Jun 20, 2007
Polycom Offers Free Grant Writing Services
Polycom is a company that sells video and audio conferencing hardware as well as web conferencing software. Their company offers free grant writing and E-Rate assistance to school districts. Polycom will also bring in equipment and demonstrate a free virtual field trip with staff so that districts can try out the equipment and better understand how these systems can be maximized. They will also offer professional development courses in your district for graduate credit to help educators better understand how to use these systems. The company also provides free web conferencing resources to clients. They also have a searchable database on educational video conferencing options that support K-12 content. In July Polycom will unveil a new program called Collaboration on Demand. This program will allow educators to hook up with other classrooms around the globe who are interesting on collaborating on projects together via video-conferencing.
Squeak
This week I attended the EduComm Conference in Anaheim, CA. Alan Kay demonstrated a computer programming language for children which is very similar to Sketch, called Squeak. It is similar to Logo. Logo is a computer programming language created by Seymour Papert.
Papert believed that the computer allows for new manipulations. One of the student centered concepts that makes this computer language so kid friendly is that zero is always where the child is, which supports child cognitive development theories developed by Jean Piaget . Squeak builds upon Logo because by including media. Students can use draw tools to create objects of interest to them and then animate these objects. They can also import video and record audio and manipulate these files by using commands such as “increase by”. The program has random and probability components built in. It also has translucent objects that students can drag over their work to use as a tool for measurement.
Kay feels that experiences like this are important because “they allow for simple thinking outside adult constraints”. Squeak allows the student the ability to derive the mathematical and scientific principals themselves by manipulating objects in a way that would be difficult to do without computers. For example, students have used the program to make their own models for gravity. One of the most important things that students learn is outlook, which Kay defines as “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?”
Kay warns that it is important that the teacher use this tool with a strong understanding of the mathematical and scientific principals they are trying to teach as a guide to their pedagogy. Otherwise he is worried that teachers will do low-level lessons such as make collages from pictures on the Internet that don’t help students develop deeper meaning and knowledge. Kay says we need to be careful that we are not just “distracting ourselves to death”. Squeak can be downloaded for free at http://www.squeak.org/ .
Papert believed that the computer allows for new manipulations. One of the student centered concepts that makes this computer language so kid friendly is that zero is always where the child is, which supports child cognitive development theories developed by Jean Piaget . Squeak builds upon Logo because by including media. Students can use draw tools to create objects of interest to them and then animate these objects. They can also import video and record audio and manipulate these files by using commands such as “increase by”. The program has random and probability components built in. It also has translucent objects that students can drag over their work to use as a tool for measurement.
Kay feels that experiences like this are important because “they allow for simple thinking outside adult constraints”. Squeak allows the student the ability to derive the mathematical and scientific principals themselves by manipulating objects in a way that would be difficult to do without computers. For example, students have used the program to make their own models for gravity. One of the most important things that students learn is outlook, which Kay defines as “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?”
Kay warns that it is important that the teacher use this tool with a strong understanding of the mathematical and scientific principals they are trying to teach as a guide to their pedagogy. Otherwise he is worried that teachers will do low-level lessons such as make collages from pictures on the Internet that don’t help students develop deeper meaning and knowledge. Kay says we need to be careful that we are not just “distracting ourselves to death”. Squeak can be downloaded for free at http://www.squeak.org/ .
Jun 2, 2007
Scratch- Programming Language for Children
Last fall I visited The Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT Media Labs. This graduate research group develops digital tools that have the same creativity potential of kindergarten tools like blocks and paint. They showed us a a new program called Scratch they were working on that allows young children to program. It uses a drag and drop approach of digital jigsaw pieces that fit together. The Media Lab has also created a social networking site for users of the program, a unique feature that researchers hope will not only appeal to the younger generation that uses such sites on a daily basis, but foster collaboration and cooperative problem solving and share projects. Click Here to Download Free Program.
In a podcast by Alan November Dr. Mitchel Resnick said, “We see this as the next step in web 2.0. Even now people have mostly shared what I would consider rather old media. To be honest text and pictures are really old media. We really see this as the next step increasingly aware that the future will be based on the ability to think creativity.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
