[dundee] OLPC Videos...niiiiiiiiiice!

[Rick]

Hi all,

I've been lurking on the list for sometime now, and was intending to
attend the LUG s first meeting of the new year with Gary, but
unfortunately wasn't able to.

Firstly I should mention that, I know Gary after attending his .Net
users group.  As I use Linux and FLOSS almost exclusively at work and
home I attend only out of the desire 'to see how the other half live'
and primarily to talk about software development in the broader sense.

Anyway, I'm a big supporter of the OLPC programme and feel that though
there is a risk of the project failing to achieve it's ambitious goals
it's still a worthwhile venture.

So would the money be better spent on teachers rather than Laptops??
Well maybe, but first you have to ask, would Negroponte have been able
to raise the money for the proposed alternative?

Another point is that the OLPC (and computers) should encourage a form
of learning and experimentation which rarely occurs in the classroom,
and is altogether more valuable than knowledge brought through a
'formal education'.  This is the knowledge gained through doing,
rather than being told, and is the same point you made about the "code
project morons", and similar to this argument about the flaws of
formal education:

"Surely in modern technological society it is the quantity of
schooling and the amount of money you spend on it that buys value. And
yet last year in St. Louis, I heard a vice-president of IBM tell an
audience of people assembled to redesign the process of teacher
certification that in his opinion this country became
computer-literate by self-teaching, not through any action of schools.
He said 45 million people were comfortable with computers who had
learned through dozens of non-systematic strategies, none of them very
formal; if schools had pre-empted the right to teach computer use we
would be in a horrible mess right now instead of leading the world in
this literacy."

http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Educate/public_school_nightmare.htm

On this point - I think the OLPC programme is best viewed as being
ancillary to a formal education system.

In addition to this I think viewing OLPC merely in terms of education
is a mistake, and I'd posit that it's biggest impact will be felt
elsewhere as it helps foster economic growth and development by
allowing communities to improve communication and gives adults (as
well as children) more ready access to valuable online resources.
Here the XO has the potential to provide communities with a valuable
piece of infrastructure, and it is here that I think it's true
strength lies.

For example, I've taken a small advisory role in a project to twin
health centres in Scotland and Malawi ( http://malawiclinics.org/ ).
The project has successfully internet-enabled approximately 10
Malawian Clinics, giving them amongst other things much needed access
to online medical resources such as Hinari.

You can imagine though, how the XO needn't necessarily be deployed
around schools, but could equally be well used within these clinics by
staff and patients alike.  The beauty of the XO is the openness of the
whole device to change and innovation.  A critical feature, when you
don't really know how people are going to use it.  My only fear is
that the projects heavy focus on educating children is a needless
barrier to it's adoption in other settings such as this.

R.

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