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

Wed Oct 24 08:02:18 EST 2007

Like Alida, I was initially suspicious of the OLPC project too. Rich
Americans helping the poor, bah, humbug. But the harder I looked at it the
more I ended up liking it. There is pages of questions and answers
(including Alida's questions) about it here:--
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ask_OLPC_a_Question
(scroll down menu on RHS)

I've included OLPC as an issues study in some of my planned 2008 courses

Tony answered some of Alida's questions - I'd like to have a go too.
Substitute the word "education" for "laptop" in this sentence:

"it would be a good idea to distribute better <laptops> to the third world"

Then it becomes a question of demonstrating that the OLPC is the best shot
at jump starting education in the third world. eg. the OLPC contains many
books and can be used in low power book reader mode - so the learners
receive books this way as well as the other extensive functionality

Rather than spend xxx dollars (not available) on trying to emulate a western
education system in the third world is it possible to leap a generation and
leverage the children directly through the OLPC project? That is the stated
aim.  (see Negroponte quote at end) Yes, there are some important social /
cultural implications here.

> Will it use American software which has American English and uses
structures and sensibilities that are ubiquitously American (and insidious)
and therefore difficult for other cultures to understand?

All the software is FOSS (Linux, python, etoys, abiword etc.) and FOSS has a
better Internationalisation record than proprietary software. (Roland has
presented on this wrt his khmer students). Laptops going to Thailand will
have a Thai keyboard, thai language etc.

> How do we know the black market won't steal these machines for their
nefarious profit making?
> Corrupt governments can use them to push their agendas online and in
classrooms

Black market and corruption are real concerns - more so for many third world
governments.

Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati has asked for (band-) aid to be
stopped:

"Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If
the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally
terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most
development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the
billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

   - welfare bureaucracies are financed
   - corruption develops
   - creates a dependence, beggar mentality
   - weakens local markets
   - dampens spirit of entrepreneurship
   - food grants undermine local farmers
   - inhibits trade between African countries

Seems to me that a developmental type project (educational) is more
justifiable - one that will help the poor help themselves. Not a band-aid
but a fishing rod.

> What divide will occur between the computer literate child and their
non-savvy parents?

Since children are better learners than adults then when modernity is
introduced into the third world  generational  divides will open up. No
doubt about that, although it remains to be seen how well each community
will manage it.

The OLPC initiator, Negroponte said:

"You are not going to have peace in the world as long as you have poverty.
And, the only way to eliminate poverty is education. If you focus on
education, particularly primary education, along the way you are going to
have other second-order effects like the environment, like lowering the cost
of health education, lots of things. If you focus on education you can do a
great deal more than if you look other places to solve the particular
problem.

There are 1.2 billion children in the world. Fifty percent of them don't
have electricity, 50% of them live in the rural parts of the world. The
reason that's important is that when you live in a rural part of a poor
nation, even though that poverty is a much better form of poverty than urban
poverty which is the absolute worse, it's also so primitive that children
will often have as a school a tree.

Or some of the teachers won't show up, or the teachers will have a 6th-Grade
education at best. So, if you look at that and you say to yourself: "How do
I fix that? How do I deal with that?" It is not by training teachers, it is
not by building schools. In all due respect, it's not about curriculum or
content.

It's about levering the children themselves. Children are extraordinary - we
don't give children enough credit for what they can do. I mean, we all know
when your cell phone breaks you give it to a 12 year old, when you don't
know how to use your laptop you ask your kid. We all know that! And yet we
sort of think that they have to, after the age of 6, stop learning by doing
and learn by being told.

