Low-cost laptop could transform learning (Yahoo)

Posted Jan 1, 2007 3:56 UTC (Mon) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link]

Two comments:

1. Alternative education tends to be very "blue-sky" in its 'reality be damned' approach to schooling, regardless of whether it takes place in a brick-and-mortar setting, or via homeschooling. "Discovery" takes place in different ways, and at different speeds, and might be a paradigm better-suited for a child/young-person and his/her hobbies/interests, rather than the classroom. As an ex-pat American who spent 25 years in Israel, now returned to the US, I will tell you from first-hand experience, that the Palestinian youth whom I met over the years were uniformly appreciative-of and viewed education as a tool, a ticket out of a dead-end life. Although the bulk of my contact was during the 1980s, Palestinians whom I met later on were unanimously grateful for having learned, at an increasingly early-age, how to use word-processing software. A "ticket out" does not necessarily mean geographic relocation. In fact, where violence and/or personal threat is not a factor, a "ticket out" can mean a change (for the better) in the way things are done; i.e., farming, construction, etc. Don't let's go experimenting with other children's "educational birthright".
   
   
2. Having said all that, perhaps the most flagrant abuse of students' "educational birthright" I've ever witnessed was this past year, when I worked at an exclusive (read: expensive) private school, here in South Florida. The school had a Media Technology Consultant, who conned the Upper School's History department chairperson into having the students incorporate Microsoft Excel into a semester-long American History project. Each student was required to find-and-use a map of the continental US as a background image for the Excel spreadsheet. Then, the idea was to use spreadsheet-cells which overlay locations on the background map, to include pertinent information for on-screen popups, when the student presented his/her project to the class, via projector, onto the classroom's whiteboard. Rather than concentrating their efforts and energies on "discovering" information, studying it, and arriving at an understanding of whatever topic of American History each one chose to investigate, they were, "to a (wo)man", caught-up in the complexities and attendant frustrations of mastering Microsoft Excel. It was a horror, and I found it painful to watch them present their pitiful projects; it was yet-another self-image destroyer.

Regardless of from where it comes -- especially if it comes from intellectual American liberals -- it is criminal to not provide children -- the younger, the better -- with skills that, from the get-go, enable them to reach-for the stars and catch the wind.

Posted Jan 1, 2007 15:28 UTC (Mon) by dps (subscriber, #5725) [Link]

Programing is even more difficult---a simple report took me a whole day to write, which probably translates as most of a term (especialy if factor in the need to teach people about splay or AVL trees). This was a relatively small item for which my theory worked, and I am fairly sure I had the trees already.

That said training to use word, excel, etc or any equivalent thereof is IMHO the wrong thing too. I think understanding the *principles* of word processors, spreadsheets, programming languages, etc is much more important. Given the design of many application forms in M$ word format these principles are not widely understood. These principle should probably include not using underlining when bold and italics are avialable instead.

P.S. My PhD thesis guidelines stated that "things which would be printed in italics should be underlined". Fortunately it was acceptable to ignore this and use italics instead.

Posted Jan 1, 2007 21:57 UTC (Mon) by orospakr (subscriber, #40684) [Link]

For example: the very simple Abiword-based word processor included with OLPC, if I may even call it that, is not fundamentally different from the experience one would have with a conventional package like Word. Thus, if a student who was fortunate enough to receive an education including OLPC should find themselves in front of that particular platform, they should have much less trouble learning it than someone who was less fortunate.

And, there's nothing that says that OLPC should replace *all* of the existing educational system, but rather augment and improve it.

Check out http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Learning_Vision . In particular, look at the bit on constructivism.

Posted Jan 1, 2007 23:27 UTC (Mon) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]

This emphatically doesn't mean that "schools shouldn't teach life-skills", nor that "school leavers should not be equipped to work in business".

What it does mean, though, is that "education teaches us who we are, not what we know", and furthermore that "teaching people to think (in the abstract) makes it very easy for them to apply their understanding to any specific problem; the converse is not true".

Computers can be a huge benefit in education, but they could also do huge harm. Actually, I've seen so many instances of computing in business making people less efficient - bad powerpoints being a particular example!