hello from Porto Alegre

Hello all!

Summer is gone, carnival  is over, local schools and universities are finally  back to activity. It is time to evolve with planning for Squeakfest Brasil.

We are pleased to announce that the School of Education at UFRGS is going to host Sqeuakfest Brasil. They will let us use their facilities without charging us ( cost zero) and that will make possible to have registrations for teachers and students at a symbolic fee ( if not free).

During this first week of activities  we  created a local  committee to plan Sqeuakfest, it is composed by  reps from Cognitive Studies Lab from Psychology ( the research group working with XOs at Luciana de Abreu – Bruno Sperb, teachers  from the School of Education – Rosane Aragon and Paulo Slomp and the director from Escola de Aplicação (an elementary and middle school ran by the university) – Edson Lindner. Local  Committee´s first meeting will happen this week and I would like to hear  your suggestions and plans to share with them.

The idea is to have a two days conference using an auditorium at  ground level and some more classrooms to hold hands on workshops with laptops. Activities conducted in the auditorium will have translation service ( English – Portuguese and vice versa)  volunteers will help English speaking people to participate in workshops conducted in the classrooms(help with translation).  We assume that Spanish speakers will be ok with Portuguese ( both languages are pretty similar).

This week we will discuss about the call for presentations/workshops/activities to be conducted with or without laptops. And for that I would like your suggestions. We can make a call for presentation very open ( just explaining that laptops will be available) or  we can create some types of activities… or focus in different audience –

We plan to have at least one workshop conducted from children (from Luciana de Abreu School) to other children.  

Workshops or activities  could be tagged by target audience: undergrad students ( education, psychology, computer science); researchers in IT for Ed; teachers; parents and children…

There is no wire less internet in those rooms, we can ask the university to install it,  but is that good?  Maybe without internet the audience will better keep the focus on e-toys ?

For those that would not be able to make to Porto Alegre for this first Squeakfest Brasil we will try to have on line transmission for the activities in the auditorium.

looking forward to hear your ideas,

Marta