Cathie, Cherry, Christine, Randy, Tim, Rita
1. Upcoming events (conferences, who plans to attend? who would like to submit a paper? what about the panel at SXSW) A list of conferences is at the wiki here http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/sq/Conferences
for CUE conference: contact Mulholland Middle school
NECC: Kathleen Harness plans to go and present, Tim plans to got, has high priority
Constructionism: we will submit a paper, let us know when you would like to co-write. Focus: what is special about Etoys? What can be done with Etoys but not with other construcionist tools like Alice, Scratch, Logo etc. We should start brainstorming that on the mailing list, put the results on the wiki
Northern Virginia Home Education Conference: Randy will ask friends about this conference, we will find out more about home schooling community and how to get involved, which conferences to attend etc.
2. start organizing next Squeakfest - what do you think we should/could do early?
Date for next year Squeakfest should be scheduled, Tim will take care of that.
As soon as the date is fixed we shoudl send announcements to local schools and advertise it. Cherry proposed: How about a Squeak Fare? Where the kids from NC can show off/demo their work?
3. Template for courseware. Randy used Kathleens template with one of his projects, we can talk if that will be the template to describe the courseware. If so, we could start writing the other courseware components ...
Randy did use the template. We will talk to Kathleen Harness about his ideas. Tim proposed to send Randys project to Bruno and Marta to get feedback. We talked about which standards to use in the project description.
Cherry did ask which standards we use:
NETS for students: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForStudents/2007Standards/NETS_for_Students_2007.htm
We will look up UNESCO and other sources to find more international standards (ask people from Plan Ceibal, OLPC etc.)
http://www.education-world.com/standards/
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=51850&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
4. OLPC book sprint next week in Washington http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Class_Acts#Needs
Plans are that Rita and Bruno from Brazl will participate. Rita will contact Carlos about that to get one more chapter about use of Etoys on the XO.
5. Consider whether we should bundle DrGeo II with this month's Etoys release, perhaps as a main item in the Supply Bin. The software team is generally in favor of it.
The education team also likes the idea. Tim told us about release dates: Etoys 4.0 ... Sep 16th; Etoys 4.1 ... Feb 21st; Etoys 4.2 ... July 21st; Etoys 4.3 ... Dec 21st; Etoys 4.4 ... June 21st
6. showcase categorization
regions and subjects are ok. Randy suggested instead of ages: concrete learning, transitional learning, abstract learning
All categories should allow multiselection, because there are cross-subject projects, projects suitable for all age groups, even projects from participants from different countries. Tim will talk with the software team about that.
Tim asked about ranking projects? Will be done manually by the education team, rank will not not be shown, it's just a sorting criterion. Will we have tagging? Rita would like to have it on the public showcase, not on the official one. We will talk about that when we can see the showcaes and try things out.
Comments for projects will be enabled, but moderated.
7. update on John Stout's Nigerian project.
Randy believes it has great possibilities for broader application.
His idea: "I believe we can go beyond developing courseware just for Nigeria and create a general introductory set of lessons that help students learn to use those tools in etoys that are useful in working with GIS information to better understand their country, help solve some of its problems and become skilled in using GIS data. They can use those tools to work with data on their country's resources, economics, politics, social systems, environment, climate, etc. If we use gobal GIS data in the courseware, the units could be a starting point for learners in any country are they could develop a better understanding of their country from a global perspective. This has the potential to produce some very skilled and productive citizens that could make valuable contributions to their country's future. Does anyone know if there are any OLPC projects with this focus using etoys? If not, I believe we should consider this approach. I would appreciate any comments.
Randy did some more sample projects for John Stout, just with Etoys, no Squeak programming needed yet. Cherry told us about an exhibition in Santa Barbara museum about water contingencies all over the world. Could be a partner for us? Here's the project that she mentioned during the meeting: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-124
8. Talk about any changes we want in the Etoys gallery of projects . . . might be nice to include projects from other sources such as EtoysIllinois and USeIT. What would you remove? What would you replace it with?
The projects meant are these which come with Etoys. Next release is Spe 16th, so which projects wpould you like to see? We will ask people who presented great projects at Squeakfest, would like to have not just english projects, but at least one multi-language project: daemon castle. Who will help us translate it? We then talked about where to put DrGeo and started talking about names of categories in the object catalogue. That will be something to talk about for release in Feb.
Next meeting next week, doodle to find a date.