does web2.0 deliver sustained conceptual discourse?

Mark Nichols:

I think too often we as edubloggers either encourage or else are encouraged to think in terms of revolution, to overthrow the shackles of "hierarchy, control and centralisation" so as to achieve a community-based series of self-expression and negotiation of truth. However I see substantial evidence (in some ‘e’ critics such as Bauerlein and Jeanneney, but especially in the broader educational works of Mezirow, Gardner, Ramsden, Biggs, Brunner, Palmer, Tubbs, Brighouse, Dewey) that the latter will not necessarily lead to better or sufficiently comprehensive educational outcomes to develop conceptual reasoning.

Citing Freire and Illich are not useful counters to this position unless a coherent argument can be made about how formal education seeks to subjugate students in ways that exploit them. Freire in particular is concerned with issues of social justice; where is this absent in our incumbent schooling system? Is it really correct to suggest that formal education is based on the banking concept? Take another look. Illich, another oft-cited critic, sought to reduce the culture of compulsion in formal education so that its value would be better appreciated....

Knowledge ‘distributed across a network’ is great if you’re looking for answers, but it seems less useful if you’re trying to establish the skills necessary to reflect on them, express yourself logically through the preparation of a complex argument, engage in sustained debate, or explore the tension of ideas. The network simply cannot sustain conceptual discourse. The latter is too complex, abstract and fraught with the potential for miscommunication and imbalanced representation. Radical ideas are too easily dismissed, and their owners too easily ignored.
- Solid Thinking
- also read the substantive comments by George Siemens at Mark's blog

I've updated some references in an old blog, our intelligence, based on some recommended reading by Mark.

In thinking about my own failure to participate fully in this discussion compared with Mark who actually reads Dewey, Freire, Illich and more and wants to patiently debate, I came across this extract from Papert's The Children's Machine (Ch.1: Yearners and Schoolers):

Educational innovators even in the very recent past were in a situation analogous to Leonardo's (referring to Leonardo's aeroplane). They could and did formulate bold perspectives: for example, John Dewey's idea that children would learn better if learning were truly a part of living experience; or Freire's idea that they would learn better if they were truly in charge of their own learning processes; or Jean Piaget's idea that intelligence emerges from an evolutionary process in which many factors must have time to find their equilibrium; or Lev Vygotsky's idea that conversation plays a crucial role in learning. Such ideas have always appealed to Yearners; they resonate with a respectful attitude toward children and a democratic social philosophy

Sadly, in practice they just wouldn't fly. When educators tried to craft an actual school based on these general principles, it was as if Leonardo had tried to make an aeroplane out of oak and power it with a mule." (pp. 15-16)

My frustration with a lot of this discussion stems from my belief that most of it has been better said before. I don't want to participate in discussion where edu-bloggers lament their failing ability to do deep reading due to their excessive participation in the blogosphere (see Nicholas Carr article: Is Google Making Us Stupid?)

Petrosian (former world chess champion)

Tigran Petrosian, World chess champion 1963-69, interests me as a chess player because his games appeared to be so positional, so much the opposite to my patchy attempts at sharp tactics. So, I bought a book of his games, written by Peter Clarke, for enlightenment. The way I practice is to hide Petrosian's moves and try to guess them. I manage to get about one in three right, on a good day.

This passage from Clarke's book was inspiring:

(Petrosian is) one who does what is needed to meet the requirements of a position and, on the whole, makes no attempt to impose his own wishes on it

... the basic rule observed by Petrosian is flexibility ... He strives to obtain the maximum co-operation and efficiency from his forces, estimating this to be more important than attacking or even taking the initiative

Clarke contrasts Petrosian with another world champion, Tal in this way:

Of the three elements that comprise chess - force, space and time - Tal has a heightened awareness of the last ...(whereas) Petrosian's fundamental strategy consists in the fight for and conquest of key squares - and space in general

I realise that my attempts at sharp forcing tactics sometimes represent anxiety on my part. I'm afraid that I won't know what to do or I might be bored in a closed equal position so I push too hard too early. I'm trying to correct this by keeping calm and let the position develop through its own internal logic, rather than impose my will artificially on it.

arrange these fractions from largest to smallest

Today I took a glass and a jug of water into the classroom and asked students to pour a certain fraction into the glass.

I started the lesson by writing these fractions / numbers on the white board:

1/2, 1/4, 1/3, 3/4, 2/4, 2/3, 1, 0

and asked students to arrange them from highest to lowest

No one seemed to be able to do it so I introduced my glass of water teaching aid early into the lesson. Most of the students could manage pouring 1/2, 1/4, 3/4, 1 (and 0) but for the others many had difficulty. They couldn't do it.

I then asked if anyone could come out the front and show how to do 2/3 rds or 3/4 by drawing on the white board. With some assistance - this took a while - one student showed the rest of the class how to split the glass into the correct number of equal parts and then shade in the desired number of parts. Eventually everyone seemed to get it, by that I mean everyone could explain in words about dividing the glass into (denominator) equal parts and then shading in (numerator) number of parts

I then moved onto doing fifths and eighths and it seemed to be understood. Students could say what to do in words.

Going back to my original question, some students could now arrange the fractions in their correct order. But there was still some confusion. One student asked: "Why is 2/3 great than 2/4?". I dealt with that by asking someone to show 2 glasses on the white board, one with each of the fractions.

At this stage I haven't broached anything such as lowest common denominator. I see that as an algorithm that produces a correct answer without understanding.

... studies in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Malaysia showing that most primary school children do not link what they learn about fractions in mathematics classrooms with situations involving fractional quantities in their personal worlds. For example, many children who correctly answered pencil-and-paper fraction questions such as 5/11 x 792 = q could not pour out one-third of a glass of water, and of those who could, only a small proportion had any idea of what fraction of the original full glass of water remained
- Nerida Ellerton and M. A. (Ken) Clements
- Fractions: A Weeping Sore in Mathematics Education

This is part 5 of a series about teaching fractions and meta-dialogues:

"a dialogue with students which involves meta cognition (thinking about their own thinking) and meta-conceptions (students thinking about their own knowledge and understanding of concepts)"

earlier posts:
meta-dialogues are hard to establish
initiating a meta-dialogue
fractions in real life
redefining power relationships in the classroom

understanding maoism through the nepal revolution

Maoists have come to power in free elections under international supervision for constituent assembly in Nepal, as the leading party of a coalition:

Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) 3,145,519 votes; 30.52%
Nepali Congress 2,348,890 votes; 22.79%
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) 2,229,064; 21.63%
(source)

People who don't understand maoism will be surprised at their popularity inNepal.

I visited China in 1972 (before Mao died) and have read a lot of Mao, especially his philosophical works. Mao's essay On Contradiction (and related essays) has had a huge influence on how I understand the world, the dialectical materialist world view.

Here are some of the things, from an interview with maoist leader Prachanda that may surprise:

Support for democracy and multi party competition:

We have proposed to form a republican front of all the democratic forces, not just from the left wing but also from the liberals and radicals. We want to unite all the republican forces in the country against the feudal autocracy ...there should be multi-party competition. We came to this decision through intensive debate within our party. Our understanding is that without multi-party competition a modern society can not be built. But there is one very important issue for us: who is this democracy and multi-party system for? We have witnessed many different democratic systems which do nothing to help the majority of the population, but just few classes or regional groups. On the contrary, we want democracy to be really to benefit the masses.

Independent thinking:

We are not dogmatists, we are not sectarians, we are not traditionalists. We want to be ever more dynamic, adapting to our environment, understanding modernity ... We have to apply marxist science in a very new context, understanding social, economic and also technological changes, without dogmatism and without sectarianism. We are trying to develop a completely new concept, different from what happened in the past century. When we are in the government, our experiment will surprise everybody. But to do that, we need the support of all the masses from abroad. That's why I want to appeal to all the anti feudal and and anti imperialists throughout the world. In Nepal we are at an historical turning point, the poor are fighting against autocracy, for justice and equality. Even if we are a small country in South Asia, we think that our revolution can have impact all over the world. We are fighting not only for Nepal but for the masses of the entire world. We need help and the contributions from everybody

Support for the development of capitalism in a feudal society:

Tourism could also create enormous income for us, thanks to our marvellous mountains, our historical and religious sites and our astonishing natural parks. Not to mention our agriculture, the land in Terai is potentially very fertile With good government we can become one of the richest country in South Asia. But we need transport, hi tech and scientific projects, infrastructures, and a lot of courage. In ten years we'll change the whole scenario, rebuilding this country to prosperity. In 20 years we could be similar to Switzerland. This is my goal for Nepal ... We cannot ignore the whole process of liberalization in the world. So, we will apply mixed economics to this country. Right now, we are no saying that we plan a total socialist economy, though we will not blindly follow western liberalism. We have some national priorities and we will welcome foreign investors, using capital from abroad for the well being of Nepal

Nepali maoists are not terrorists. There is a monumental difference between popular armed struggle against oppressive regimes and the terrorist methods used by groups such as alqueada who target civilians intentionally. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) should be removed from the US government listing of terrorist organisations. (source)

It also seems clear to me that the Nepali maoists succeeded because they used flexible, non dogmatic analysis and tactics based on the actual conditions in Nepal.

More regular up to date information at Revolution in South Asia blog

redefining power relationships in the classroom

This is part 4 of a series about teaching fractions and meta-dialogues:

"a dialogue with students which involves meta cognition (thinking about their own thinking) and meta-conceptions (students thinking about their own knowledge and understanding of concepts)"

earlier posts:
meta-dialogues are hard to establish
initiating a meta-dialogue
fractions in real life

My quest for meta-dialogue in teaching fractions has merged with the broader issue of redefining power relationships between myself as teacher and my students. This is as it must be in the modern world, where the "cool" thing to say is "school sux" and "maths is boring". Not only students say this, School (and teachers) have many critics.

Students are going to be reluctant about revealing what they know and especially what they don't know about fractions, or anything else, unless they feel some sense of personal ownership of the physical and psychological space - including the meanings that are transacted, the humour, encouragement for speaking your thoughts etc. What is the word for this overall environment? I'm not sure - trust, empowerment, rapport, engagement? Whatever you call it, it is the secret ingredient (xxx) to the successful classroom / teacher. If it is present you can feel it shortly after entering the room.

And that ingredient (xxx) is (initially) built through wide ranging negotiations that recognise (some, not all) student rights and are perceived to be fair and reasonable. I say some student rights because the teacher retains overall responsibility for educational goals.

It works much better in a primary or middle school environment where the teacher has the same group of students for multiple lessons. In my case it's a year 8 group for homegroup, maths and science. Increasing of contact time is one essential factor for improving teacher-student relationships.

What NOT to do:

Don't stay in the regular routine of teacher out the front lecturing and setting exercises through a textbook. But it remains OK to do this sometimes, particularly in the early stages of getting to know a group. I'm not arguing for complete negation of traditional methods

Retain some traditional control:

As a teacher of maths and science I have my own agenda. I am not aiming for student empowerment in some generalised sense based on their current understanding of the world. My goal is to engage students deeply in maths and science activities and learning, which I see as important for them.

Sometimes I do find it necessary to being strict and insisting that students stay "on task". I also think that students sometimes use "fun" as a means of avoiding things they don't understand and at their current stage don't see much point in learning. For example, recently I was doing a more or less traditional sort of lesson about converting improper fractions to mixed numbers and there was all sorts of avoidance through fun happening in the room. When I got strict about it I found that only 2 students in the class knew how to do it. Since I have my own agenda and beliefs (that fraction knowledge is important) I insisted in authoritarian fashion that we deal with it.

What student's have pushed for, at this stage:

Student's asked me if they could go outside and I agreed but before we go out I negotiate with them an educational activity that we can do outside. Everyone has to agree, otherwise we don't go out.

The first time we went out, each student had to find a "real life fraction" outside (fractions in real life). After that I promised the class I would take them outside at least once a week. The second time we did a penalty shootout competition where each student had to measure their best effort. The going outside activities have been very successful in terms transforming the class attitude to maths. "Maths can be fun".

The most difficult issue for me has been some students saying they have become sick of using Scratch. I realise now that I pushed it too hard and in a didactic fashion at the start, rather than letting them discover and explore it more in combination with other software. (which is what I would do if I had my time over again). So, at this stage I have backed off a little on Scratch use and we are exploring other software as well. This is not something I really want to do from an educational perspective (so I haven't stopped using Scratch altogether) but something I feel I have to do since the reaction against Scratch use has been strong and persistent.


New, different things I have encouraged:

I have continually invited students to come out the front, borrow my markers and write exemplars or answers to questions on the white board. eg. "Who can write an improper fraction on the board?" I push those who haven't written much on the board to have a go.

I have asked my students to teach fractions to students from another class. Initially, they only had to administer a pre-test but then step by step I ask them to take more responsibility. They are now at the stage of writing their own fraction questions and programming them in Scratch.

At first students liked the idea of administering a test to other students but as I asked them to do more teaching there was some resistance. We discussed this. The best I could do was to explain my position that I felt being a teacher was one of the best ways of learning. Some students still don't like the responsibility so the acceptance is grudging. Nevertheless, I recently noticed some stats on this about which methods promote understanding, quoted in a comment by Tortuga on OLPC news:

By compiling various research sources a breakdown was arrived at that looks like this: Lecture (5%); Reading (10%); Audio Visual (20%); Demonstration (30%); Discussion group (50%); Practice by doing (75%) and Teaching others (90%). This reinforces the concept that students need to be turned into teachers.

