Talk:Educational ideas

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Books Wikibooks (20+ languages)

Stories ICDL library of stories

Gruppo Logos children's books (20+ languages)

Primary source material Wikisource (20+ languages)

Project Gutenberg

Dictionaries Dicologos dictionary (250+ languages)

Dicologos children's dictionary (148 languages)

Wiktionary (100+ languages)

Other/Mixed The Internet Archive repository

K-12 Open Tech collection

Motherland Nigeria's KidZone

This content sidebar was on the main page and is totally off topic. I put it here in case there is some other place where it might belong. I suggest that the only appropriate page on this wiki is one that has a simple list of annotated URLs to point to POSSIBLE source material. The fact that a digitized book exists does not mean that it is useful for education or that it is useful for kids to read.

This page is for educational ideas.

'Constructionist' vs. 'Constructivist'?

It's my understanding that Papert – the coiner of the theory and term 'constructionism' – now works on the OLPC project. While I'm currently reading Edith Ackermann's paper contrasting the differences between Piaget's constructivist theory and Papert's constructionist theory (I found it through a link at Wikipedia), I'd be very curious to hear Papert himself explain the differences.

I also note that Montessori's educational ideas are noted – have you heard of the Reggio Emilia approach? I taught preschool in a North American Reggio-inspired setting for two years, which perhaps explains my fascination with the OLPC plan. It might be interesting to examine the idea of every student having one computer in terms of a Reggio Emilia-inspired classroom...

CuriousGeorge 22:25, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

Educational Competitive games among Teams?

I have seen children play for hours, educational games like Trivia, and some other educational games.

I think educational competitive games played among teams, have the following advantages:

a) Motivational, as children like to play, any game, as long as some competition is involved, and devote incredible amounts of time to this tasks.

b) They encourage and promote QUALITY (do it well the First Time), and PRODUCTIVITY (do it as fast as possible), as well as TEAMWORK habits if the game has rules that requiere all members to participate by turns.

c) Colaborative training, as it is played among teams, and as under game rules slow students affect the team, team members will help lazy students to improve precision & speed, for the sake of the team.

d) Working habits, such games will promote the formation of good working habits for adult life, as society is competitive and works better under Teamwork techniques.

e) A good source for this type of games, and a Lab for analyzing students behaviour, for this type of games, is any Scout Group, in which the patrols (groups of 4 to 8 girls/boys) learn to colaborate and do Teamwork to do difficult tasks, under thier own leadership, to compete among the patrols of their group. Patrols are the building blocks of a Boy Scout troop. A patrol is a small group of boys who are similar in age, development, and interests. Working together as a team, patrol members share the responsibility for the patrol's success. They gain confidence by serving in positions of patrol leadership. All patrol members enjoy the friendship, sense of belonging, and achievements of the patrol and of each of its members.

MEXICO, AGS. --Dagoflores 18:51, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Teaching to use Machine tools by Simulators

The older students, and adults at Home, might benefit from a tool to learn to operate Machine-Tools, like Lathes, Industrial Sewing Machines, soldering equipment, etc. through simulator programs that can solve the lack of Material, the tools (machines), providing an learning environment without the dangers of the actual machines (altough, accidents must be simulated in the simulator, and presented dramatically). Vocational Training is a useful aspect of education in the modern world. MEXICO, AGS. ----Dagoflores 00:27, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

The Educational value of Mental/Conceptual Map Tools

A wonderful tool that I have used in teaching, is the design of Mental/Conceptual Maps, as a Tool of sumarizing whatever our students are reading or studying.

I have seen quite interesting software for this, including lots of available clip art, the facility of opening symbols of our maps to see further detail in it, etc.

In fact, I am now trying to make a Map, of all the concepts we have in this wiki... MEXICO, AGS. -----Dagoflores 02:36, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Educating for a Competitive World?

There is, without doubt, a competitive environment in todays world, in which our students will mature, and work.

I have not seen a single mention of the habits, habilities, attitudes that our students must develop to compite in such a world. Not a single word about how to promote & evaluate, QUALITY, PRODUCTIVITY, SERVICE & IMAGE, which are the ingredients of competitiviness. Not a singlo word about how to develop leadership, or habits for Teamwork, assertiviness, and other capabilities, not a single word about how to plan, organize, direct, evaluate & control the work of the students, or train them to do it themseves. MEXICO, AGS. -- --Dagoflores 00:47, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Can OLPC help Tanzanian project?

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Hello there I am a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. I am conducting a research project with Tanzanian children and children from Dallas, Texas. My research focuses on podcasting and blogging between the Tanzanian children and the children from Dallas on topics like global peace and peacekeeping skills. My hope is the children will create a trans-continental dialogue on how to promote peace in their local, national and international lives.

The problem is that the Tanzanian children don't have computers and I wanted to find out how we could apply for funding for the $100 laptops. I think these are perfect for what we are trying to accomplish. The children are located in a village called, Lasso Karua Vunjo near Mount Kilimanjaro. I have a good friend that lives there and is taking care of many of the children, however, his health is failing and he only has his social security checks to help build the school and medical center. Obviously this isn't enough money. So I have decided to help the children there by incorporating this project and providing children's books. I will be there this summer to help in any way I can and to start the research project.

Please let me know what I can do to apply for the laptops. Thank you very much, Joy L. Wiggins, Ph.D Assistant Professor Curriculum and Instruction University of Texas at Arlington Arlington, TX 76019 jwiggins@uta.edu joywiggins11@hotmail.com

Ideas for refactoring this page

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This article is losing some focus and parts may need tp be moved to secondary pages with their own titles. Nitpicker 07:52, 10 December 2006 (EST)

Comments pasted from #olpc-content 2007-08-01

videos from commons
with thumbnails
and from other video repositories.
there is no 'featured videos' list anywhere
a classical music .ogg collection, with thumbnails of the composer
a collection of animated gifs in context
jamendo is making a set of pop-music .oggs (cc-by) with cover art and an all-visual main page.
do the same for pdfs:
http://www.archive.org/details/iacl
http://www.archive.org/services/collection-rss.php?collection=iacl
http://www.archive.org/browse.php?field=/metadata/subject&collection=iacl&view=cloud

Are CD-ROMs a good choise?

I wonder if CD-ROMs are a good choice for distribution of material. They are prone to damage and scratches, and it is not unlikely that material going far will simply be ruined once it gets there. Further it takes special hardware to read a CD-ROM as well as to copy it -- hardware that the OLPC does not have onboard and which require extra power in order to use. This extra hardware also adds to the total cost of each teaching group, as they have to have access to the hardware and if the hardare is broken, it could take some time to get a replacement.

The OLPC does have three things onboard that could be used instead -- an SD reader, four USB ports and a wireless connection. By distributing materials on ROM or RAM chips they become lighter and could be read by all OLPC devices out of the box. The individual chips may cost more than a CD-ROM, but the increase in cost of a chip is likely to be much lower than the price of one CD-ROM reading unit. Broadcasting a file over the wireless network might also be a good idea. This allows the teacher to keep the chip and giving the material to children within reach of the teachers unit -- making sure that the chip is not lost or damaged by accident.

I haven't done any research into this as I don't have access to prices, but I suspect that the better solution is memory chips, rather than CD-ROMs. FrederikHertzum 18:40, 10 October 2007 (EDT)