T527 Sugar Professional Development for Teachers

By making explicit the threads of the understanding goals and assessments the Teaching for Understanding framework supports the creation a tightly woven curriculum design that is more efficient at teaching both low level skills and higher level thinking.

Context?

What is the

T527 Presentation Goals

The Learners are US elementary school teachers and technology specialists interested in learning about Sugar.

• In person workshops are held regionally, followed by a combined online experience.
• Online Modules last 2 weeks each.
• Teachers recieve continueing education credit.

Online community also provides peer and expert technical support for implementation.

What is?

Ah Ha

• Do I still have implict goals that I need to make explicit?
• Am I trying to have the teachers keep too many goals in mind at once?

Photo by ecstaticist of Flickr

Puzzle

Open Source Learning Platform for Students 5 to 12 years old

Professional Development

for

Teachers

Generative Topics

By Caroline Meeks

Caroline@solutiongrove.com

How as elementary school teachers

can we empower all learners with Sugar?

Throughlines

Collaboration for Learning

This includes

- Teaching standards relate content

- Raising expectation of the student by self and others

- Increasing creativitiy and learner initiated learning

- Reducing the digital divide and achievement gaps

- Supporting different learning styles and multiple intelligences

- Adding arts and music to the student's experience

- Increase partnership around student learning between school, home and out-of-school time activities including with families that are not english speakers.

Bridge the Gaps

Collaboration for Learning

from the classroom to the planet.

Teachers will see themselves as a part of, contributing to and getting help from, a global community committed to education for all. They will view themselves as global citizenship in the Open Source/Content Communities.

Teachers will practice collaborating with other teachers.

Teachers will learn skills to help them promote collaborative learning in their classrooms.

by TheLastMnute on Flickr

Targets of Difficulty

Photo by Muffit on Flickr

Closing the Achievement Gap

Differentiating Instruction

The Acievement Gap: The difference between how well low-income and minority children perform on standardized tests as compared with their peers

The Digital Divide: Access to computing for students of all socioeconomic backgrounds. Learners should understand concretely how to do it in their class and school and also understand more about the issue globally.

Disabled Curriculum Abyss: David Rose says its the curriculum that is disabled not the students. Teachers will understand how to use Sugar to reach learners with different abilities and learning syles and to challenge learners of all levels.

The Opportunity Gap: Using Sugar on a Stick to extend learning time, expand access to high quality content, and promote Home, School and Community partnerships.

The Participation Gap: Using Sugar to empower expression with new media and prepare students to participate in a global culture.

The 4C's Chasm. Partnerships for 21st Century skills identifies Learning and Innovation skills that include Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration. Teachers will understand how to use Sugar to support creation of these skills in all students.

The Expectations Deficit: Using Sugar to produce impressive artifacts that raise expectations.

Understanding Goals

Teaching to Standards with Sugar

Using Sugar and Activities

by SanGatiche of Flickr

Teachers will understand how implement Sugar in their classrooms and schools and use it in powerful ways to support learning, expression and reflection and creation of artifacts.

Knowledge

Forms of Expression

UG2.1 Teachers will understand how Sugar can effectively and efficiently be used to help their students learn a wide variety of content areas, including content on the high stakes tests such as the MCAS (p. 117 TfU).

This learning goal is designed to address the cultural beliefs about Sugar (Bielaczyc) and shift them towards believing it can be used to teach core subjects in ways that can impact standardized test scores.

UG2.2 Teachers will understand how Sugar can be used in their existing contexts, in their schools, in their communities with the resources available to them.

-Ability to use programming tools as a means of expression.

-Ability to create multimedia artifacts using a variety of tools.

-Understand the Zoom Levels

-Open Activities

-Add Activities

-Use the Journal

-Understand the Frame

-Keyboard short cuts

-Registration and file backup

-Know how to use a range of activities

-Know how to add new activities

-Know how to get help from the Sugar community and how to help other teachers

Purposes

Wndows into the Learning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4880PJnO2E&feature=player_embedded

Consider this video with the question "How well can the coach sing?"

Teachers do not need to be experts themselves to support their students in excellence.

Empowering Students to Create

Activities that explicitly make learning visible - aka ongoing assesments

Teaching Diverse Learners

Photo by Foto Iervolino of Flickr

Teachers will understand why and how their students can express themselves in many different ways with various Sugar activities and in the process create impressive work products that demonstrate their abilities, learning and understanding in ways that increase exceptions of success.

