I just attended a great talk on OLPC. I thought I should share my first reactions with folks not fortunate enough to be able to attend.
BTW, if anyone feels this is a bit of an abuse of this list, feel free to let me know (I won't be offended). I recognize that these are not well polished notes and perhaps should rather find their way on my blog. The first part was about school and learning - great stuff. Goal: changing the way kids learn (no mention as this point about laptops). Art would have been pleasantly surprised. This was done in a "non-preachy" way, unlike the way some home-schooling advocates present their stuff. (no offense meant to anyone on this list). A big chunk of the talk dealt with technical/hardware issues - all done in a very relevant way, but not exactly relevant for edu-sig. Some excellent reasons were given as to why Python was chosen as *the* development language. There is actually a button on the keyboard which is meant to "display the source"; click on it and you're presented with the actual Python source code used to run the application being viewed/used. The user can then modify the source (like smalltalk I guess, like Paul F. [?] sometimes mentions on this list) and run the modified version. One open issue (as I understand it) is that of finding the "best practice" for plugins. The idea is that the core programs should be as small as possible but easy to extend via plugins. I thought that there already was a "well known and best way" to design plugins - and it was on my list of things to learn about (to eventually incorporate rurple within crunchy). There is a real need to have more people involved in the development. This project presents a real opportunity to "make a real difference" to a lot of kids out there. Overall, I was extremely impressed with the talk - it was a job well done and a fantastic start to the conference. André _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
