Since our Pennsylvania young learners are denied the option of "cyberlearning" unless they are home schooled...Open Source software is something to seriously consider when you have young inquisitive children. Tux Paint is a favorite among young learners (and old ones) due to its simple and straightforward design. Just added in my research-to-do list: the Scratch Programming (MIT) application that shows young learners logical and procedural thinking.
AbiWord is an alternative for learners that are just starting to read and write. Also for the ones that can get overwhelmed with all the functionality in MS Word. If young learners write their thoughts using a word processor, readers might pay more attention to the content of their work instead of their penmanship. I just saw this in action last night as a group of parents approached a bulletin board full of students' notes. They were commenting on their writing and spelling. Nobody mentioned the fact that their fourth grader was writing about the personal qualities of one of their classmates. A powerful exercise for a group of students that came together two weeks ago, to know and learn from each other. I was excited to see the second grade teacher giving all the parents a book of poems authored by her students, until she mentioned that she typed them on the computer herself. I was looking at two desktop computers sitting right there in the classroom. Sending her an email with an AbiWord link and talking to her is in the works.
The school being referenced here is a small charter school. Exposing them to the open source applications Dr. Garrigan shared with us in class can deliver some possibilities for the teachers and their students, as they embark on their constructivist learning curriculum.
References:
New Breed Software. Tux Paint [Open Source Drawing Software for Children]. Retrieved from http://www.tuxpaint.org/
Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. Scratch [Open Source Programming Animation Software]. Retrieved from http://scratch.mit.edu/
Lachowicz, D. AbiWord [Open Source Word Processing Software]. Retrieved from http://www.abisource.com/
Esther, another good post. I appreciate that you are looking into these resources for your kids and thinking outside the box (I hate that type of jargon but it seems to fit).
ReplyDelete:)