Cambridge Friends School
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NOTE: The contents of this page are not set in stone, and are subject to change! This page is a draft in active flux ... |
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Status
This program is already in the works and development and training has been started (see Cambridge_Friends_School_Pilot #Curricular_Development)
Status updates will be kept in this section.
It's not a terribly formal doc. The reason for this is that formal documents are rather dull to write (and read) and we want people to read this, comment, and contribute. We care about the content and how much it makes sense to other people more than we care about presenting this in accordance with some hypothetical protocol. Irreverence may ensue. You have been warned.
Introduction
Disclaimer: Please bear with us. We haven't done this before. Comments, criticisms, feedback, and suggestions for improvement are always tremendously welcome - leave a note on the talk page.
The short version: Give each 1st and 6th grader an XO, then run a "learning buddies" program that pairs them up to explore how they can integrate the XO as a tool into the existing CFS curriculum.
This document is a proposal for an One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) pilot for the 2008-2009 school year to be run in classrooms representative of the age range of students at Cambridge Friends School (CFS), a private pre-K to 8 school in Massachusetts. The main points of the program (aside from giving each child, teacher, and relevant administrator a low-cost, rugged laptop running open-source educational software, to be owned by them and used as a personal learning tool and information access point, gateway to exploration, and all that) are that it will:
- Be financially and infrastructurally independent - housed and funded from within the school itself (with help from local volunteers and sponsors). See #Budget.
- Cultivate and support a local grassroots community around the school that will contribute technology, content, and mentorship to both CFS and the OLPC program at large. See #Local outreach and community involvement.
- Involve parents, especially through their children doing outreach work. See #The parents.
- Have older children serve as technical support and project mentors for other students within the school as well as those outside it. See #Students teaching students.
- Have people of different ages and disciplines from both within the school and around the world together on self-defined, self-designed, self-led projects that have an impact on the world outside the walls of CFS. See #The activities.
How do we plan to do this? Read on.
Contact information
The obligatory blurb about the current draft's author: Mel Chua is an electrical and computer engineer currently working in open-source software development, studying engineering education, and writing in the third person. She has been heavily involved in volunteering for OLPC since Feb. 2007, organizing the first Jam in Boston, running the Summer of Content program, and interning at the OLPC Boston office as part of the Content team despite her hypothetically technical background. Aside from building prosthetic hands, evolutionary robotics simulators, and doing embedded programming for USB peripherals and wireless motion control platforms, Mel has been teaching and developing curriculum for 8 years and has taught and TA'd everything from a math camp on fractals with middle-school students to intro electronics with undergraduate engineering majors. For more details and contact information, read her user page.
Mel is also hoping that some blurbs from other contributors (and other contributions from said contributors) turn up in this section very soon.
About OLPC
Warning: What you are about to see is boilerplate copy-paste designed for formal things like press releases. A far more interesting and up-to-date way of finding out what's going on is reading the OLPC wiki.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The rugged, Linux-based, mesh-networking-enabled, and power-efficient laptops have begun to be deployed to children by schools across the world on the basis of one laptop per child. OLPC is based on constructionist theories of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert and later Alan Kay, as well as the principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital.
About CFS
Warning: What you are about to see has simply been yoinked from CFS's front page. It's probably a good idea for someone to tweak it and point to where more recent updates can be had.
Cambridge Friends School is a co-educational elementary school (pre-K - grade 8) established in 1961 under the care of Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). They have 220 students, 23.3% of whom receive financial assistance. There are two classes per grade, with a maximum class size of 17; the current class size average is 12. See CFS's mission statement.
Proposal
- Give laptops to students and get them to explore, for credit, topics they are interested in (and give them time and resources to do this).
- Give teachers laptops and work with them to facilitate and guide, rather than strictly direct, the projects students choose to work on, and to communicate to students, parents, and administrators the exploratory and experimental work of students (it's always a risk to try something new).
- Give parents ways to more directly see what their children are doing inside the classroom, and opportunities to get involved within their field of expertise.
- Give students teaching opportunities to mentor younger students as well as (possibly older!) people outside the CFS community.
- Plan and integrate learning activities into the existing CFS curriculum and into the existing efforts of our partners (work smarter, not harder - leverage existing projects to be more fruitful).
- Reach out to the community around us and beyond us.
