OLPC camp with Russian children

What should be the methods of teaching informatics today? What will it be after some time? It seems that ... in the world of pedagogy, everything is as before. As before, most teachers force children to stand at the blackboard for hours transferring numbers from binary to decimal and vice versa. But as before, there are enthusiasts who are trying to make knowledge more accessible.
The fact that the game method of learning really works great - we have known for a long time. This is used in organizing trainings, in foreign language courses - anywhere, but not in most schools. Here we often have only: a desk, a board and a computer once every three weeks.
Themed camps for gifted children are quite infrequent events, despite their effectiveness. There are camps for artists, mathematicians, literature connoisseurs, and, of course, programmers, of course. Here I will talk about the OLPC camps held in Russia and give a retrospective of the first of them - Digital Ecology 2008.


It was in August last year. A group of teachers at the Nizhny Novgorod Pedagogical University has launched a camp project in which children in grades 5–7 will be able to get in touch with the red book nature of the Nizhny Novgorod region, on the one hand, and with modern technology on the other.
The money for the event was found in a fantastic way and interested people were found. In addition to other equipment, which will be discussed below, we managed to acquire 50 OLPC XO laptops, which were paid for by the Making miles for millenium fund. Yes. Dutch Foundation. Gave a lot of money to buy laptops for Russian children.
Next, I will talk about people who helped “do our day,” about their goals, about technical devices, programs, children tested and what all these subjects did there.

Technique and software

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Constructivism is a pedagogical concept consisting (briefly and metaphorically) as follows: if you want to quickly understand our Universe, take part in its creation. In other words, the greatest pedagogical effect is achieved only with the active position of students.
What is a computer for a programmer, if not the magic wand with which he creates his world? So let us give such sticks to children and teach them to use them. Requirements are easily formed immediately:

• The wand should be worn with itself, and not stand on the school desk. Netbooks, not desktop machines
• the creation tool must be protected from its owner. Classmate and OLPC XO
• you cannot immediately give our little Padawan an adult Jedi sword - let it be trained first. Not C ++ / Java / PHP, but Scratch / Squeak / Logo.
• abstract thinking develops hard. And at first it is interesting that you can touch, touch, lick your tongue ... what moves, says, flashes with lights. Sensors, robots and UFOs!

Well, here are the solutions:

OLPC XO-1

Beautiful, green, unkillable, with a powerful battery, a mesh network over wi-fi and a bunch of other bonuses. A small description can be viewed in my last post.

Classmate PC

Intel's brainchild. Also created for children device. It is much superior to XO in power, but loses its orientation towards users (permeable, non-shock, battery for 2-3 hours, etc.) They say that there is a mesh network on the classmates and they can be combined with XO. I myself have not seen.

Asus eee pc

In principle, everyone knows everything about him.

Picoboard

Wonderful board with sensors: reacts to sound, light, pressing, measures voltage. It goes well with the educational programming language Scratch . And this Scratch is nothing more than a logical continuation of the turtle LOGO, on which many of us managed to program in primary school (I mean a very young generation) So, for example, the program for Scratch looks like, using sensors:



Isn't it easy? On Youtube you can watch Evgeny Patarakin’s experiments with Picoboard.

ru.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qa1Yty5Dzo

But that is not all…

Other aspects

I don’t think that it’s worthwhile in this article to describe the concept of “school-flock”, to talk about geocaching, astronomical and environmental research conducted by children, playing music and other non-computer offtopic. Anyone who wants to read the camp reports can, for example, buy a Linux FORMAT magazine (there are many organizational moments, albeit slightly sad, but described in detail), or follow the link:

• OLPC-news
• On the OLPC-Russia community page
• Photo

Conclusions and Conclusion

The modern level of development of computer technology, which implies (either explicitly or implicitly) that everyone has a mobile or other (personal) device for interacting with anyone (a teacher, colleague, friend or unknown, who is passionate about the same areas of knowledge) the emergence of new forms of communication and knowledge.
It seems that now there is a gap in the cultures of communication between students and teachers. The modern student acquires knowledge in two, while often unrelated ways. This is a classical school, with traditional tasks, lessons, games, and the Internet, which implies free informal communication, search, an unpredictable “training program”. By combining these paths, one can cultivate in students a culture of using the achievements of modern information technologies. This is exactly the symbiosis that modern schools need so much to keep up with their students.