And, in the best of situations, a child in the developing world is in a
classroom 2 1/2 hours a day, five days a week, which averages a lot less
than 2 hours a day over the week. So, even if you make that experience
better, you're only dealing with a small part of the problem. So what we
did, we said to ourselves: "How can we actually leverage the child for a lot
bigger part of the day, and do something particularly for the poor children
in remote parts of the developing world?" And we set to do what we call the
"$100 Laptop"."
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/04/negroponte-levering-children.html

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

On 10/23/07, Alida Bonotto <abono at mira.net> wrote:
>
>  The OLPC leaves me cold, especially with its application in third world
> countries. How do we know the black market won't steal these machines for
> their nefarious profit making? Corrupt governments can use them to push
> their agendas online and in classrooms. What divide will occur between the
> computer literate child and their non-savvy parents? Will it use American
> software which has American English and uses structures and sensibilities
> that are ubiquitously American (and insidious) and therefore difficult for
> other cultures to understand?
>
> Bill Kerr wrote:
>
> hi Cameron,
>
> The OLPC has wireless mesh networking and a new user interface (sugar)
> based on a community metaphor, which invites extensive collaboration with
> each child having their own laptop. In that respect (and some others) OLPC
> is superior to its new low price rivals from Intel etc.
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/05/community-user-interface.html
>
> If each child owns the laptop then that open up potential for home use -
> as well as the clearly important "sense of personal ownership"
>
> I agree with you that if the laptops are introduced and teachers keep to
> their old techniques and lesson plans then its not going to work very well
> at all
>
> That is sort of the point of this discussion - where would / should it
> lead?
>
> Papert has argued for years that maths could be transformed with one
> laptop per child but that it doesn't  work with other ratios. The pencil
> argument, it would be poor education to chain up pencils in a lab or to
> insist on sharing of pencils
>
> As you say:
> The laptop struggles to break out from being a glorified word-processor,
> file storage and email client to the off the shelf tool that gets used as
> needed, to develop a solution for the problem at hand.
>
> With OLPC the laptop does or should develop or appear to develop some sort
> of agency of its own, it demands to be used in new and different ways - are
> the teachers up to it?
>
> btw I attended a conference at Methodist Ladies College (Melbourne) in
> circa 1980 when every child  had a laptop and they were using logo
> extensively (David Loader was the Principal).
>
> Your points about forcing collaboration are interesting and I'd like to
> hear more about the tool you mention that facilitates a process whereby
> students "produce work that reflects their own knowledge, not the groups
> knowledge"
>
> I'm wary of formalising collaboration in an institutional sense. I think
> learners have the right to choose their time and place for collaboration.
> When setting up groups I often do permit a group of one.  I'm aware of one
> very good educational blogger who has been arguing this for some time:
> blog of proximal development
> http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/
> (I will dig up some of his posts about this particular topic if you want)
>
> cheers,
> --
> Bill Kerr
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/
>
>
> On 10/23/07, Cameron Bell < bell.cameron.p at edumail.vic.gov.au> wrote:
> >
> > But Bill, lots and lots of schools have implemented laptop programs -
> > some for many years now. We have found that you don't need one laptop per
> > child - in fact, I believe that insisting each child having their own laptop
> > can stifle pedagogical progress. When each child has their own laptop or
> > they are working in a lab, the teacher is generally just using the same
> > teaching techniques and lesson plans they always have, insisting on personal
> > work, students working in isolation (communicating, but in isolation) with
> > the whole class doing the same activity at the same time. The laptop
> > struggles to break out from being a glorified word-processor, file storage
> > and email client to the off the shelf tool that gets used as needed, to
> > develop a solution for the problem at hand.
> > We have run with a one-between-two program here for the past couple of
> > years (I was skeptical as I had just come from a 1-1 school) and apart from
> > a couple of dedicated labs, we now deliberately aim for one-between-two for
> > all our technology infrastructure. It means students *must* collaborate
> > as teams on producing work and we are being forced to develop methods for
> > students to be able to collaborate- but then produce work that reflects
> > their own knowledge, not the groups knowledge. It's tricky but I have found
> > a very useful little tool that enables that to happen in my classes and the
> > rest of the staff have adapted too! Some of us are creating digital
> > portfolios, this requires group prac work, but individual reflections. How
> > do you do this with one-between-two? You are forced to examine individual
> > learning plans, multiple lesson plans within a lesson, rather than the
> > one-size-fits-all approach that we have always done. (Primaries have done
> > this for years!) While 1/2 the class use the laptops for part of an
> > activity, the other 1/2 are doing another part. For us, this is also
> > essential to break up a 72 min period and help keep the students focussed.
> > One between two is cheaper too!  ;-)
> > Cheers
> > Cameron
> >
> > Bill Kerr wrote:
> >
> > 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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