Creating authentic artifacts leads to:

- Better understanding

- More engaging

- Creates portfolio items

- Raises self-esteem and expectations by people viewing the work.

- Provides more avenues for expression

- Teaches multimedia expression which is increasing in usage in the world.

Turtle Art Portfolio

Teachers will understand why and how to use Sugar in ways that

differentiate instruction for effective learning by a wide variety of students.

Teachers will learn:

How and when do you use audio and visual features

How can you modify the assignment for different levels of learners

How can you teach to and highlight student's multiple intellegences

Whole Class Blog Post Report

to the Sugar Community

Photo by Hawii of Flickr and shared under a creative commons licence

Extending Student Learning Time with Sugar

Teachers will understand how to have their students use Sugar on a Stick outside the classroom and what sort of homework assignments are effective in supporting learning and reducing the opportunity gap.

Learning Communities

from global to the classroom

Knowledge

Methods

Teachers will make a portfolio in the face to face portion of the class and continue to add to it in subsequent sections.

In the face to face portion of the class we do a student-parent-teacher role play using the portfolios.

The portfolios will be used throughout the course to support teacher self reflection and peer and facilitator feedback.

-What works best as homework vs in school

-How to use Sugar to collaborate around student learning with parents and after school care providers.

In support of our global learning community goal the class will write a report pointing out exemplary work in relationship to the learning goals of the class. This report out will serve a number of purposes:

-an example of participation with the greater Sugar community.

-positive feedback and examples

-show the teacher's work to an authentic audience (developers and other teachers in the Sugar community)

-Internal feedback tool for the facilitation team on how teachers are doing against our learning goals so future activities can be adjusted.

This will probably be written by the facilitators for the in person workshop and as the course contiunes the facilitation team will transfer the responsibility for writing to the teachers to the extent it is feasible. Teachers that are already bloggers will be encouraged to blog, but in general we are working to create learning community and break teachers out of an individual practice habit.

-best practices on communicating with parents and getting home systems set up to use Sugar.

-best practices for communicating with after-school programs

-Examples of how to get computer donations for your class, students without computers.

-What to do if a Student loses a stick

-How to load content onto the stick so students can work without internet at home.

-How to have students turn in work using Moodle so you can grade it from anywhere.

Purposes

-Out of school time use can help students pursue their interests and foster a love of learning.

-How can students give each other feedback to expand who they can learn from.

-Bridge the "opportunity gap" portion of the digital divide

Teachers will understand themselves as participants in a world wide movement to improve education. They will understand World Wide Sugar, One Laptop per Child and Open Content Communities including understanding how to contribute and how to get help from these global resources.

Teachers will appreciate and be able to participate in learning communities at many levels.

-Within your school

-In your geographical area

-World wide Open Source and Open Content Communities

-Teachers in other countries using Sugar

• Teachers will understand how to use Sugar to support collaboration and the Learning Community in their classroom.
• Teachers will expand their sense of being a global citizen that both contributes to, and benefits from a global open education movement.
• Inside the classroom we will consider the shifts of students to become experts and facilitate each others learning.

Performances of Understanding

Scaffolding Student Research Papers

Online Modules

In a classroom students, not teachers create the memorize games

Teachers will form topic based teams and use InfoSlicer and Browse to create a selection of research from the web for students to use to write a research paper. This will create a bundle of content that can be loaded onto student sticks and used without internet access.

We will discuss UDL and finding appropriate level of content and how to scaffold young learners to do their own research on the web.

We will discuss how to use the web to bring in material that is culturally relevant to the students and even how to find materials that are created and used in other countries.

Students will create multimedia research reports that can be shown to parents and others to raise expectations.

In Person Workshop

Create a Memorize Game

Literacy skills

Teachers will experience Memorize from the Learners view point.

- Create a new game

- Share a game and join a shared game

-Get images from the internet and use them in another activities

-Switch between activities

- Navigate to and use the Journal

Some teachers may:

-Use sounds

-Record audio

Teachers learn how to create multimedia and add it to their portfolios.

Sugar skills include using Memorize, Browse, Journal, Paint and Collaboration.

Literacy and research. Can be applied across the curriculum.

Speak to me!

Learn to use an online chat for collaboration

Speak, Read eTexts, Labarynth, Record

Students create a multimedia research paper.

Doing this task will help teachers realize that their students can learn as much or more making the game as they do playing it. Students also have to decide what to put in their game which is an opportunity for metacognition that they don't have when they play a premade game.

