Personally, I think the whole approach is wrong. You will never convince Ministries of Education to stop their "core" activities just because there are laptops.
The better approach is to show how laptops can enhance education in schools. This should not be an "either/or" approach. We can do both. As a simple example, children can leave the school earlier after suitable teaching and complete work on the laptops at home or other locations. This will free up the school to take a second shift of students. Teachers can restructure their teaching to have groups working together to learn, so freeing them up to take more students. Ian Thomson ICT Outreach Section Economic Development Division Secretariat of the Pacific Community B.P. D5 - Noumea Cedex - 98848 New Caledonia Phone +687-265419 Fax +687 26 38 18 http://www.spc.int -----Original Message----- From: iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org [mailto:iaep-boun...@lists.sugarlabs.org] On Behalf Of Bernie Innocenti Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 8:36 AM To: Timothy Falconer Cc: olpc-ha...@lists.laptop.org; grassroots OLPC; olpc-o...@lists.laptop.org; Squeakland List; Maho 2010; IAEP; ht2011-win...@waveplace.org Subject: Re: [IAEP] [realness] a school is not a building On Sun, 2010-12-05 at 15:18 -0500, Timothy Falconer wrote: > Hi all, > > A favor: help me make this case (or refute it) as we prepare once > more for Haiti ... "spend money on training & laptops instead bricks > and mortar". > > http://waveplace.com/news/blog/archive/001035.jsp It's a beautiful thought that touches deep into my hacker spirit, but the conclusion seems weak: what is it that we are advocating for? Remote learning? Home-schooling? Having classes under a tree? It's unclear. The point that you were making with the military canteen vs cooking at home metaphor is that compulsory education doesn't follow individual inclinations. Then, the conclusion should state the proposed solution for this problem. -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep