NOTES OF 11/5/01


                    LAPTOP SUPPORT GROUP MEETING


                          George Markowsky


I am once again circulating notes based on the most recent meeting or
our group. This meeting took place on 11/5/01. As before, this is not
a set of minutes, but rather a summary of important announcements and
decisions.

The next two meetings of this group will take place on Monday
11/12/01, and Monday 11/19/01 at 2:10 PM in room 227 Neville Hall. To
support this group I have temporarily created a webpage at:

            http://www.cs.umaine.edu/~markov/laptop.html

There is also a link to this page from my home page at

                  http://www.cs.umaine.edu/~markov

Once we get the website operational, we can move these materials there
if we wish. You can find the following items on the laptop page:

     1. The notes of the various meetings.

     2. The updated mailing list of all participants

     3. A scanned version of Pao Hsu's drawing. She presented this
     drawing to illustrate the key elements involved in supporting the
     laptop initiative. This can be found on the website.

     4. A link to a Newsweek article profiling Seymour Papert.

     5. A link to the NCTM Learning Standards page.

The 11/5/01 meeting focused on the workgroups. Here is a summary of
the discussions.

WEBSITE GROUP
This group is to work on creating a support network (a Teach Buddies
site), a Student Pen Pals site, a Spearhead Center, a Doubting Thomas
site, and an advocacy site. It should look to evolve the site into a
full-fledged portal.

The members of this group have had some discussions, but have not yet
selected a leader. Prashanth Chandrasekar, President of the student
chapter of the ACM, has agreed to canvas the members to find a
volunteer leader. The current members of the group are:

MEMBERS (Leader not selected yet)
ACM Student Chapter
      Prashanth Chandrasekar
      Jonathan Bilodeau
      Wenyu Zhu
Gerry Alden
Steve Philbrick
Mike Scott

So far the group has talked about producing an overall design. The
thought is to create a portal that will include links to other helpful
sites. One think that they would like to put up is some sort of a
mission statement.


LEARNING UNITS GROUP
This group is to work on the content of the various units to be
prepared for the teachers. In particular, they should work on
developing a Technology Studies unit that will teach students about
computer technology. This group will also worry about the software to
be offered in support of the Laptop Initiative.

The discussion focused on the extent to which this subgroup would act
like a clearinghouse or a creator of materials. The sense of the
entire group is that while serving as a clearing house has some
importance, we primarily want to see this group creating things of use
and interest for the teachers. The group will do a presentation at the
November 19, 2001 meeting. The group will also work on a framework for
developing tools and materials. The leadership of the group passed
from Larry Latour to Eva Szillary. Eva will convene the next meeting
of this workgroup. This group needs to get some items ready for the
Pilot Schools Workshop which is scheduled to start on January 14,
2002.

The revised membership of this group is:


MEMBERS (Leader is Eva Szillary)
Eva Szillary *
Young-me Ahn
Kate Comeau
Sally Coppus
Max Crain
Rick Eason
Wayne Garthwaite
Pao Hsu
Lilian Karadakova
Larry Latour
Molly Maclean
Steve Philbrick
Peter Rottmann
Mike Scott
Yohong Sun
James Verrill




PILOT SCHOOLS WORKSHOP GROUP
This group is to organize the workshop that we hope to offer in
January for the Pilot Schools with an auxiliary session for all 7th
grade Maine teachers. The main workshop is expected to last 4 days,
and the auxiliary session to last one day.

Max Crain agreed to act as chair of this group. All the members of
this workgroup are also members of the Learning Units workgroup. It
was decided that it would be best for both groups to work together.

The following statement was submitted, by Max Crain:

     Dear Workshop Committee,

     I'm thinking that we should agree on priorities for selecting
     software and projects for the workshop. We also need to decide
     how we will work with participants.

     I would consider the workshop successful if it persuades teachers
     that the laptops may offer new and significant opportunities to
     learn.

     Following are some of my suggestions. Please add to these,
     review, or provide an alternate way of beginning this discussion.
     It would help to discuss specific project examples soon.

          1) The tools that we present should allow participants to do
          something that they could not have done without computers.

          2) Suggested projects should be capable of interpretation in
          personally meaningful ways by a wide range of participants,
          and should be roomy enough to accommodate
          individually-propelled responses. Very abstract or
          specialized problems are likely to be viewed as mere
          exercises.

          3) Our interactions with participants should allow them to
          engage in construction, discovery, and the "having of
          wonderful ideas". Of course, opportunities to learn come in
          many forms: the work of others, instruction, information of
          various kinds, discussion but these are already available
          in schools, and are often not so engaging on their own as
          they are in the service of a more active approach to
          learning.

          4) We should consider that play instincts, which evolved
          over long periods, can be functional with respect to
          learning, even in school.

     Question: Some uses of computers are likely to seem overwhelming
     ("not enough time") , frightening ("too hard for me"), or
     peripheral ("need to teach the basics first") to many teachers.
     I'd predict that this would be the case with modeling and
     simulation StarLogo and Stella, for example. I'm not sure that
     I understand the nature of such reactions are they the tip of
     an iceberg?

     ---Max

MEMBERS (Max Crain is the Leader)
Max Crain *
Larry Latour
Steve Philbrick
Eva Szillary



MONITORING GROUP
This group is to work on the educational framework and the assessment
of the results of the laptop initiative.

Pao Hsu will act as the leader of this workgroup. This workgroup
will work closely with the Learning Units and Pilot Schools Workshop
workgroups.

The importance of being aware of the NCTM (National Council of Teachers of
Math) learning standards was made. There is a link to this from the website
mentioned above.

MEMBERS (Pao Hsu is the leader)
Pao Hsu *
Sally Coppus
Eva Szillary


INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE GROUP
This group is to organize a large conference/workshop that is
projected to run 3 days, with a tentative date of May 13-15, 2001.
This group will also work with the State to position this conference
as the premier annual event in support of the Laptop Initiative. So
far, Alan Kay has indicated that he will speak at the conference.

A full report will be presented at the next meeting.

MEMBERS (Leader is Seymour Papert)
Seymour Papert*
Tom Bickford
Sally Coppus
George Markowsky
Lael Stegall