Helpful for students with visual or reading disabilities or just learn better through listening.

This is an easy way to help students practice recall of facts and its thus very straightforward to see how it will help prep for standardized tests.

Will discuss sharing research bundles and look at getting materials on other cultures from primary sources in those cultures.

eToys,

Browse, Infoslicer, Write

The ability to have text read to them outside of class is very valuable for students with disabilities that limit their reading. Record is a multimedia creation tool and students will benefit by having access out of school time to create their own projects.

Instruction is demonstration, a video of a student doing a demonstration, followed by hands on time. As suggested by Bowe and Pierson (2008)

This is an engaging activity, and students can learn how to do it on their own so it can be done in after-school or at home. When they play the game with others it checks their work creating the game.

Project will look at providing research materials in a variety of multimedia formats and at different levels. Will also look at how to scaffold writing with templates.

In a classroom students make their own memorize games and learn as much or more making the game as they do playing it. Students also have to decide what to put in their game which is an opportunity for metacognition that they don't have when they play a premade game.

Take a document from Write (such as the assignment done in the in person class) and import it into read eTexts and have it read to you.

Use Record to record yourself in video and audio. Add your recording to your Turtle Art Portfolio

Try Speak in English and in the various different languages in your school district.

Have a meeting in Speak with 1 or more of the members of your geographical team. Brainstorm how these tools could be used in your class. (Informal discussion grouping method)

Optional Challenge: For a mixture of learning styles, create a Labyrinth mind-map on how to use Sugar to meet the needs of auditory learners, add that to your Turtle Art Portfolio.

Students have research materials available even if there is no internet access at home.

Globally, we can show examples of games made around the world. In the classroom students are collaborating with each other by playing each others games.

Collaborative

Turtle Art Portfolio

Create and Contribute a Lesson Plan

Collaborative Calculation

Last Activity of the in-person workshop.

Write a Reflection Paper

Turtle Art, Journal

Portfolios can support looking t multiple intellegence and shift assessment towards assessing what the student knows rather then a deficit view.

Think of a topic where your students could collect data collaboratively, share it and graph it.

At a minimum this activity introduces the teachers to socialcal, the Sugar spreadsheet. It could also use a number of other activities such as Browse for collecting data and pictures from the internet. Calculator, Paint, Turtle Art etc.

For teachers with laptops we can introduce Measure, which measures the distance between laptops. Right now this only works well on an XO but its being adopted for other computers.

For teachers with resources and interest in it we can introduce the use of sensors for data collection and potentially combine them with Turtle Art and/or Scratch

Write, Journal, Collaboration, Browse, File manipulation

Teachers will understand how to use a portfolio for assessment of student knowledge.

Teachers will pair up and use the Write activity to collaborate on a reflecting on their experience creating memorize games and brainstorming what sorts of games they could have the students make for themselves.

Teachers will develop ideas on how to use Sugar to support writing and collaboration.

Teachers will become familiar with the Write Activity

When they are done they will email themselves the write document.

- Teachers will learn how to export documents so they can be opened by Word on nonSugar computer.

- Teachers will learn how to read webmail in Browse

Explore repositories of Sugar lesson plans from around the world.

Write a lesson plan and contribute it to a repository.

This is a cumulative activity where students take what they have learned and create a formal lesson plan that is submitted to the lesson plan repository (probably Curriki).

Portfolios in Sugar travel with the student and can be viewed and added to with the help of parents and out of schooltime care takers.

Write can include images for visual learners. It can change the text size for the visually impared and helps with handwriting issues. Students can write together and scaffold each other. Teachers can provide templates to scaffold learners.

Portfolios organize artifacts and structure reflection around them. They are also artifacts themselves that can be shown to parents and future educators. Portfolios show off what students have created and can serve to raise expectations.

Writing is an important standard based topic taught in Elementary school. The teachers will also be asked to reflect on how making memorize games can help teach to standards.

I'd like to show example portfolios from around the world and change expectations of the teachers as to the type of work that can be done by students in developing countries.

This is an engaging activity, and students can learn how to do it on their own so it can be done in after-school or at home. When they play the game with others it checks their work creating the game.

After a group demo of how to creaet a portfolio teachers return to their groups of 3 from the messing around with Programming activity. Teachers will be given a template and asked to put their work to date into the portfolio and to reflect on their experiences.

Books, Books and More Books

Elementary students can create a more polished final product and can do more rounds of editing. It is also easier to share the final product.