Another thing I have done a little of and which I might do more of is change the seating arrangements around, eg. put the table in a square with everyone facing inwards for a good group discussion environment.

It's a complex dance of when and over what issues to concede teacher power and when to exert teacher power in striving to develop students to become more engaged and deeply involved in maths learning.

confessions of a fundamentalist

confessions of a fundamentalist, part one (OLPC news)
confessions of a fundamentalist, part two (OLPC news)
Berkman lunch, Walter Bender, Sugar labs by David Weinberger (some interesting parts there from the talk that are not included in the OLPC news article)

Walter Bender's talk is a good expose about getting the philosophical balance right between free software and learning in the here and now, that kids learning is the end goal and free software can be much more the means than it has been up to now in a Proprietary dominated world.

But in the rhetorical flourish of using Nicholas Negroponte's provocative words to obtain a catchy title for his talk I think Walter falls into a trap. Walter says free and open source (FOSS) is not fundamental but learning is. He then goes onto associate learning with constructionism (no other theory is mentioned) and so it begins to sound like constructionism is the fundamental "correct" learning theory.

Philosophically, we need to reject all fundamentalism. Physicists are still looking for new fundamental particles.

Learning theory is a mess. I have long argued that there is no unified learning theory and it is best to cherry pick.
There is no unified learning theory
from never mind, to structured mind, to messy mind
learning theory evolves (wiki)

This page of the wiki outlines some of the many learning theories (incomplete). Constructionism, as explained by Papert, is a great learning theory but certainly not the only one worth examining.

XO-LiveCD

Following the instructions on Tony Forster's blog (sharing with sugar) I downloaded the XO-LiveCD-080321.iso image, burnt an image CD and booted the latest OLPC software on my PC. Thanks Tony.

This partially solves the problem of the difficulty of educators in the developed world investigating the potential of the OLPC software and Sugar

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many different activities are now available, ranging from Paint, Write, Chat, music composition, multiple programming environments (Scratch is now on) and lots of games. I counted 41 different Activities.

I plan to take a couple of the Live CD's to school and see if we can setup Sugar collaboration there, as Tony has done on his home network (connecting a networked PC to his OLPC machine)

Sugary collaboration (joel stanley, tom hoffman)

I didn't grok the ability of Sugar to transfer collaboration to other hardware. Joel Stanley explains how much of the collaborative functionality built into the OLPC can be transferred via Sugar to other hardware provided you have a network of some type (from a recent email chat). This increases the lure of schools purchasing trollies of cheap laptops such as the EEE ("ultramobile" PCs). Thanks also to walter for leaving a similar comment about part of this on my earlier blog post.

Question: Alternative scenarios (to having OLPCs) might include the plethora of cheap laptops now coming on stream, initiated by the EEE -- but without mesh network and sugar etc it's going to be a very different experience, isn't it?

Joel: No.

Sugar =! XO. And Sugar is where the collaboration occurs. Your platform can be any computer, as Sugar will run on any computer.

What you think of as the "mesh" is really a software layer in Sugar that enables connection between to computers, and is quite distinct from the 802.11s meshing wireless technology.

Sugar's collaboration software layer can run atop any network layer - a wired network, current wireless (802.11b/g) or up and coming tech (802.11s "mesh" wireless). The collaboration experience does not degrade by using traditional tech; infact, it improves due to increased reliability over mesh - a technology which is still and evolving and is yet to mature.

Note that students who use XO's in classroom or school wide deployments will not use the mesh wireless at school - it doesn't scale beyond 20ish machines (yet - this is a work in progress, the number goes up as the software develops).

(Don't let this detract from the awesome technological feat that is the 802.11s mesh - it enables groups of up to 20 students to turn on their laptops while sitting under a tree, or in an random classroom, to form a network without any other infrastructure. This is a handy piece of tech, but it is not essential to the Sugar experience.)

Question: Do you know on what platforms sugar currently runs?

Joel: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Supported_systems provides an overview.

To summarise: current versions of the major Linux distros can run Sugar as it's desktop. Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 8, Debian Unstable.

Ubuntu 8.04 provides a version of sugar that is close to - but not exactly the same as - the Update.1 or build-703 images for the XO.

Debian has more up to date packages in "unstable", which isn't a released distribution of Linux, but is more than stable for our purposes.

Question: So my school can buy a trolley of EEE laptops for my class, run ubuntu / sugar and sit out under the tree and chat? There's gotta be a catch

Joel: The 'sit under a tree' model is how we describe the XO's when operating without a wireless access point. This uses the unique mesh technology.

As it stands, your school can buy a trolley of laptops, and run Sugar on Linux with all the collaboration enabled, /iff/ they can connect to a wireless access point.

Some terms that will help us have this discussion:

mesh - a low level wireless networking protocol that enables laptops to form a network without the assistance of an Access Point. Enabling the 'under a tree' model. Unique to the XO (at this point).

collaboration - a fundamental part of Sugar that enables multiple users to share activities. Runs on top of /any/ network - wireless LAN, wired LAN, internet, etc., and therefore any hardware platform.

Tom Hoffman explained the broader educational implications of this in April:

As I see it, Sugar is a set of tools for writing creative and collaborative activities for children. I think a lot of the confusion about, say, "porting" Sugar for Windows mis-places the reader's emphasis on Sugar as a window manager, rather than Sugar's potential advantages for the activities (née applications) which are built on it. Put another way, what's most important about Sugar is not what I see and do up to the point I launch an activity, it is how the activity works.

As an English teacher, here's what grabbed me about Sugar: it was designed to make it as easy to pass a copy of a student's work across the room electronically as it is to carry a piece of paper across the room. A close second in importance is automatic saves that don't use a hierarchical file system. Not using a hierarchy isn't such a big deal in high school, but if you've ever sat in the back of a room full of third graders while their teacher tries to make sure they've all saved their PowerPoints to the right folder in a networked drive, you'll understand the value (although the computer teachers tend to have internalized the idea that that teaching 9 year olds to use tools ill-suited to their needs is part of their job) ...

As a teacher, if one kid fires up an OLPC running the full Sugar shell and clicks on the Write icon in the frame, and another kid double clicks on a icon on his desktop or selects Write from his Start menu, I don't care as long as they can easily collaborate. I don't really care if on Windows Write opens as a regular window, with a separate window for the neighborhood view. I can deal with that. I don't care if my Windows desktop running Write has any concept of mesh networking, because it is plugged into an ethernet jack anyhow. I just want my kids to be able to have writing circles with the least technical hurdles possible....

From where I sit, there has been a distinct lack of interest in Sugar from the "learning sciences" and other communities that are involved in research and development around software for kids. They have not seen Sugar for what it is, which is the one chance in this generation,and I'm talking human generations here, not technological ones, to create a common set of open source tools specifically for writing applications for kids. They don't seem to get that this is a singular opportunity to invest in the foundation of their discipline. I don't understand why, but one hope I hold out for Walter's software spin-off is that he can engage this community. However, I only see that happening if Sugar is not limited to OLPC or Linux. Also, it is certainly true that as long as Sugar is a subset of OLPC, OLPC doesn't have a strong motivation to dedicate resources to non-OLPC platforms. Sugar needs an home outside of OLPC that can look at the software in a broader context.

obama on israel

"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."
- Arabs Shocked by Obama Speech

I think this is the wrong call for those who recognise and understand the historical truth that Israel is occupied Palestine. My limited understanding of US politics includes the belief that the Democrats are more captive to the Zionist lobby than the Republicans.

This is not "change you can believe in" but status quo pandering to powerful special interest groups.

By contrast Bush did more clearly call for a Palestinian State than his predecessor, Clinton, although it is an exaggeration to say that Bush was the first US President to call for a Palestinian state(source1, source2)

an effective critique

The blogosphere is full of helpful and interesting people, as this recent email I received testifies:

I just found your site with some interesting javascript.... but i cant beleive you post a photo as bad as it is...

So just for fun i correct it !... use it if you like it is better... i did it just to see if i could recover it..

Heh, that's the best way yet that I've been told that I'm a crappy photographer!! LOL (and thanks)

untangling Free, Sugar and Constructionism (walter bender)

Walter Bender Discusses Sugar Labs Foundation

I agree with the way that Walter Bender talks about Free, Sugar and Constructionism as though they are different things which can be brought together synergistically to enhance the overall learning impact. I think it's important not to mix up these words in a fuzzy jumble, to be able to speak clearly about the different aspects of something you support, the OLPC, [no, not necessarily the OLPC but whatever material construct that Free, Sugar and Constructionism becomes embodied in]

Also, in an imperfect world where you can't achieve everything at once it's important to try to tease out the relative impact of each piece of the mix. If we can't obtain OLPCs for Australian schools, for instance, then it still might be possible to do something along similar lines if we understand the issues deeply.

Free:

We should provide tools that skew the odds towards appropriation, without being proscriptive. For example, you could give a child a book as a PDF file or in a Wiki format. In both cases, the child can read the book. But the choice of representation does make a difference: the chances that the child will add a comment to a PDF file, which is read-only, are much less than to a Wiki page, which has built-in affordances for annotation.

Bringing the concepts together, the culture that is embodied in the FOSS movement — a meritocracy that is built upon both collaboration and critique — is synergistic with some core principles of learning, so, where possible, I try to embrace that culture. (The guidelines when I was still at OLPC were to choose FOSS tools over proprietary tools when there was not a significant difference in terms of the impact on learning.)

So, for Walter learning is more important than FOSS but if the software is roughly equivalent then choose FOSS. I agree.

Sugar:

Sugar revisits how computers can be used for education: it explicitly promotes sharing and collaborative learning. At its core is the concept of an “Activity”. Activities are software applications such as a web browser, a word processor, or even a calculator, that, when “Sugarized”, are enhanced by three key features:
(1) the application is readily shared with others; for example, to share what you are reading with others requires just one “button click”; in the word processor, Sugar provides the ability to do peer-to-peer editing, again with just one click; a chat window is always available for seeking help, sharing ideas, or exchanging data;
(2) a journal entry is created every time an application is run; not only are files and data automatically saved, but a diary is created so that a child, his/her teacher, and parents can monitor progress; and
(3) applications run full-screen in a simplified framework, yet there is no upper bound on the complexity that can be reached; for example, TamTam, a music Activity that is bundled with Sugar, enables a child to progress from playing a single instrument to layering multiple instruments and rhythms to playing music in synchrony with other children to composing music to designing new instruments to programming music.

I would summarise this three points of what it means to be “Sugarized” as:
(1) Shareable with one click, ease of sharing, conversation and community
(2) All edits can be tracked through the journal (it's invaluable for a teacher to know which students are editing since many students don't edit)
(3) low entry, high ceiling

I think this clarifies what Sugar is, not just a new User Interface, with different features than Windows, but also a way of doing things that is built into the Activities (which replace Applications). Others have acknowledged the confusion of identifying clearly what Sugar is. In the Power of Sugar Christoph Derndorfer pins Sugar down as a "gravitational force" ie. there is a cloud of different concepts floating around in idea space and Sugar is a unifying concept that picks out some concepts and brings them together, including:

information storage and retrieval (Journal) and the fact that collaboration is a “first order experience”

Constructionism:

“Constructionism” is a theory of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert. Papert first started developing the theory as a student of Piaget in the early 1960s. Over the course of more than 40 years of research and practice, Papert and his students found that children learn best when they are in the “active role of the designer and constructor” and that this happens best in a context where the child is “consciously engaged in constructing a public entity” — something “truly meaningful” for the learner. Further, the creation process and the end product must be shared with others in order for the full effects to take root.

I think this part is correct as far as it goes but it does leave out creating the meta-learning environment, which does require a lot of work by the teacher

Affordances:

I notice also that Walter uses the word affordances a couple of times and I think that is just the right word to use, because affordances means the opportunity is there but not the inevitability (eg. bad teaching can destroy the best intentions of those who designed the machine):

Sugar provides simple and readily available affordances for learners engaging in construction and sharing the process and end products with others ...

Sugar is at present unique in the way in which it provides affordances for collaboration for all applications ...

Scope:

... some are writing software to improve Sugar; some are porting Sugar to new platforms; some are developing new activities that run in Sugar; some are helping to debug Sugar and help with quality assurance; some are writing documentation for Sugar developers and for those who use Sugar in the field; some are developing new scenarios for learning with Sugar; some are using Sugar and reporting upon their experiences to the community; and some are providing help and support

What a great list of possibilities! So, there is some scope here for educators as well as python developers - ideas for new activities to run on Sugar and developing new scenarios for learning with Sugar.

One question though: With OLPCs only being distributed to the developing world and with limited options for educators in industrialised countries to obtain at least two OLPCs (at least two are necessary for collaborative activities), then how do interested educators acquire the basic material substrate to become actively involved in these activities and scenarios? There needs to be a way for educators in developed countries to obtain OLPCs. We are currently stuck in our wealthy countries doing thought experiments for the impoverished. (the Give one - Get one scheme was limited to the USA / Canada, had a limited time frame and from some reports the distribution was inefficient or worse)

the constructionist suitcase, at OLPC news

I wrote a longer, more detailed version of my earlier blogged notes about tidying up the constructionist suitcase, which has been published in olpc news. It is attracting some comments, too.

