Antonio Battro shares with us the paper “Multimedia Learning Design for one-to-one computing” (Italian) by Fabio Serenelli:
Flash version:
http://issuu.com/marianaludmilacortes/docs/tesi_serenelli_phd_unimib_01724941
1. We need to finalize our application to Google Summer of Code by the end of next week. I’ve put a rough draft of our application in the wiki (See Summer_of_Code/2013/Application). Most important is to finalize our list of project ideas and mentors. Please add your ideas to the wiki to Summer_of_Code/2013.
2. Martin Abente (with a little help from his friends) has gotten the beginnings of a Twitter Web Service working from the Sugar Journal. Simply invoke the Copy-To Twitter menu item, and your Journal entry is sent as a tweet. There is some work to be done in registering the service per user and some housekeeping regarding pulling replies into the comments field of the Journal, but it is already in pretty decent shape, thanks to the Web Services framework that Raúl and I developed last month. (I am hoping that the framework is reviewed and accepted into Sugar so that it will be easier for people to test and enhance it.)
3.  Guzmán Trinidad has written a book about Physics on the XO (See FÃsica con XO). It features many of the projects that Guzmán and Tony Forster have been developing, using a combination of Measure and Turtle Blocks.
By Christine Horowitz
One Laptop per Child Facilitator, Walter G. Byers Academy
The methods of teaching reading and writing have changed very little over the past decade.Proven pedagogy such as guided reading circles, modeled writing sessions and read alouds continue to dominate classroom literacy time, and for good reason. They are highly effective tools that increase student achievement. Why, then, do we want to ‘mess things up’ with the integration of technology when it hasn’t been a necessary component to literacy success in the past?
The answer is twofold. First, recent studies have shown that literacy goal achievement is further increased when using available technologies (Rose) and, second, the XO laptops ensure each and every student has the technology available – 100% of the time.
The blended literacy model adopted and being implemented by Project L.I.F.T. schools and the One Laptop per Child program bring a natural, effective partnership in the classroom that can boost literacy goals for students in grades one through four. The XO laptops ensure that the technology component is continuously available to every child so that the methods outlined below are possible. As an added bonus, the partnership will also increase digital and media literacy skills that are so necessary for our students to be college and career ready.
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE XO IN A BALANCED LITERACY PROGRAMÂ GUIDED READING
The XO is an excellent tool that can engage students in independent reading practice while the teacher is working with a small group or reader.
-Have students use the XO to access online, leveled reading support programs
-Students can use the Speak Activity to sound out difficult words for themselves
READ ALOUDS
Using the XO as a ‘spoken book’ can offer read aloud opportunities beyond a teacher’s capacity that are more individualized to student level and interest. Free online read aloud sites provide teachers and students with engaging readings dictated by skilled orators.
www.barnesandnoble.com (choose KIDS and ONLINE STORYTIME)
PARTNER and SHARED READING
The Get Books Activity allows the student to access thousands of free books in rich text, PDFÂ or HTML formats. Further, teachers can access and/or load leveled books on the XO machine.
Students can perform shared readings while text displays on each XO laptop. Students can toggle between the story and the Speak Activity in order to have difficult words sounded out for them or they can access Wikipedia Activity to investigate topics that they read about. ESL students can use the Words Activity to translate newly learned words from/to English and multiple languages.
MODELED AND GUIDED WRITING
Teachers can use the built in ‘ad-hoc’ network to connect with students and guide writing instruction. They can also share writing assignments in real-time and several students can collaborate on a single document, including creating graphic organizers together.
Beyond Activities-based guidance, students can use the XO to share writings via the Internet. Studies support the idea that providing a wider audience for writers (i.e. blogs, wikis) encourages students to be more conscientious writers. Also, blogging, creating web pages and other forms of digital media give students real-world experiences in which to write upon and the potential for large amounts of feedback from a varied audience (The Journal).
WORD WORK
The XO is a useful tool for early elementary students as it supports phonics instruction. Students can type in letters, letter blends and words and hear them repeated back, even changing the speed of playback, if necessary. Spelling and vocabulary can be reinforced through a variety of Activities, including a concentration-like game and those that reinforce individual letter sounds and blends.
Using the powerful little XO machine for literacy in the classroom is a natural fit that can take every student to a new level of learning literacy. Add in the important 21st century skills of collaboration and digital media literacy and a teacher can have a hugely successful literacy program that fully engages every student with the learning process.
SOURCES CITED
Rose, David. “The Role of Technology in the Guided Reading Classroom.” Scholastic Teachers. Scholastic, Inc., Oct. 2004. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.
“The Journal.” Content Delivery in the ‘Blogosphere’ –. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.
Some of the brightest minds at Carnegie Mellon University and beyond gathered together on campus recently, ready to take their turn on stage. More than 450 attendees appreciatively took it all in, at the fourth annualTEDxCMUÂ event.
This year’s theme was ‘Spark.’
“Our goal is to inspire each and every one of our 450-plus attendees — to create a spark of ideas that will spread, and ignite people’s minds with brilliance,” said Ketaki Desai, master of public management student at CMU’s Heinz College, and president of this year’s event. The team built their list of speakers based on several factors, including subject matter and passion. They assembled both men and women from diverse fields that would best represent the CMU population.
Rodrigo Arboleda:Â chairman and CEO of One Laptop Per Child Association, a not-for-profit that has distributed more than 2.7 million laptops to children in 41 countries, was one of the featured speakers. At the end of his presentation he received a standing ovation.
A collaborative effort between One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and Project LIFT has delivered 2,000 laptops to seven schools in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, with support from the Knight Foundation, who brought together and funded the project.
The local Charlotte group, Project Leadership and Investment for Transformation (LIFT), is a community initiative working to improve outcomes and eliminate education disparities for minority and low-income students in the West Charlotte corridor.
Rebecca Thompson, OLPC facilitator at Bruns Academy, said that the laptops will directly assist LIFT schools in reaching their goals for students to be 90 percent on grade level and 90 percent achieving more than one year’s academic growth in one year’s time. These goals are to ensure that when students arrive at the feeder high school, West Charlotte, 90 percent of them graduate.
Students have utilized the XO 1.75 laptops via Sugar-based activities facilitated by OLPC on-site coordinators, according to Thompson, with activities ranging from basic document software to beginner computer programming.
“This initiative provides families with access to technology, information, and increased academic engagement,” Thompson said. “We have already seen such a positive impact with so few machines. We look forward to seeing our work transform the community and see the full impact of the project.”
To help integrate the laptops into each teacher’s daily lessons, teachers were offered multiple zone-wide and site-specific trainings. Each participating school also houses a facilitator to help guide teachers for maximum curriculum integration.
The LIFT zone schools included in the OLPC program are:
Charlotte marks the second project in recent years for OLPC in the United States. The first project, also funded by the Knight Foundation, was in Miami for 500 children in a single school.
Based on the successful results from the first year of that project, Knight approached OLPC to undertake the larger, multi-school program in Charlotte, according to a release.
Original by Nurarmenia.org – Newsletter
| Dear Friends,
International Mother Language Day has been celebrated every year since February 21st 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. Languages are the most powerful instruments to preserve and develop our tangible and intangible heritage. All moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue. General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 1999 Â We encouraged our students to honor the Armenian language and his creator Mesrop Mashtots through their work in the XO. Â Below we share some of their excellent work.
Best regards, NUR team |
