Week 2 - Day 3

I was more impressed today than I have been any other day of our training. We started off in Turtle Art which is one of the harder activities on the XO, but also an incredibly useful one. You use simple programming to create shapes, images, and a range of effects. The beauty of it is when you teach kids to create things with activity they gain a deep integral understanding of what goes into a shape. This may sound silly to some of you, but it is important to learn that a triangle is composed of 3 sides and three angles – the angles must add up to 180 degrees and the sides must be such lengths that the meet at the corners and create those angles. Drawing one is simple, creating one encourages understanding.

Really, this is the principle behind the whole project. As of now, kids use memorization to learn/to repeat information. The teacher writes on the board, the kid writes in a book, studies really hard, and at the end of the week the kid re-writes the information on a paper labeled “Test.” How well you recall determines your grade. What we’re doing here may not get rid of the test, but we can go beyond the process of writing and rewriting and move to one of guiding, creating and understanding. This will make all of the information that these little minds are exposed to will be much easier to access later on in life.

Later, while some stayed in Turtle Art, a few moved on to the Maze and Implode activities we had planned for the second part of class. These may be something that the kids use more in their spare time, but it still helpful for them. A few weeks ago I was talking with Seth, a Peace Corps Volunteer from Mauritania, and he mentioned how much he would love to have books of mazes for kids there. This type of critical thinking, even in game form, still encourages situational problem solving that isn’t fostered well in the current system. The teachers I worked with took a little bit to get the hang of the Maze, a pretty foreign concept, and a little less time to understand Implode, but all of them liked the challenge and didn’t give up.

Next week, we will continue to train the teachers in the morning but begin to work with the kids in the afternoon. We know we’ll get a good turn out, but still have a few things to consider before a possible 200 kids show up ready to go. We’re thinking of a staggered start, but this could get interesting.