Thanks to gary, km and tony for thoughtful comments received to the draft I sent around prior to publication. As it turned out the new co-editor, Bryan Berry, was happy with the draft version and so it was published without modification. Probably best to keep discussing with the wider audience at OLPC news for now.

I'll add in the references here since they were chopped from the olpc news version:

Educational Software: Designed by Kids for Kids. Bill Kerr, 1994

Fractions: A Weeping Sore in Mathematics Education. Nerida Ellerton and Ken Clements

Genetic Epistemology. Jean Piaget. 1968

Papert's Ideas: Mainly from Mindstorms. Bill Kerr. 1991

Software Design as a Learning Environment, Idit Harel and Seymour Papert. MIT. January 1990

The Emotion Machine, Marvin Minsky. Simon & Schuster. 2006

funnies

students fail - and professor loses job

Students Fail - and Professor Loses Job

Do we help people from disadvantaged backgrounds by some form of affirmative action, by the modification of standards?

One issue which seems clear to me is that institutions should never create an expectation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds that anything less than full attendance is acceptable. Talented students might be able to do very well with poor attendance but in most cases poor attendance equates with poor performance.

Teachers need to find new ways to engage and motivate students without dropping standards. Students need to accept responsibility for learning. These simple statements seem to have become quite complicated.

It's wrong that someone who takes a stand for high standards should lose their job.

What isn't mentioned in this article is the post modern trend towards cultural relativism that erodes the very notion of standards, it all depends on your perspective.

High standards are attacked from both the Left and the Right: The Left from the point of view of "inclusion", the Right from the point of view of "back to basics". The cultural "Left" (what I call the pseudo left) is more dominant, they promote a politics of inclusion, participation and flattery. It sounds progressive to include people. But it's not a response to a demand from below, it's imposed from above by cultural commissars who are looking around for some way to "engage" the "disengaged masses"
- truth slips from view ...

... some see truth itself is seen as a meaningless concept – due to their embrace of cultural relativism, the importance of "diversity", celebration of difference, a particularist world view linked to the politics of identity, repulsion or revulsion from modernity, all knowledge is seen as socially constructed, different views are equally valid, experience is more valuable than theory
- constructivism and objectivity

We have entered a period where there is incredibly pressure to look good, to achieve well by accountability measurements that are often dubious - the fuzzy standards of outcomes based education. This achieves very little real improvement but generates enormous amounts of paper work and wasted time.

I remain quite conflicted on this issue. On the one hand I see a clear need to establish standards of improvement for the most disadvantaged groups in our society, indigenous Australians in particular. On the other hand, there is a need for sweeping educational reform along the lines of slow deep learning and meta cognition which is perhaps very hard to measure.

fractions in real life

This is a continuation of earlier blogs about the difficulties of initiating and maintaining a meta dialogue with students about fractions -

"a dialogue with students which involves meta cognition (thinking about their own thinking) and meta-conceptions (students thinking about their own knowledge and understanding of concepts)"

earlier posts:
meta-dialogues are hard to establish
initiating a meta-dialogue

In my last blog I said:

What happens next? Focus Question: What do the other students find hard about fractions?

I did ask that question of the class and did get some response (eg. they find ratio harder than fractions) but the response wasn't sufficient to reach the point where my students felt they could design their own fraction question. My students had no intention of approaching this analytically like a teacher might, eg. go through the fractions test, find out which questions the other students got wrong, make generalisations about what they knew and didn't know and devise an intervention to bridge that knowledge gap, etc. No way!

I should explain. I have a relatively small class of year 8 "specials", a mixture of some students with learning disabilities (various), some with behaviour issues and others who are "normal" (whatever that means).

Fortunately, I had thought about this potential road block beforehand and had another question ready to facilitate my goal:

Can anyone see any fractions in the room?

A few students could immediately see other fractions in the room and I wrote their responses on the white board. This included what fraction of the class were boys, what fraction were girls. Then one girl came out the front and demanded the white board marker and she wrote on the board, "1/12 is the old guy" (!!!) Of course, the class loved it and this became the exemplar I could use to illustrate how they could write their own fraction problem. We did this collectively on the white board.

The idea of fractions in real life became for me the way out of the dry pages of the maths textbook into something richer and more meaningful.

Next lesson I offered the class a deal. We would go outside for a walk provided that each one student agreed beforehand to find a fraction outside and come and tell me about it. This worked a treat and developed into questions like this:

• What is the ratio between the seats and the bin?
• What is the fraction of red cars?
• What is the ratio between the goalie and the players?
• What fraction of boys is shorter than xxx?
• What fraction of the class is wearing glasses?
• What fraction of the class took off their jackets?, etc.

So, although the class is not really reflecting yet on what the other students find hard about fractions they are, nevertheless, now at the point where they can develop their own fraction puzzles to give to the other students.

I have slowed down the amount of content being covered. This is a central point. To go deeper (meta cognition) you have to find a way to go slower.

genetic epistemology

Sometimes big words are important, not too hard to understand and they do throw a fair bit of light onto what educators do and how that might be improved.

When I read Mindstorms carefully many years ago I realised that Piaget's phrase made the distinction clear between open ended discovery learning and a more scientific approach that actually tried to tease out the evolution of knowledge structures both within a subject domain and the child. ie. both ought to evolve - our view of knowledge itself as well as its development within a child

What I wrote in 1991:

Piaget was not an educational psychologist but a genetic epistemologist. These obscure words are highly significant. Papert has recently moved to a new lab at MIT which has been named the Learning and Epistemology Group. Clearly epistemology is central to the concerns of Piaget and Papert. So, what is epistemology and what is genetic epistemology?

Piaget has recognised it as a mistake to separate the learning process from what is being learned. The study of what is being learned is epistemology. Hence, a genetic epistemologist is a person who investigates the evolution of the structure of knowledge in the minds of young people!

This is a much more dynamic conception than a traditional psychology of the learning process which passively accepts the traditional structure of knowledge as a given. Piaget and Papert are suggesting that there is a dialectical relationships between knowledge and people. Papert quotes Warren McCulloch tellingly to make this point:

"What is a man so made that he can understand number and what is number so made that a man can understand it." (Mindstorms, p. 164)

In looking at learning it is not enough to look at "learning how to learn" (ie. concentrate on the learner) but we need to study the basic structure of the subject itself. Papert investigates the basic structure of mathematics in some detail including a critique of the formal logical thinking emphasised in Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica and the "new math" of the 1960s/70s. In Piaget/Papert's view the basic structure of maths is derived from the thinking of the Bourbaki school: order, proximity (topology), combination (algebra).In Papert's view it is not natural that advanced maths ideas are inaccessible to most. What Papert has tried to do is restructure maths so as to accommodate the natural tendencies of the child. Instead of mathophobia Papert hopes to create a mathsland where it will be natural to learn maths, like learning to speak French in France.