Math

Globally, we can show examples of games made around the world. In the classroom students are collaborating with each other by playing each others games.

Create graphs, work together to collect data

SocialCalc, Calculate, Measure

Makes visible the learning from the Memorize activity

Allows teachers to create a wide variety of projects that could be culturally relevant to the students

Find and share on the Sugar Labs Moodle Database an ebook that is suitable for your students.

- Learn how to edit the Wiki

- Learn how to find books

- Learn about different sources and creative comments licenses and sources for contents

Find books about your student's cultures and cultures around the world.

-Books in different languages

-Books used in OLPC deployments around the world

Connecting to learning assets in the home: Are their parents who speak languages other then English, consider having the student take home a read aloud book in the other language. This could be their native language or a second language.

With a partner or small group, pick a book you'd like to use in your class and share annotations and highlighting to share with each other how you'd use it in class. This activity shows teachers how to have students collaborate together on a book. (Informal discussion grouping method)

Data collection outside of class

Teachers will remix into new groups of 3 and role play student lead portfolios. reviews.

From Literacy Coaching Resources website

http://www.literacycoachingresources.info/StudentLedConference.html

Create an eToys Books

Books contain content that can be used across content standards

Messing Around

with Programming

Makes visible learning from the workshop

Creating your own book is the next lesson.

Split students into 3 Groups:

This activity explicitly asks the teacher to use any languages that are in the house to read books with the student.

Scratch

Read eTexts, Internet open content sources

Use the breadth of the internet to find books in different languages, levels and for different interests.

eToys

The eBooks can go home with the student.

Turtle Art

Turtle Art, Scratch, eToys

Sdenka Salas - The XO Laptop in the Classroom

Download from: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sdenka_Salas_-_The_XO_Laptop_in_the_Classroom#.C2.A9_THE_XO_LAPTOP_IN_THE_CLASSROOM

Written by a Teacher

from Peru

These tools provide an alternative to writing or drawing to expressing understanding of a topic.

Teachers will be asked what ideas they have for integrating this into their curriculum and introduced to the rich web resources for teaching with these tools

Programming takes a great deal of time and is hard to do in small chunks. Allowing access out of school is important

Explanation Game

A routine for exploring

causal understanding

Use a favorite folk tale to create a book in eToys.

This is uses a book of lessons for Sugar written by a teacher in Peru. The teachers example is a wonderful, political folk tale that speaks to the plight of native peoples in Peru.

Teachers will be encouraged to use folk tales that resonate with the cultures of the children in their classes.

The eToys books can be shown to parents and others and will provide impressive content to raise parental, student and community expectations.

We will create a place to share the books with the world.

These tools allow students to create amazing things.

Have each group play together with the tool, messing around and creating something cool. After the first 10 minutes, it might be interesting to stop the groups and have them do an Explanation Game protocol from visible thinking.

This activity could use a jigsaw team. We could identify skills and roles (graphics, animation, story boarding) then have the teachers work in role based groups to develop skills and in teams with different roles to create the books. This type of grouping can help support the "many experts" learning culture we want in the classrooms.

Worldwide community exist for both Scratch and eToys with teaching resources and student sharing of programs

The routine focuses first on identifying something interesting about an object or idea:

"I notice that..."

And then following that observation with the question:

"Why is it that way?" or "Why did it happen that way?"

From Harvard's

Visible Thinking

website

Literacy skills

Once the groups have achieved something with their tools, remix into groups of 3, with one from each group. Each person shows off what they created and explains how they did it to the other two people in their group.

They should also address the following questions:

What could students create with these tools that integrates with their curriculum?

-What type of students and learning styles would this tool work well with?

http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/03_ThinkingRoutines/03d_UnderstandingRoutines/ExplanationGame/ExplanationGame_Routine.html#

Students create their own book which can be shown to parents and others and contributed to a wider community.

The idea for the project will be presented from a book written by a teacher in Peru which uses a folk story with themes of social justice for indigonous people.

eToys

Students can pick their own stories to turn into books. Stories can be folk tails from their cultures. Students can take this work to different levels. If the task is too difficult it could be scaffolded with a template for a book they are working on in class and have students add things to it. Students could use record to record voice rather then writing. This project could be done in a childs native language or as a language learning activity. Students could work in groups and share talents.

Students can work on their books outside of class. They also learn eToys skills which can be applied in many different ways. eToys is used internationally and there are extensive materials for interested students to persue independent learning with eToys.