Worthwhile

I sometimes wonder if I am doing the right thing by spending time on projects for OLPC and Sugar Labs. I do my best to work on it only during free time, but then, some graduate students spend their whole life in lab, and simply don’t have free time. What keeps me involved, apart from the social ties, are writeups like this one, from Stephanie Selvick of the OLPC Senegal student team.

In the first session, I was paired up with a male teacher who was nervous about communication. He asked if I spoke French, and I apologized that I did not. He then continued to have entire conversations with me in English. He began by saying he didn’t think the teachers would use the computers in their classroom. This particular school received their XO’s 6 months ago, received their first teacher training about 2 months ago, and will be introducing the students to the computers for the first time on Monday. … After that, my partner began by pointing to each individual activity and asking how each could be implemented into his curriculum. Although I scoff at the ideology that “curriculum” is somehow not important, I began to understand the dilemma. I said we should begin by opening one activity and we can answer those questions about curriculum after.

Distance was his gem! The distance activity measures the distance between two XO computers. It sends sound waves between them and a measurement in meters pops onto the screen. He loved it. He began brainstorming assignments for his kids to measure the distance around their homes or rooms and said they could also figure out area from those numbers. Although it took us the full 90 minutes for him to be comfortable with opening the program and inviting another XO to share the program, his enthusiasm was quite the relief. When each person shared what they learned from the first session, it was great to see his enthusiasm about distance in other teams about other activities. The goal of making teachers the experts for each other felt underway.