Logo was designed with this philosophical/mathematical background in mind. Logo was developed as a language so that mathematically naive users could learn how to program and control the computer as well as more sophisticated users.
- Papert's ideas

Although, perhaps now out of date in some respects (eg. Bourbaki) this is still a very valid framework for a research agenda in a more general sense - that we explore the deep meaning of subject domains and develop better ways (in some cases using modern technology) for those deep meanings to be developed within the minds of children.

18 surprises about New York City

My friend Barry has just returned from trip to the USA with his family (Joan, Joey, Hannah)

He has written an interesting blog, 18 surprises about New York City, and is looking for feedback particularly from those who have visited or who reside in NYC

australia's shame: breaking the "code of silence"

The main problems of the australian aboriginal people are substance abuse and dependency on passive welfare (see my noel pearson blog for the full argument)

This is a problem in australian cities as well as remote communites such as Aurukun

An article in today's Australian (the forgotten fight a violent cycle) spells it out for the suburb of La Perouse, hugging Botany Bay in Sydney's southeastern suburbs:

• aboriginal men sexually abusing children
• the local rapist , a man known throughout the community, and how every time he comes out of jail he rapes again
• the woman who was tortured for two years by her boyfriend
• a two-year-old boy spending the night in the open
• Department of Child Services very slow in responding to complaints
• everyone in the room affected by suicide
• the men of the area have gone missing - in jail, dead or just AWOL
• grandparents are commonly "rescuing" children - a word used by one of the local women - from drunk, violent or absent parents
• more young girls becoming pregnant now because of the baby bonus

It's great to see women like Carrine Liddell now speaking up and breaking the "code of silence" in her community and calling for the quarantine of welfare.

initiating a meta dialogue

previous blog about this: meta-dialogues are hard to establish

I asked another teacher if my year 8s could teach her year 8s something about fractions. She happily agreed.

My students responded very positively to the idea of being in charge of administering a fractions test to other students. This was in marked contrast with the earlier reluctance from most to divulge to me what they found hard about fractions.

I asked them to play the role of the teacher, to explain the administrative requirements of the test and that it was alright to explain the meaning of the questions but not to give answers.

Of course, after a while a few of them (not all) began to break the rules and started to teach the other students. My inclination was to "not notice". One of my thoughts was that if I had initiated the process by telling them that their role was to teach fractions to other students (rather than administer a test that they had already done) then there would have been some resistance. But once they found themselves in a situation of sitting next to another student doing the test they found it hard to resist helping. Some of my students took the formality of their teaching role seriously and "told off" some of the students who were helping their peers too much by supplying the answer (or more accurately what they thought was the answer).

My purpose is to get my students to think about their own knowledge of fractions, their meta cognition (thinking about their own thinking) and meta-conceptions (thinking about their own knowledge and understanding of concepts)

There were two teachers in the other class because it was the year 8 Wiltja class, which contains many indigenous students from the Lands in Central Australia. Both of the other teachers were curious about my approach and that was a good conversation too.

It felt like a win-win-win. My students enjoyed it, the other students enjoyed it and the teachers enjoyed it.

What has happened so far?

• fraction knowledge exploration has begun
  
• social interaction between classes has begun

What happens next? Focus Question: What do the other students find hard about fractions?

• by reflecting on the knowledge of others my students reflect on their own knowledge
• design own fraction problems for other student on paper
• program your fraction designs in Scratch (transform to a new medium)

error in chess and life

For me, competitive chess is sometimes the best way for becoming self aware of my own potential to make idiotic decisions.

That is good for me. Although, that particular way may not work for you, I would argue in general that it's important for everyone to become aware of their potential for idiocy. Unless of course you are one of those people who don't make idiotic mistakes.

In chess you win, lose or draw and so there is objective measure of performance. (cf. "real life" where stupid decisions can continue to be disputed for years, sometimes even centuries.)

Over the board competitive chess is public - other players watch your games and observe your brilliance or stupidity, as the case may be. Chess has a touch move rule so mistakes cannot be withdrawn even if you see them after you move and before your opponent has replied. Your mistakes are irreversible, your guts lay on the floor and everyone can see them. In chess you can make a whole series of good moves and then wreck it all with a single bad move, perhaps when tired and under time pressure from the clock.

Although this is not "real life", there are enough similarities for the learning process to transfer into real life. Many chess players do assert this. As in real life there are different types of errors, such as: incorrect evaluation of the whole position (you think it is better for you but it is really better for your opponent); tactical calculation errors (you miss your opponents killer move after a 3 move deep sequence); atrocious blindness when tired or in time pressure ("how on earth could I have been so stupid as to miss that?").

Unlike the colour of the pieces this process is far from black and white. In many chess positions there are a handful of "good" moves (not just one good move) surrounded by many poor moves. This means that chess players can have style as well, eg. "positional", "aggressive", "closed", "open", "Nimzovitchian, etc."

Competitive chess players develop acute sensibilities with respect to error and the potential for error. This develops in a significant way for serious players who go through their games afterwards to identify at least some of their errors. This can take the form of an immediate postmortem. In my experience nearly all serious players accept the invitation to go through the game immediately after it is finished (time permitting). For players into improving their game further this is followed up by an analysis at home with annotations and running positions through a computer program such as Fritz, for further enlightenment.

It's best to look hardest at your losses, which can be (is) a painful experience. I know of many chess players who confess to sleepless nights after a painful loss. At the highest level this has even become life threatening in exteme cases. Karpov lost 10 kg and was hospitalised several times in his famous 1984 match against Kasparov (reference). This is the way that good players improve - by intimate dissection of their own stupid errors in an attempt to reduce errors in the future.

This chess process seems to me to be quite similar to the development of scientific knowledge - the public process of hypothesising, experimenting, making knowledge claims publicly and then arguing about those claims. This process of casting away illusions about ones own competence and becoming involved in a sometimes painful process of internal struggle with ones ignorance is central to both individual development and our development as a society.

Elaborations from other fields:

1) Marvin Minsky coins the phrase "negative expertise" in part as a critique of the behaviourist approach ("who trained themselves to think only about the physical actions that people do, while ignoring questions about what people do not do") but also because "negative expertise ... is a very large part of every person's precious collection of common sense knowledge ... much of what we come to know is based on learning from our mistakes" (The Emotion Machine, section 3.5, p. 81)

2) John Lienhard in his historical review of how books changed the world:

.... what principles should the adults, who currently control things, follow, in shaping a future we cannot predict? Lienhard recommends:

1. Seek out our own ignorance, that wisdom is having some awareness of our ignorance

3) Alan Kay's views on system design, summarised by John Maxwell:

The problem with both a user centred approach to design and a designer centred approach is that both assume that we know in advance what the system will be like. So, the starting point for designing a children's machine ought to acknowledge ignorance, that we don't know the endpoint.

