As someone in her third year of CSG’s OLPC program, my studies have become more independent, allowing me to dive into exactly what interests and inspires me the most. This past summer, I had the amazing experience of traveling to Ghana for 23 days to bring and install technology, including three “Internet-in-a-Box” (IIAB) systems, which are essentially digital libraries. Internet-in-a-Box provides people access to educational sites such as Khan Academy, Wikipedia, and Project Gutenberg who do not have access to the “real” Internet. I spent most of my time in Ghana teaching students and teachers alike how to use this technology to enhance their educations. For more information about my work in Ghana, feel free to visit the daily blog that I kept during my stay at http://technologyforghana.weebly.com/.
After returning from Ghana, one of my lingering questions was how I would best be able to continue my work with IIAB from Columbus, OH. In response to that question, I have decided to use my unique experience installing and teaching IIAB in Ghana to create a handbook on how to set up an Internet-in-a-Box system from start-to-finish, based on what I learned through my work (what went right, what went wrong, etc.). The hope is that this handbook will teach others how to to install and teach Internet-in-a-Box on their own. The closer Internet-in-a-Box comes to being a plug and play device, the easier it will be to install this technology in all parts of the world so that many people can benefit from it. My handbook is still very much in the works, but I have a working draft of many pages, and I am excited to see where it ends up!
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Recently in OLPC, we’ve been working on a program called Tidepool. Tidepool is a program created by Tim Falconer, who wanted to create a program that was fun and addicting to teach kids how to code. To do that he has tried to make a game as "addictive" as Minecraft, which is a highly popular kid’s game. There are building houses, flying avatars, sketching characters, and much more. In class we’ve played around with the program trying to figure out how it works. In the beginning we had a lot of trouble with it, but then we found tutorial videos that Tim, the creator, made and have been figuring out our way through the program really well.
This program has taught me that I have more patience than I thought. When given a program that you know nothing about, it can be very frustrating, and you can get even more frustrated when there are bugs and problems with the game. Throughout it all, I waited, stayed calm, and let the problems fix themselves. This week in class we started to learn about a new project that we will be creating. For this project we are working in groups to create lessons on Scratch to teach children about puberty. Emma Kemp has researched all of the information and has laid out the entire outline for this project. With her information we will be making interactive and informative Scratch projects. This class used to use Etoys for this type of work so it will be a new challenge for us to create the lessons within Scratch. The reason why we are making these lessons is to help a school Ms. Murakami has been connected with called Akili Prep School in Kissimu, Kenya. This is a day and boarding school for girls from ages 9-15. We will be releasing these lessons to the girls at this school and to anyone who would like to use them. Everyone should be informed on the way their body changes and how to get through that time in their life, and being able to teach others who either don’t know or aren’t fully informed is an amazing thing. I’m excited to get to work on my project and teach the girls about their body and the way it works, which is something every girl should be comfortable with. It will be difficult to work a lesson into Scratch but I am ready to take on the task. We will be working on this project for the rest of the semester and I look forward to doing it!
Recently, we have taken the information that we have learned about the computer programs and brained stormed some ideas that the teachers in Barbados would find useful for learning activities. One of these ideas was using the chat room to work on group projects and another was using the speech activity to help the children learn the definition of words as well as being able to hear them. Activities, such as these, are very important because they are allowing the teachers and students to improve their education through the use of the computers, which is the purpose of one lap top per child. We then practiced teaching the CSG fourth graders different programs such as scratch in order to prepare us for teaching the children in Barbados. Teaching the fourth graders also made me very excited about going to teach the children in Barbados and I am looking forward to the trip. Both creating the learning activities and teaching the fourth graders have expanded our knowledge about the computers and the age group we will be dealing with.
Our class has worked a lot on coding with Scratch and getting familiar with the laptops we will send to Barbados. We’ve learned the a basics of coding as well as some of the interesting programs in the laptops.
What I have learned about teaching others is that it is quite difficult, especially with children. Their attention span is shorter, they get distracted easily, they aren’t very cooperative, and they talk A LOT. It was pretty hard to get the 4th graders to listen to me and get their eyes away from their computer screens, and when I did get their attention, I found it difficult to keep it. They would constantly go back to looking at their screens, talking to one another, or not listen. Besides that, they were extremely eager to learn about Scratch and coding which I found very very nice! They all were willing to express when they needed help with something or when they achieved something. The girls were very good about listening to my advice for them and were cooperative with participating in the drills. Overall, it was so fun to teach them, it helped me appreciate what my teachers go through to get us to pay attention in class! Last class was spent teaching 4th graders about basic programming and how coding works to make machines do things. We taught them about scratch, which is a simple programming tool that allows a user to create a script using blocks. Some of the blocks had instructions like ‘move 10 steps’ or ‘turn 15 degrees’. During the time that we spent with them, we taught them how to make their sprite draw shapes.
We are visiting the 4th grade classroom again this week to show them how to make a maze. This maze will end up being a programmed game that the kids can play. The past few classes we have been preparing to go and teach the 4th graders. Like Marissa said, we worked on “natural” and “formal” language. We also learned to work the new scratch. We did this so we would be ready for Form V girls, and their version of the program. Ms. Murakami made an outline of what each girl will be teaching and we reviewed that, so we would be prepared and well educated on the specific aspect we were teaching. I have felt that I know a lot more about technology than I originally thought I knew. I feel like I get the hang of things quickly on the computers and I enjoy when my classmates are able to thoroughly explain things to me when I don’t quite understand. Teaching the 4th graders will really help us understand what it will be like when we teach the Barbados kids.
In class we have been learning a lot about how the XO laptops work, from taking them apart and looking at the mother board and all the mechanics behind the technology; to seeing which applications we can download from online and share between laptops. So far I have learned that I know a lot more about technology than I thought, and the things that I don’t know I can pretty easily figure out usually. I’ve learned that scratch is a really fun program that can be used for endless activities. The maze was a really great way to get introduced to the functions of scratch and learn all of the commands. It’s really fun to get a new task and learn which features you need to use. When it comes to teaching others I have learned that your common language is based a lot off of your personal experiences and where you live. Like someone might not know what you’re talking about if they don’t live in America. My favorite thing so far has been making the mazes and doing the “blind” partner drawing activity. I will remember the importance of communication with other people for a really long time. I am feeling very glad that I signed up to be in this class.
Yesterday in class we worked on how we were going to teach the 4th graders. We used both "natural" and "formal" language to explain how to draw objects and shapes. This was a practice to show the 4th graders how to use Scratch and programming which in the end would help us for the trip to Barbados. One person would face the board that had a picture on it and describe what to draw to their partner who was not looking at the board. It was difficult, but we all did really well.
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Students will be blogging weekly throughout the school year as they prepare for the trip. Please check back occasionally for updates. Archives
May 2016
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