[dundee] Taylug Weekly Articles 8 - POMS

[Rick]

Hi all,

I think this debate has become unnecessarily polarised, with people
arguing over the extremes.

I'd genuinely be surprised if anyone thought a laptop was equivalent
to a teacher in educating a child (or vice versa), yet it seems the
arguments are being largely forced down this route.

As Andrew and others have said, the laptop is designed to be used in
conjunction with a more formal education.  Simply giving a laptop to a
child who's had no education in reading/writing is likely to fail, or
at best only result in negligible improvements.

On 06/02/2008, Gary Short <gary at garyshort.org> wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> ...
> 3. In short the problem that OLPC tackles has been solved, there are tried, tested and proven methods and techonologies in this area already; why throw that away and spend millions developing a solution to a problem that has been solved? Why not invest in the current (proven) solutions? It does smack a little of NIH.

Here you seem to be arguing that education has been 'solved' via the
'classroom model', yet I don't think we're arguing about this.  The
argument here is (or rather SHOULD BE) about the merits of the
classroom vs 'exploratory learning'.  So I'm not convinced that the
laptop smacks of NIH, or represents a new model.  Computers have long
been proven as a means of education and learning.  Indeed, Alan Kay
has spent much of his career following this path.

1)

Providing children with a new way of learning.  An exploratory form of
learning without formal bounds.  Here I am talking about the kind of
learning and insight one gets only through doing.  Classrooms aren't
meant for this sort of thing.  We've all met people who know lots of
'facts' but have no understanding.  Facts are rigid and pretty useless
in the real world, far better to adapt and be able to question
experiment and understand on your own.

So, the question here is one of:

- Do laptops provide this sort of learning?  I'd argue they do.  The
OLPC has even more
  potential here than typical laptops due to it's open nature.
  + Are kids in developing nations with a small amount of formal
education able to derive
     these insights from a laptop?  I'd argue they can.  Children are
naturally exploratory.
- Whether or not it's better to have more 'formal learning' or some
'formal learning' +
  'exploratory learning via a laptop'.
  + This is potentially a trade off...  Either you have more of the
same, or have some of the
     same with a laptop.  I'd argue it's better to measurably improve
education for some
     rather than more broadly supply a lower quality of education.  I
think the laptop can do
     this.  Sadly we're not yet in a position to supply everyone with
a great education.
- Is this sort of learning more valuable than that taught in a classroom?

As a small aside... these points were recently echoed (with many more)
in Craig Murray's (Dundee Universities rector) excellent inaugural
speech to freshers, where he was heavily critical of the university
for churning students out to fill jobs, rather than teaching people to
learn:

http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/9/29/3260440.html

It's an excellent speech, and was ironically censored by the university.

2)

The laptop is not just a laptop.  It's a portal to a world of
knowledge and information.  The schools with laptops will be able to
easily distribute ebooks and even high quality web resources to their
children.  Nobody would argue that the printing press changed the
world.

Here the question is:  Would Providing developing nations and schools
with a 'turbo-charged printing press' for distributing educational
materials efficiently at next to no cost (beyond the initial
investment).  Do more than providing more teachers/textbooks etc?

I'd argue that computers provide the most efficient form of
information exchange and knowledge creation that we know of.  Shipping
physical books around is incredibly costly in terms of teacher/student
resources etc...  A book can only be in one place at a time.  With N
laptops it can be at N places at once, with far less distribution
cost.


The strength of the laptop is that it can concurrently support many
different styles of learning.  Nobody knows yet HOW it will be best
used to deliver its vision, and there is much scope for innovation on
the ground in their deployment and how they're managed socially.
These questions all need answered, and there's a lot of learning yet
to be done on managing this.  Who knows maybe it's best deployed as
one-laptop-per-teacher... we don't know, but ultimately the money on
R&D has been spent, and regardless of it's educational merit will be
recouped through reuse of it's innovations in other hardware anyway.
The challenge now is to find ways to realistically deploy it to the
maximal benefit of developing nations.

At the risk of adding more fuel to the fire, here's a link which is
perhaps more supportive of Gary's views:

http://mobileactive.org/one-laptop-child-v-cellphones-view-malawi

Naturally having an interest in Malawi through the twinning project
I'm involved in, I'd like to hear other peoples reactions to this
link.

-- 
Rick Moynihan
rick.moynihan at gmail.com
http://sourcesmouth.co.uk/blog/