How do we build a system that can grow into something yet unforseen by either its users or designers?

It ought to be more like paper or clay than a finished device like a car or a TV.

One metaphor here is cell biology. One kind of building block which can differentiate into all the needed building blocks. You need an evolutionary approach.

Late binding (Etoys, References) allows a fluid approach to change, the opposite of hard wired instrumentalism.
- alan kay's educational vision

4) the domains of ignorance

Known unknowns: All the things you know you don't know
Unknown unknowns: All the things you don't know you don't know
Errors: All the things you think you know but don't
Unknown knowns: All the things you don't know you know
Taboos: Dangerous, polluting or forbidden knowledge
Denials: All the things too painful to know, so you don't
- from The Domains of Ignorance

5) five orders of ignorance

from Philip Armour's "Of Jet Planes and Zeppelins"

• 0th Order Ignorance: Lack of Ignorance
  • I (probably) know something
• 1th Order Ignorance: Lack of Knowledge
  • I do not know something
• 2nd Order Ignorance: Lack of Awareness
  • I do not know that I do not know something
• 3rd Order Ignorance: Lack of Process
  • I do not know a (suitably effective) way to find out that I don't know something
• 4th Order Ignorance: Meta-Ignorance
  • I do not know about the FiveOrdersOfIgnorance

Philip goes onto explain that you can only have a process for something you already know how to do.

And the corollary: you can't have a process for something you've never done.

Dewey might say this

What might Dewey say about education2.0?

I wanted to say something about this blog a few months ago but it was hard to quote from because it was so good I wanted to quote the whole thing. I went back and read it again and had exactly the same feeling - so go and read the whole thing!

Disclaimer: I haven't read any Dewey original (blush)

tidying up the constructionist suitcase

Constructionism has become a suitcase word. If we are to continue using the word we need to tidy up the suitcase because different sorts of garbage have crept in.

So, what is in the suitcase, what should stay in and what should be taken out?

Take out:

• religious aura or grandiosity, it's the answer to all our problems regarding learning
• fuzzy goodness, it's similar to other good things like freedom
• superiority by assertion, it's better than all other learning theories
• stand alone definition - definition is only one narrow and fragile pathway to knowing
• technocentrism - something that will just happen by sending out OLPCs to children, it is somehow embedded in the hardware and software of the machine
• straw man opponents - all School is "Prussian" or some other derogatory term

Keep in:

• learning by the process of designing things (design, make, appraise)
• objects that are good to think with (eg. logo, LEGO, OLPC, Scratch, etoys)
• deep structural learning, knowing the "fundamentals" (not quite the right word) not just knowing how to get the "correct answer"
  
• rich concept development, knowing a thing in multiple ways, not just one way
• personal appropriation, aka as love, where the separation between cognitive and emotional (affect) becomes hard to maintain
  
• setting up whole new learning environments (total learning environment) - changing lots of things to achieve synergistic learning effects, not just one thing - this includes creating "context(s) where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity" (Papert/Harel)
  
• meta cognition (thinking about ones own thinking) and meta conceptual development (thinking about ones own knowledge and understanding of concepts)
• an honest children's version of a powerful idea, based on the non universals
  

Rough notes - thought arising partly from some recent discussion at its.an.education.project list

One thought is that the suitcase still looks rather full

Reference: Software Design as a Learning Environment, Idit Harel and Seymour Papert. MIT. January 1990

These are the guys who initially made this suitcase (Jean Piaget and Seymour Papert):




updates: I'm adding some updates to the original, in italics

meta-dialogues are hard to establish

I gave my year 8 class a pretest in fractions. The pretest was derived from Idit Harel's "Instructional Software Design Project".

The range of marks for my students was between 20 and 47 out of 67. So, there were significant gaps in the fraction knowledge of all the students.

I then returned the marked test to the students with a copy of the original test questions. Some expressed surprise that I was given them a copy of the test which they had already done. "Do you want us to do it again?", some asked and then answered their own question, "No way!". I explained that I wanted them to look at some of the questions again for discussion, not do them again as a test. I felt that they felt this was a strange request, that they had a task oriented mentality, that you complete a task and then move onto the next task.

I then taught a brief lesson about fractions, explaining that the underlying rationale of the test was transformations between different representations of fractions - transformations between maths like pictures, real life pictures, words and symbols.

I also covered some fraction vocabulary asking for the meanings of numerator, denominator, proper fractions, improper fractions and mixed number. Some of the class members knew the answers to these questions. I invited them out the front to write their answers on the white board and some of the students were happy to do this. Many students enjoy being out the front, writing on the white board.

I then came to the point of the lesson by asking them: "Can you identify for me and somehow articulate a fraction puzzle from the test which you found difficult?"

Once again I gained the impression that I was asking for something strange. One student said that he now understood it all since I had taught a (brief) lesson about fractions. This led to a friendly argument between me and him where I claimed that if he did the test again he would still obtain wrong answers and he insisted that no, he would get them all correct - but no way was he going to do the test again because he had already done it. This went on for some time, a bit like a Monty Python skit about the difference between an argument and a contradiction.

Eventually, after some turmoil and mulling around, the students submitted to my request and began to give me examples of fraction problems from the test which they found hard. One confident student even came out the front and wrote a question she didn't understand on the white board.

But the main thing I noticed from most of the students is that they gave me examples from the end of the test which had the hardest problems, even though many of them had made errors on problems from the easier sections at the beginning and the middle. So they were complying with my request but I think trying to give the impression that they knew more than they actually did know.

I realised then the importance of being able to setup a cross age tutoring scenario. So, that instead of asking what my students know it's far better to ask: "What do you think students in another class would find hard?" Then my students would be more likely to identify a problem in their own zone of proximal development, rather than something that might be too advanced for their current zone at this stage

It's hard work setting up a dialogue with students which involves meta cognition (thinking about their own thinking), meta-conceptions (students thinking about their own knowledge and understanding of concepts) or self evaluation. For many you have to think up ways to trick them into being comfortable with revealing what they don't know. It would be very easy for a teacher to give up on establishing meta dialogues.

internet safety

The world's first road traffic death occurred in 1896; the coroner was reported to have said,

"this must never happen again"

• 1.2 million people killed (2003)
• up to 50 million people injured (2003)
• predicted 65% increase over next 20 years

common sense is astonishing (piaget)

Piaget:

When he was a small child, he was counting pebbles one day; he lined them up in a row, counted them from left to right, and got ten. Then, just for fun, he counted them from right to left to see what number he would get, and was astonished that he got ten again
- genetic epistemology

I think the key thing in this beautiful story about counting pebbles is the word "astonished" in the above quote.