- See where things go from there...
The laptops
The XO is a low-cost (~$200 at the time of this writing), rugged laptop designed to survive things like 5-foot drops onto concrete, or being left in a bucket of water by a small child in Peru for several hours (both of which have happened; the XO kept working). Aside from its extreme ruggedness, here are a few other salient details:
- Built-in camera and microphone for recording the world around you
- Microphone in port doubles as an analog sensor input - for a few cents, you can probe pressure, temperature, voltage, pH, and generally have a sophisticated science lab that weighs 3 lbs.
- Sunlight-readable reflective screen means that bright light makes it easier, not harder, to read
- Low power consumption, takes a wide range of charger inputs; hook it up to a car battery, a solar panel, an AC wall outlet, a hand crank...
- Can flip over into tablet mode - great for use as an e-book reader.
- Built in mesh network connectivity; kids can share files and collaborate in activities even without a wifi connection available (though it can connect to normal 802.11 wifi as well). Most software activities on the XO are designed for collaboration.
- Open-source - kids can explore and modify the software running on their own computers with the help of a large, friendly, enthusiastic, and in many cases local grassroots group of experienced programmers.
For more details, see the Hardware specification. If no XOs are available before the pilot's start date (Fall 2008 or Spring 2009 - one of the semesters of the 2008-2009 academic year) other low-cost laptops may be substituted.
The students
We'd propose giving the XOs to all students in the 1st and 6th grades for the pilot year. It seems like these are commmon "transition years," ages at which students are likely to be new to the school, and having the support of an older child (or a younger child to mentor) would be a beneficial relationship especially around this time.
The teachers
Students from the Illinois Math and Science Academy Chapter worked one-to-one with 6th grade teachers on finding and training them in activities they considered useful in their classes. The activities that they chose were included in the customization key for the eventual XO deployment.
The Activities
Some common activities between teachers included chat, write, browse, read, and View Slides/lang-ko. Spanish teacher Ms. Sally found many of the multilingual tools helpful, including Words, Geoquiz, and wikibrowse [Sp].
Schedule
This schedule is a strawman.
Spring 2008: Community development
- Gather interest and support pledges from the OLPC Boston community
- Work with the Olin repair center to set up a technical support plan
- Get interested teachers and parents informed of how they can contribute
- Fundraising for supplies (if needed)
Summer 2008: Setup and training
- Have the OLPC Boston community develop software and activities in response to the curricular requests of the teachers
- Set up connectivity and charging infrastructures in the relevant classrooms
- Invite teachers to workshops to learn about the program; connect them with teachers from other pilot schools and countries so they can share ideas
- Find someone to document the project's progress throughout the year
Fall 2008: Launch and initial activities
- Distribute laptops
- Start!
- Schedule weekly (for the first month) and biweekly (after the first month) visits and activities with the local OLPC community to explore different ways the XO can be integrated into the curriculum
IMSA Intersession: Boston ILXO Deployment
January 3, 2009
+Explained basics of how an XO works (technical aspect)
+Software stack-layering model-each layer interacts with the other (layered from physical (bottom) to activities (top)
XO/Application Interface (API):
+Activities
+Journal
+Sugar Non-Sugar
+OS (Fedora-ish)
+Open Firmware
Shell, Kernel, Network
+Hardware
Define
Build: Activities-->OS (Fedora-ish)
Customization Key--> Activities (bundles)
Development Key--> password that gives you permission to use currently being developed builds (builds that are non-signed and non-released)
Sugar::windows; education::business
WINDOWS
business based
i.e. my documents/files
SUGAR
education based
i.e. communities, activities
1.sharing=collabration (mesh network, my neighborhood)
2.reflecting/documenting=journal
3. discovery=activities
everything is automatically saved-->history is logged by the applications;shows learning/process of thinking
The Development Cycle::Textbook writing Process
Build 1--> Build 2--> Build 3-->Build 4
release a build every six months
first start adding whatever you want
then start editing
get a release candidate
fact check
spell check
release. (but at the same time everything is still being updated) you can update like firefox(?)
