[Yr7-10it] RE: Year 7-10 IT structures

[Bill Kerr]

There is a large elephant in the room that no one has referred to so far:
the OLPC

The one laptop per child non profit project not only plans to deliver
millions of laptops to third world children but has also become a hand
grenade in the commercial world - and has succeeded in forcing down the
price of other laptops now on offer

"... the whole global mind-think around technology has changed.

No longer is low cost computing in education a fantasy, no longer are big
technology companies secondary, and everyone wants to sell technology into
classrooms. Intel introduced Classmate
PC<http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/brazil/olpc_classmate_mobilis.html>to
Brazil, Asustek is selling
Eee PC's<http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/intel/negroponte_100_laptop_asus.html>in
the USA, and even thin-client manufactures compare
themselves to OLPC<http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/competition/stephen_dukker_anti_olpc_campaign.html>
."
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/countries/sales_inhibiting_xo_distribution.html
How will schools and education departments in the wealthy west react to the
fact that in a few years we will have the capability for every child to have
their own laptop?

Will we treat them like mobile phones and ban them or try to figure out a
way to utilise them for optimal educational development?

The use and misuse of computers in schools has up until now been based
around the idea that computers mainly belong in labs and / or that access is
limited. The fact of limited access has acted as a powerful brake for many
teachers not to extend their knowledge much beyond the basics.

Most (all?) of the maths curriculum could be taught using laptops. In fact
MIT produced a series of books in the 80s for teaching much of maths and
aspects of language and art using logo.

Shouldn't we factor this potential into the discussion? If we are talking
about the future it might be incorrect to assume that the pattern of
distribution of computers in schools will remain similar to the present.

-- 
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
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