I have no personal recollection of being astonished by discovering the law of conservation of pebble number. And yet experiments with young children show that before a certain age this is something they (meaning all of us) don't know. At some stage in our personal development we learnt this, internalised it and then forgot that we learnt it - and can't recall any sense of astonishment or not knowing something which as adults, seems to us to be common sense

This is why constructionism doesn't scale (yet) - or is dependent on a teacher being there who realises that what is obvious and common sense to them is not obvious or common sense to children. And then finds ways to spend time discussing and experimenting with these common sense notions with children - rather than just assuming that everyone "gets it". Or doing exercises which involve getting the "right answer". How many pebbles? Answer = 10. Next question. This applies to all knowledge, not just to pebbbles or number.

If we don't understand Piaget's genetic epistemology then constructionism or a deeper philosophical approach to learning won't scale. This explains why when a school leader with a deep understanding of learning leaves the site then the whole learning environment of the school often then changes back into something mundane. For those who remain, obvious things become obvious again and are no longer astonishing.

Note also that pebbles are free and that pebbles are not green machines. There are some things that software freedom and green machines can't do.

thanks to Edward Cherlin for the Piaget link

Ivan Kristic's challenges

I also agree that Ivan Kristic's recent blog, sic-transit-gloria-laptopi, is a must read, warts and all, for its passion and the challenging way in which it airs some important questions, such as:

Can constructionism scale?

As far as I know, there is no real study anywhere that demonstrates constructionism works at scale. There is no documented moderate-scale constructionist learning pilot that has been convincingly successful; when Nicholas points to "decades of work by Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, and Jean Piaget", he's talking about theory.

Is there any evidence that "free software does any better than proprietary software when it comes to aiding learning?"

This insight:

There are three key problems in one-to-one computer programs: choosing a suitable device, getting it to children, and using it to create sustainable learning and teaching experiences. They're listed in order of exponentially increasing difficulty

This assertion:

A Windows-compatible Sugar would bring its rich learning vision to potentially tens or hundreds of millions of children all over the world whose parents already own a Windows computer, be it laptop or desktop. To suggest this is a bad course of action because it’s philosophically impure is downright evil.

This proposal:

I’m trying to convince Walter not to start a Sugar Foundation, but an Open Learning Foundation. For those who still care about learning in this whole clusterfuck of conflicting agendas, the charge should be to start that organization, since OLPC doesn’t want to be it. Having a company that is device-agnostic and focuses entirely on the learning ecosystem, from deployment to content to Sugar, is not only what I think is sorely needed to really take the one-to-one computer efforts to the next level, but also an approach that has a good chance of making the organization doing the work self-sustaining at some point

line rider in scratch (part two)

In Scratch drawn lines are graphics and are not programmable (except for their colour) so I introduced arrow sprites which have properties such as direction, which can be accessed and transferred to the cat character

Make a global variable, named catDirection. Then when the cat touches a line a message is broadcast to the other sprites. Each arrow sprite has its own local direction property, which can be assigned to catDirection.

For more than one arrow you need to create a "touching?" (boolean) variable which detects if the character is touching any arrow. Then you need another if not touching ... and statement to set the direction to straight down when it slides off the end of the arrows


To have the cat speed up when falling down and slow down on an up arrow make another variable, "distance", which increases for down angles and decreases for up angles

Send me an email if you want the step by step instructions. Here are a couple more of the code segments:

line rider in scratch (part one)

Rob Costello came up with the idea of incorporating the popular game line rider into the maths curriculum

When I mentioned this to my year 8s quite a few of them already had it on their memory sticks

I've developed a very simple version using Scratch. I discovered that Scratch comes with a ready made drawing pencil sprite (in the Things folder), with a drawing script. So I only had to write a script for the character to fall and then move along the pencil line.


I've written a worksheet. Send me an email if you want a copy.

I'm working on a part two, which introduces arrows for upwards motion and speed variations.

pamela bone

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die
- Aubade, poem by Philip Larkin
- Quoted in Pamela Bone's book about her fight with cancer, Bad Hair Days

Pamela Bone, journalist and author, died recently, from cancer, age 68

Here are some of the other battles she fought and about which I'm in agreement with her:

• She supported the Iraq war because Saddam Hussein was a horrible, fascist monster who had to be got rid of. That was a consistent theme in her writings, that genocidal dictators must be stopped
• She criticised the peace movement that protested against the Iraq war but failed to have any plan to overthrow a fascist dictatorship "... why millions of people marched last year (meaning 2003) not to denounce the world's worst dictator but to prevent the overthrow of that dictator."
• She asked publicly why western feminists failed to speak out against human rights abuses carried out in the name of Islam "When did cultural sensitivity trump women's rights?"
• She criticised the dreary cultural relativism that pervades the thinking of so many of those once described as on the Left. "Why is international public opinion not outraged at the treatment of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies?"
• She maintained her optimism and in saying that the overall trend in the world is positive

reference:
podcast interview
She talks here mainly about her illness and attitude towards death (also some references to her job as a lead writer at The Age, the Iraq war and her visit to Rwanda). It was good to hear her voice - on feeling really ill with terminal cancer, "... it felt like being slapped in the face and told to get out of the human race"

Bone writes her final column

... Calm and clear to the end

Why we stay mute on Islamic sex apartheid Pamela confronted Germaine Greer for failing to speak out against honour killings

Western sisters failing the fight
"LET it be recorded that in the last decade of the 20th century the brave and great movement of Western feminism ended, not with a bang but with a whimper"

UN must act to save distant people the failure of the UN to act against genocide in the Darfur

The silence of the feminists

Dislike of George Bush's foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech

the importance of and potential for the enhancement of mentoring

marvin minsky has recently written a great series of articles about the importance of cross age mentoring and how networks open up new opportunities for that - on the OLPC wiki

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Marvin_Minsky_essays
Memo 3 essays (all four)
Memo 2 -> drawbacks of age based segregation

extract:

From where do our children’s self-images come? Of course, they copy a lot from their parents, siblings, teachers, and friends but (as noted in Memo 2) they also tend to emulate familiar public “celebrities,” so that many children come to know a lot about athletes, pop-stars and actors, but few can recognize the name of a single philosopher, scientist, or mathematician, because such achievers are rarely mentioned either in classrooms or media. The images of those celebrities must have substantial effects on our children’s goals—yet those descriptions are mainly fictitious, crafted by publicists to grip our children’s attentions for countless thousands of valuable hours. And even when those biographies are accurate, they don’t often demonstrate qualities that we should want our children to admire.

the teacher's union conservatism is just as bad or worse than the education departments conservatism on this issue - look at what DECS (Ed Department) and the AEU (Union) have done to Al Upton's students (update 3):

"Mentors/coaches – any communication between students and adults overseas was strongly advised against. DECS and AEU representatives agree on this"