Are we finally Learning Learning after 3 years?

Education is a world problem; people want to solve this; many ideas are put forward for what to do about it; sometimes effort gets so focussed on one idea, like educating teachers or building schools, that they fail to step back and look at the bigger picture.

Different speakers discussed lessons learned:

1. Walter Bender
   1. Informal time with the machine is always going to amplify the learning. This is the most important thing we can do. This should include informal time at school when the teachers and other students are around as well as when they take the laptops home.
   2. 1-1 time for the children with the laptops cannot always be achieved. In this case, finding ways so they can have at least some 1-1 time, even if it is taking turns using the laptop in the class environment.
   3. Stories
      1. Kids put stickers on their XO laptop... despite the laptop actually being designed to prevent them from doing this... they found a way, and increased their sense of ownership through personalisation.
      2. A boy was using chat in class. It turns out he was chatting to his girlfriend... who was sitting across the table from him. Perhaps the children had said they could not talk... so he was using chat to talk. He was writing. Playful yet still learning as a natural side effect of having to use the technology to express himself using the written word.
2. Morgan Ames
   1. The Scratch and Turtle Art activities lend themselves to constructionism especially if students are deeply involved in using them
   2. Producing ‘works of art’ in applications like paint, scratch, and turtle art can be a strong source of self esteem for them. Many students have become self styled creative thinkers expressing themselves through the art of turtle graphics. They call themselves ‘scratcheros’ and ‘etoyseros’.
   3. Currently upgrading the software on the XO laptop results in the loss of the childs data, such as programs they have written in turtle art. Some children are so proud of the work they have done that they copy the programs into their paper books so they can recreate them once their laptops are upgraded.
   4. Websites
      1. http://tinyurl.com/Analisis-actividaes
      2. http://tinyurl.com/Inventario-en
      3. http://tinyurl.com/Morganya.org
3. Bernie Innocenti
   1. It is very important to prepare the families before allowing the children to take the laptops home as this can be very disruptive; many homes do not have any form of technology or even power
   2. A local news paper in Uruguay is running regular news articles on turtle art showcasing different programs you can create to draw different shapes and patterns
   3. Children are able to use multiple activities in concert to do what they want to do... they find a way. For example, taking a photo of themselves with the camera and then retouching the image in eToys to make the image more cartoon like before adding it to scratch to be a character in a story.