XO Learning

I made  my  flower move! I will tell you how I did it  tomorrow.

                   MADELINE

Madeline,

I had a great time playing with the eToys tutorial yesterday and thinking about how we could accomplish each challenge with only one script. Any time you tell a computer how to do something, you are learning math and some problem solving skills that will be good for you in life as well as school.

I’m looking forward to learning more about eToys with you as we work to create an animated picture for our homework.  I found a good website about how to make a car that might be helpful as you work to animate your flower with wheels.  There are several other tutorials or instructions on the site, too.  I’ll follow those instructions as I get started. You might want to do so with your parents.  Better yet - ask them to make something, too.

Here’s some more background information about Squeak and eToys that your parents might find useful. Oh, and here are some examples of elementary school projects made with Squeak.  (You might need your parents to download some software onto your family computer to see these.  Let me know if you need help.  There are a couple of games and mazes that look pretty fun.)

This is Madeline.  Bud, I beat you at Etoys Challenge for Novices.  I finished the car race first (by finishing the tutorial).  Do you want to do it again?  I learned you have to be patient because if you aren’t you could mess up.  If you go too fast you can make the car go wild.  I also learned that the boxes you put in to give the car commands, you click and don’t hold your mouse, and it will take the box and put it where you want it. 

See you Tuesday, MADELINE

Friday night we were all watching the NBC Nightly News and saw a teaser for story coming up that showed kids using the XO laptop.  Finally at the end of the broadcast was the Making a Difference segment about the “Magic School Bus” in Arkansas.  A native of the area has had a school bus converted for wireless hook-up so these kids with a 60-90 minute bus ride (each way) can access learning tools online, especially in math and science.  He has gotten ipods and laptops donated - some of which are the XO.  It was really neat to see the kids excited about their learning.  What a great opportunity for them.  This fellow is hoping to convert other buses for the next school year.  You can link to this web address to see the 2 videos from NBC.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10397946/ You may have to copy and paste it to make it work -I’ve never tried this before!!!

Be on the lookout for the TurtleArt turtle that Madeline sent out into the stratosphere. (Madeline thinks that the turtle is probably in Germany.) We learned today that using the biggest numbers we can think of isn’t always the best idea in a computer.Today we met for our second session. We changed the nickname and colors on Madeline’s machine, and took a look at some of the TurtleArt sample files. We then opened up TurtleArt and taught ourselves how to draw with the turtle. Our homework for next time is to use TurtleArt to draw a picture of a house. The best house wins. Deadline for building is March 17th, the day of our next session.   If you’d like to enter our TurtleArt contest, go ahead and send us a link to a copy of your TurtleArt house via the blog comments. We’ll showcase all entries on the blog here. If you’ve never used TurtleArt, but would like to try, you can learn more about it on the OLPC wiki. If you don’t have TurtleArt, and would like to use a different version of Logo to create a picture of a house, go for it!  Madeline - take a look at this handy color chart to use while using logo - you can select which colors to use on your house! See you in two weeks!

Hi, this is Lee and I’m Madeline’s mom.  We spent some time yesterday with Bud learning more about the amazing XO.  Madeline has had a lot of fun exploring all the many different things it can do.  We think it’s going to be a great journey as we learn more.  Now Madeline has a few words to share………….

I want to thank Bud for teaching me more about the XO and he’s taught me a lot.  Thank You Bud!

We had an excellent first meeting today, I thought. I enjoyed getting a chance to see how far Madeline’s come with the XO in just a couple of weeks. Certainly, a little exploration can be a great teaching tool.  I particularly enjoyed connecting our two XO’s together and shooting photos around the coffee shop.  Watching Madeline play Memorize and sing and shout into the Measure Activity were also both good moments.

I mentioned some links for y’all.  Here’s a roadmap of planned updates to the software, as well as some instructions on how to do a manual update (although I don’t think that you need to do one at this time).

Also, the XO is currently set up with the generic colors and name that I assigned when I tested the machine. Here are some instructions for changing the name and colors. We can do this at our next session if you’d like.  Oh, and I promised a homework assignment.  I’ll think a little bit more about that before I assign anything.

Madeline,

As we get started working together, I thought you would enjoy reading what some third graders in Seattle, Washington thought about the XO computer that their teacher, Mr. Ahlness, has brought into their classroom.

This blog meant to be a place to document our learning about our XO laptops. We’ll share what we’re up to, what we’re learning, and interesting and useful links about the XO and other users of this marvelous device from the One Laptop per Child Foundation.