School Server and Mesh Network
SERVER
one hub with people connecting from one distance
MESH
one hub with one person connected...one person connected from them...peer to peer connecting much better when in a faraway place (i.e. village in the middle of the dessert); one access point
SCHOOL SERVER
1. gives infrastructure access point; mesh
2. squid=local cache; able to see what is used a lot, save on the server and save it locally
3. local moodle=community level content; common web server
+mailserver
+establishing a city library
January 4, 2009
+Prepared for meeting with Mac/Katelyn at 5PM 30 minutes
+success criteria: know what we're doing with CFS through Harvard when
"working relationship"
+Tried to use Emulator on Windows
at first try, cannot connect to network even after entering wireless name into server shut down
open again-worked on jason's and katie's computer
check for software updates
it works!
+Learned Terminal
command lines
cd: change directory
ls: list contents
cp: copy
cd ..: go up in directory
cp -r: copy recursive (copies everything in the folder)
rm: remove
wget: download
mu: move
Journal (technical)
Backlight
Compiled a list of possible activities for the customization stick
available at https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pFAYZYtRIh1CR_8ry7Tg8QQ&hl=en and
will get a prototype customization stick done by tomorrow
teacher meeting: 3:30PM the next day; awaiting confirmation
student server-Tuesday
teacher meeting-Wednesday (moved from Thursday)
after school: Thursday
Other points on agenda
How to download new programs
What build is and why it matters
Brief introduction in how networking works
Sharing activities with each other
Connecting to an access point
January 5, 2009
+Testing Results+
- Log-needed to reinstall on XO (only Boston ILXO Deployment ones)
+Issues:
- No limit to how much one XO can vote
- Journal doesn’t document results
+Procedure:
- Computer with Poll building can create a poll and then SHARE IT WITH NEIGHBORHOOD (make sure that Mesh network is the same)
- Other computers click on the poll icon below the start computer (will be in the same colors as the XO)
- Join---there should be little notifications that tell you that polls are being shared and for you to join each poll (Yes/No)
- Vote.
- you can also create your own poll underneath THAT poll builder and have it automatically shared with people who are underneath that application
- note if the person who made the poll EXITS the poll builder application, then the poll is shut down.
- if you enter again, then you can't see the results (no saving and with saving)
- Journal notes down different activities and which people are joined (with colors) but can't note down which questions/results that you got.
- View Slides-need to test; find zipped image files; works, but only in zip format and all have to be JPG, GIF, etc.
- Ruler-works, has four different types (good for circles/measuring angles/measuring things).
- ePals- 13 or under, need parent/guardian email; built in pen pal system; need a username and password in order to connect to other people; what does it do beyond the normal browse function?
- Words-default is yo, yo; able to translate a lot of words from English to Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French and German (dictionary); very good for foreign language…two way…can’t do whole sentences/passages
- Mozilla Firefox-works,takes up space (tabbed browsing)
- Write- works, can insert images, tables
- If you want one from the internet
- Copy and it should show up under the objects (which will pop up when you want to download an image) as clipboard + url.
- Insert and save as a different document name underneath the activity tab so that you can distinguish in the journal which is which
- no way to open documents from the actual write activity
- can't open with Word if working from XO to actual PC
- Memorize-one of the preinstalled ones, so definitely WORKS
- Procedure
- create one
- you can save game to my objects (journal)
- you can choose between grouped and ungrouped (grouped-pairs are different, ungrouped-match the same thing);saves as a different object/game if you change one little thing (no overwrite function)
- load game under play tab and share with neighborhood
- based on turns, if you get it right the first time then it goes to the next person
- Geoquiz-
- need to use the right arrow control pad and the actual arrow pad on the keyboard
- choose between Africa or South America
- Identify the country that is highlighted from a list
- . if it is right, then the country gets highlighted in green and there is a Correct! sign
- . if it is wrong, then there is a red wrong button and it just skips to another highlighted country
- . once you have identified the entire continent…
- . goes immediately into pollbuildertakes a long time to load
- . not complete?
- Automatically closes/goes to PollBuilder after it is done with the geography quiz but not if you have Log open, it just closes.
- Can we expand to other continents (Africa and Asia...other continents)
January 6, 2009
- Concerns:
- connecting to wireless (when it’s protected)
- the intro to programming stuff
- Powerpoint stuff
- structuring the next meeting with teachersdo a mock one?
- Geoquiz: can we expand? who is in charge?
