This is a project by and for teachers! While students will be the ultimate beneficiaries, our project is designed to come up with new and easy to use curriculum ideas for teachers using Sugar and XOs in their classrooms. Our first concentration will be in the areas of Music in the primary grades and Science in the middle school grades. Later, other subjects will probably be added.
We will be working with XO-1s that have been updated to the latest software and will add some additional science-related Activities. As we work, we will be blogging about what works (and doesn’t) and ideas for ways to use the various Activities in the classroom.
For Music, we will be using mostly Tam Tam Mini and Tam Tam Jam to involve primary level students in musical experiences that fall in line with the Montana State Curriculum Standards.
For science, we will take full advantage of the XO’s camera and recording capabilities as well as the Measure program, that includes an oscilloscope, for a variety of hands-on experiments.. We would like to be able to build and add various sensors and use them for experiments that will be in line with the science curriculum standards.
Our team includes two teachers at Arrowhead School. Dorothy Jett is the school’s IT person and teaches second grade. Scott Romsos is the middle school science and math teacher. Dorothy would like to involve other teachers from the primary grades in the project as well.
The team Mentor, Caryl Bigenho, is a retired teacher from Los Angeles who is in the area from about June to October. She has been a member of the OLPC Support Gang since 2007 and has mentored several other Contributors Program projects. When Caryl is not in the area, the team will be able to keep in touch by way of Skype, email, and our blog.
In addition to these team members, Scott Dowdle, Sys Admin at Montana State University and President of the Bozeman Linux users Group has been helping us with some of the more technical tasks. We hope he will be able to continue to be available for consult when needed.
If you are involved in using the XO in either primary music or secondary science, we invite you to submit ideas for our project as comments on this blog.
Arrowhead School XO Explorers 