remind them periodically in the week to fill it out |
| 10:55 | tomeu | I think we should leave all this possibilities open |
| 10:55 | walterbender | the Uruguay teachers have internet access |
| 10:56 | maybe a section of the survey is separable for them to bring to their students... | |
| 10:56 | but I think we want to have a concrete end to make sure people do it | |
| 10:57 | mchua | may I suggest a "no longer than 1 hour" completion time as a strawman to work from? |
| 10:57 | FGrose | A blog polling service would have those features and allow individuals to submit blog comments for individual ideas |
| 10:57 | walterbender | I don't think we'll get questions written in real time now, but maybe post them in the wiki over the next 24 hours? |
| 10:57 | garycmartin | mchua: needs to be shorter than 1hr!!! |
| 10:57 | jt4sugar | Believe should get as much educational info in 1st survey ask if they would like to do follow-up survey for some of the other info |
| 10:57 | walterbender | FGrose: many of these teachers have blogs, so we can ask them to include a URL |
| 10:58 | mchua | garycmartin: 30min, then. I'm just trying to set /some/ hard upper bound. any upper bound. |
| 10:58 | walterbender: +1 to wiki for questions | |
| 10:58 | garycmartin | mchua: 15min would be my call unless you want junk responses half way through. |
| 10:58 | :-b | |
| 10:59 | walterbender | I think garycmartin is correct. |
| 10:59 | jt4sugar | If you have to many questions they wont have time to tell you how they use the activities |
| 10:59 | rita | maybe there could be a short version and an extended one for teachers who want to communicate more? |
| 10:59 | walterbender | But we can open a window for more feedback and maybe make a class project for them to survey their kids? |
| 11:00 | FGrose | If we could structure some of the questions & answers, the blog polls will do the statistics |
| 11:01 | walterbender | we can continue this discussion in a moment, but as it is 1 minute until our hour is up, regarding Topic #4, I'll set up a wiki page for hat one too... preferred meeting times. |
| 11:01 | manugupta | A combination of multiple choice questions and asking for comments on certain areas might reduce time. |
| 11:01 | walterbender | #ACTION: set up wiki pages for gathering survey questions |
| 11:01 | #ACTION set ip wiki page for soliciting preferred meeting times | |
| 11:02 | #ACTION learn to type :) | |
| 11:02 | manugupta: +1 | |
| 11:02 | does anyone recommend a survey tool? (that works in Spanish?) | |
| 11:03 | mchua | walterbender, we set up an open-source survey tool at Olin that worked really well, I'll see if I can get the link for you |
| 11:03 | walterbender | mchua: i18n? |
| 11:03 | mchua | walterbender: I'll check. I suspect so. |
| 11:04 | hpachas-PE | walterbender, hola |
| 11:04 | FGrose | Lot's of social networking polls & blog site polling tools but I don't know how they work for more indepth surveys |
| 11:04 | walterbender | would everyone be willing to author some questions (and ask their significant others who happen to be teachers for advice)? |
| 11:05 | hpachas-PE: hola | |
| 11:05 | hpachas-PE | walterbender, la 8.3 esta disponible para instalar en XO? |
| 11:05 | walterbender | hpachas-PE: we are discussing questions for a teacher survey |
| 11:05 | mchua | walterbender: ah, we used phpsurveyor before it was called http://www.limesurvey.org and yes, it's got massive amounts of i18n it seems. |
| 11:05 | walterbender | hpachas-PE: are there examples from MEC in Peru we can see? |
| 11:06 | FGrose | (For the meeting log on curriculum sharing): http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/Main_Page |
| 11:07 | (and a nice testimonial):http://www.mail-archive.com/ia[…]org/msg02757.html | |
| 11:09 | walterbender | I want to be disciplined about time (and get Tomeu back to coding), so perhaps we should continue offline, gathering questions? |
| 11:09 | garycmartin | walterbender: +1 |
| 11:10 | tomeu | was back debugging ;) |
| 11:10 | hpachas-PE: puedo decirte como probar 0.84 en una XO | |
| 11:10 | hpachas-PE | tomeu, excelente!! |
| 11:10 | walterbender | OK. I'll get going on setting up the wiki pages... Everyone, please add questions and everyone: thank you for joining us this morning (in Boston) |
| 11:11 | #endmeeting |