- Additional Testing:
- News Reader-works definitely, needs internet, approved by katie
- COBBLE-not applicable for academic studies
- Maps-takes a long time to connect to map server, needs a really good internet connection in order to work; operates as GoogleMaps/Earth
- GPS Roadmap-if you want more maps, you need to bring them on a FlashDrive (more trouble than it’s worth); not applicable for academic studies
- View Slides-Existing PowerPoint presentations (and other presentation types) can be manually converted to SVG slides using the following process:
- Create a PDF file from the PowerPoint presentation. On Mac OS X, PDF creation is built into the printing system. On Windows, software such as CutePDF Writer allows you to add a virtual PDF printer. Similar functionality exists as part of the CUPS printing system on Linux.
- Using a vector graphics program such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, open the PDF file a slide at a time, and save as an SVG.
- This method may have some issues with fonts. It also does not create the most efficient SVG files.
- Also can save each individual slide into a PDF format
- If you download a ZIP FILE and open it in Journal, it should open immediately with View Slides
- FROM THE WIKI: The image files can be JPEGs, GIFs, TIFFs, or PNGs. You can put them all in the root of the Zip file, or you can put them into subdirectories. The important thing is that the files and directories are named sequentially.
To make a file like this first create some image files and name them sequentially: image001.jpg, image002.jpg, image003.jpg, ...
- Read Etexts-only Project Gutenberg files that are plain text; will soon also be supported by the Read activity…download the zip versions
- once you download the zip you have to copy it to clipboard and then choose to open with read e-texts (plain text files only!)
- Read-only PDFs (Google Books, other stuff)
- Classroom Presenter- load slide shows? what files does it take?
- SimCity vs. Micropolis—all the same, but Micropolis is probably better
- Read Etexts-only Project Gutenberg files that are plain text; will soon also be supported by the Read activity…download the zip versions
- For Wednesday To Do List
- fix Read…will not open up PDFs and stay open
- finalize list of activities
- put them on a flash drive and put them on at least five computers
- figure out classroom presenterwhat kind of files can actually be opened with it?
answer these questions:
- make up the sheets for student activity/find out what time it will actually be at
- find out how to deconstruct an XO
- find lab manuals for the school
- make up the sheets for student activity/find out what time it will actually be at
- How to run customization stick using Terminal
- open up terminal
- type in cd /media
- type in ls
- type in cd KINGSTON
- type in cd Activities
- ls
- nano loadAll
- get out…but don’t save (CTRL X)
- bash loadAll
- and then type in yes/no according to what programs you need
- FINAL CUSTOMIZATION STICK ACTIVITIES:
January 7, 2009
Agenda for second teacher' meeting
- How to connect to wireless/do collaborative activities (first thing on agenda for Wednesday), demo with Chat)
- have to be on the same mesh network in order to see each other and share stuff; technically, should be able to be on the same wireless and mesh network and be able to share-best case scenario
- when sharing multiple activities, all activities will be shown on the neighborhood view, but only the one might not be able to share more than one activity
- you can only pick one: either mesh or wireless..one always takes the other off
- Explain differences among Read E-text (zipped+plain text), Read (PDF) and View Files (zipped+Jpgs)
- Shared an example of each document on the XOs…see if people can view
- explain to teachers that they have to download the actual file and then share it on neighborhood
- Demo one on one with each teacher’s lessonone on one, show all activities on the Favorites view
- Arjun- Math/Science
- Katie-History/English
- Jason-Spanish
Spring 2009: Outreach and giving back
- Host an open house for parents - but also local scientists, engineers, educators, etc. - to see the children present the work they've done
- Mentor other area pilot schools?
- Papers? Conferences?
Equipment needed
XO laptops
Note: I'm making up these numbers - folks from CFS, do you have more accurate counts on how many of these you'll need?
- 1 laptop per child in participating classrooms (~15 students x 4 classrooms = 60 laptops)
- 1 laptop per teacher in participating classrooms (4 laptops)
- 1 laptop each for supporting teachers and administrators... (5 laptops)
- music teacher
- science teacher
- math teacher
- art teacher
- technology coordinator
- 5 extra laptops for emergency repairs, community events, and short-term loans to external volunteers
Total: 74 laptops
Power adapters
Power adapters use the normal 120VAC from wall outlets, which are readily available throughout the CFS campus. We'll need to get some power strips and extension cords for children to all be able to plug in at once, but these are easily obtained from local hardware stores at affordable prices.
