[Primaryit] brainstorming project ideas

[forster at ozonline.com.au]

Hi
I am going to Timor in July as part of the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project.

I would appreciate help brainstorming collaborative projects and ranking their suitability for grades 3/4 (probably equals Australian 1/2/3).

Ideas so far:

As a class, edit Wikipedia in Tetun language http://tet.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1jina_Mahuluk
for your school or village, (arrive at a consensus document, then the teacher uploads)

Measure the heights of your classmates, enter into a spreadsheet with their names and display as a bar graph, show the average

Measure, then sketch your school or village in a paint program 

Do a profile of your classmate to a simple template eg photo, parents names, sibling names

Take a photo, add a page to the word-picture book Lia Sira https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AaBmiKWefrGFZGhzZDZqYjdfMGd6azhkNWQ0&hl=en 

Start a school e-newspaper

Take photos of things representing 1, 2, 3, etc. or circle, triangle, square, then make a picture book

Spreadsheet your team's football results

Collect sounds and photos of birds

Use the Stopwatch program to measure athletics results, then spreadsheet

Using the data logging input, measure the conductivity of seawater, rainwater etc. Measure daily illumination and sound level.

Each student tosses a coin 20 times (or software spinner), collaboratively spreadsheet the result.



Background
The school http://www.seaton-olpc-ug.org/?q=node/54

The Laptop The OLPC laptop has the usual apps. , similar to those on Windows
a word processor, spreadsheet, paint, camera, microphone, Scratch, Etoys
full list at http://activities.sugarlabs.org//en-US/sugar/


Thanks
Tony