Monthly Archives: September 2011

Winning video selected in OLPC Stories contest

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OLPC and Nickelodeon have selected the winner of the OLPC Stories contest: fourth-grader Giuliana Violetta Pozzoli Daiub, age 10, from the class of Liliana Ortega in Paraguay.

You can see the winning submission, a Scratch animation, featuring a narrator, SpongeBob, neon lights, and an XO on a dance floor.

As the contest winner, Giuliana will be attending the 2011 Halo Awards organized by MTV and Nickelodeon in LA next month. Congratulations to her and to the other four finalists on their work. Asked what message she would send to other children, she thanked her parents and teacher for supporting her, and said ‘always remember that with your XO and imagination you can be who you want to be and realize your dreams!’ (recordar siempre que con tu Xo e imaginación puedes ser quien quieras ser y lograr todo lo que sueñas!)

Stager salutes Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show

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Gary Stager writes a short, readable rant about the state of support for exploration in primary education in the US, inspired by watching an episode of “Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show“. The show is a sporadic video blog about “everything cool and worth making” by the daughter (now 10) of a veteran tech ninja.

Stager wonders whether educational computing (and now ‘edtech’) is a proper discipline or “just a shopping club”. He suggests many teachers might not support such a bright and curious student in their class, if it meant dealing with distractions or diverting from a fixed curriculum they were committed to teaching. I suspect others would love such a student and find ways to work with them outside of class, but feel constrained within it. Here’s his post:

Super-Awesome Sylvia in the Not So Awesome Land of Schooling

Hat-tip to Juliano Bittencourt.

Lesson development in Rwanda

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Julia Reynolds describes some of her work with the Rwandan Education Ministry in developing lesson plans, with a joint workshop and some guest presenters from other educational orgs:

In the old currciulum there was basically a list of subjects, but in the new one there is more description on how the lesson can be carried out through learning-centred methods, information on what the students and teacher should be doing and what are the expected outcomes. They also made sure to relate these concepts to Rwandan life.

Rwanda has been doing a lot of lesson plan work over the past year, I hope some of the results will be available to read online.

Nickelodeon contest update: Voting open for the best art projects by XO students

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Mundonick is hosting a public vote for the best projects submitted in the OLPC – Nickelodeon contest across Latin America. Check out the finalists in the contest and vote for your favorite; the winners will be flown in to attend the HALO Awards ceremony this season.

Unfortunately, at the moment these videos can only be viewed from certain IP ranges – including most of Latin America.