Wifi network
The CFS campus already has wireless internet access. Whether the coverage and bandwidth are sufficient for an XO pilot needs more investigation. This may necessitate the purchase of an extra wireless router or two, but they are easily obtained from local computer stores at not unreasonably exorbitant prices.
School server
The XS school server will not be an initial vital component of the CFS pilot in terms of having a standalone desktop/server in every participating classroom running the official XS software release. (It's possible that this could be a local grassroots group project; a team of volunteer Boston-area developers are already implementing an XS server in their spare time.)
However, there will be a storage repository of some sort specifically dedicated to backing up the CFS XOs (this could easily be done with a single desktop on campus with several large hard drives in a RAID array, or with off-site hosting) as well as an "external portfolio" website where students and teachers can upload and host their work. When possible, students and their collaborators will host their work in existing knowledge communities such as Curriki, WikiEducator, Wikipedia, Launchpad, and so on in order to make their contributions immediately part of a global collaboration and a larger body of knowledge.
Peripherals and sensors
Library books
Budget
Materials
Operating expenses
Support and training
Total
Partners
Curricular development
One of the major goals of this deployment project was to create a customization stick that was able to load all of the laptops in the pilot with a number of activities each of which tied into the previous curriculum at CFS. This included meeting with three teachers (Math/Science, Spanish, and English/History) in order to discuss possible activities as well as the manner by which they would be woven into the curriculum.
We feel that this is an essential component of the deployment because
- 1) teacher involvement with, interest in, and understanding of the OLPC project as well as the XO itself is necessary to keep a pilot program running smoothly after its inception*
- 2) that integration into the curriculum is required in order to get the pilot running in the first place.*
Our customization stick development was centered around three teachers: Biology/Math , History/English, and Spanish
Spanish - Our goal for the Spanish curriculum was to integrate the language into all of the activities being used. Certain problems with the current curriculum included only 2 meetings per week. We implemented the Record activity in order to allow the students to create audio/video journals during the days that they didn't meet for Spanish. We also decided to use EPals in an attempt to find another school of comparable curriculum and size to try to make a 1 to 1 English-Spanish student network, including possibly a Spanish-speaking sister school that also received a deployment of XOs. Activities such as Memorize were also used because of their flexibility to be used in any language. Geoquiz was also implemented as Latin American geography is part of the Spanish curriculum.
Biology/Math - The Biology curriculum was focused on very specific aspects of topics ranging from cellular biology to electricity and magnetism. We decided to use WikiBrowse to give the kids access to information without a connection to the global internet. We also provided the class with Ruler, Distance, and Stopwatch for the introductory lessons to time and measurement. Finally we added Turtle Art in order to tie the math curriculum to the visual arts program.
Notes - There are several factor that we believe are required. We think that a teacher training session is important and needs to be both a teaching session as well as a learning session. Time should be given for the teachers to explore the laptops themselves. It is also necessary to create a student tech team or a smaller group of students capable of sustaining the pilot through repairs and troubleshooting. Finally it is vital that support groups including IRC and the OLPC support email line are communicated to the pilot members. (We feel that it is important to move the pilot into independence slowly and to be available for help in the weeks following deployment)
Technical deployment
Repairs and support
Outreach, promotion, teaching
Concerns
Too much extra work
The School Server software (XS) needs to be modified to be dovetail into the existing infrastructure, as the XS software was originally designed to serve as the only infrastructure in the deployment area. As a result, security and networking issues still need to be addressed in the software before the server is put into action.
Support/repair concerns
We are still working on putting together a student support crew, starting with a meeting on January 8, 2009 with some volunteer students. They will have to be trained in basic software and hardware support quickly, as the Illinois Math and Science Academy Chapter is leaving January 9.
Health and ergonomics
The keyboards may be slightly small for sixth grade hands, as these laptops were designed for a slightly younger audience.
Gaming/distractions
As with any computer related activity, it is the teacher's responsibility and students' expectation to keep students on track. The terms of use of XO's in the classroom is no different than the use of the mobile laptop lab cart currently in use at CFS.
Inappropriate content
While these laptops are on loan to students and can be considered private property, the students should be aware that all of their activity can be monitored through the journal by anyone with authority. The Harvard Chapter has talked about this briefly.