Wayne and Kirby (others?), I agree regarding OLPC and the (limited) practice emerging from it. It's a different use of the technology than what's normally being done. Papert's work from a long time ago is, I assume, still an inspiration for those alternative uses. It's therefore different also from the underlying philosophy of WE and most OER initiatives.
I took a look at the freedom toaster. I'm not sure if I understood the concept well. How is this different from just building your own computer or acquiring one built by others and having it at an affordable price, loading it with whatever you want to load it with? I'm thinking of places where I worked in remote regions in the DRC. Schools with nothing. Stones for kids to sit on; a piece of blackened scrap wood to write on as a chalk board; teachers and students with no access whatsoever to even the most basic sources of information; no electricity supply, except for the occasional portable generator if at all. Preloaded OERs would have to be transported with the device that contains them from wherever there is a possibility to upload them (the nearest village or small town with (irregular) Internet access and basic electricity supply to where they are actually needed. That may involve someone having to walk for half a day, carrying some small device, like an iPod, with all the stuff on it and requiring no more than a photovoltaic charger or something of that kind to run it. An iPod-sized screen may not be ideal for reading, but it may work. Somewhat larger devices (Archos, electronic book readers) might do a better job. Content must be thought of having the available technology in mind. If reading extensive documents from a small screen is not an option and printing out documents is also impossible, audio perhaps is a possibility. Or audio files enhanced with sketchy verbal and graphic information. Surprisingly or not, cell phones-shared by many-are in those circumstances often more likely to be found than any other piece of transportable hardware. If they are of the kind that is capable of uploading and playing songs, their memory capacity could also be used for uploading learning resources in audio format. Just an idea. My main point is that circumstances vary widely and there has been little progress so far in preparing the local environment to be able to explore creatively the (limited) technological resources available. From what I have seen of it, OLPC is possibly one of the global initiatives best placed to foster such development at the local level. Thoughts? Jan -- Jan Visser, Ph.D. President & Sr. Researcher, Learning Development Institute E-mail: jvis...@learndev.org Check out: http://www.learndev.org and http://www.facebook.com/learndev Blog: http://jvisser-ldi.blogspot.com/ _____ From: wikieducator@googlegroups.com [mailto:wikieduca...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Wayne Mackintosh Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 1:05 AM To: wikieducator@googlegroups.com Subject: [WikiEducator] Re: WE believe in education - So where is all the free content? Hi Kirby, Wow -- its a small world :-). I'm a South African by birth and very familiar with both the Freedom Toaster and Tuxlabs projects -- both inspirational projects. We can learn a lot from these projects and find ways to collaborate. I've always maintained that real ICT innovation in education will come from the developing world. Africa launched a continental information society initiative back in the mid 1990s, long before other regional collectives. Designing within constraints results in real innovation :-). I too have my reservations about the XO project -- however, the strength of the OLPC initiative lies in the projects foresight to think differently about ICTs in education -- namely starting from a pedagogic foundation rather than attempting to replicate existing PC technology. Off to take look at the CS Unplugged' curriculum -- thanks for the link. Cheers Wayne 2009/11/15 kirby urner <kirby.ur...@gmail.com> On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Wayne Mackintosh <mackintosh.wa...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Kirby, > > You make a good point about the potential abundance of access to digital > content. However, in reality I think we are a long way off from a world > where we have access to digital content PLUS the permissions to adapt, > modify and redistribute without restriction. Herein lies the differentiating > feature of OER -- namely a permission culture to remix content. > > For example, we're in the early phases of establishing a national New > Zealand OER collaboration for the school sector > (http://wikieducator.org/OERNZ). There is an abundance of material which can > be accessed -- for example, the Learning Federation > (http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/copyright.html) or the NZ Ministry > of Education funded TKI project > (http://www.tki.org.nz/e/tki/about/terms.php) --- In these examples there is > no cost associated with viewing or making copies for educational purposes. > However, the most important freedom for educators -- namely the right to > adapt, modify and redistribute the content to better meet the needs of the > learners we serve are restricted :-(. > We're applaud the 'CS Unplugged' curriculum, made a link to it from my notes on one of our digital math meetings (a group of professional educators, lobbying for State of Oregon to make 2010 a launch year for some of our pilots): http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/08/education-planning.html (CS Unplugged linked from 2nd paragraph FYI). > Good points with reference to the challenges and costs of internet access in > a wide variety of situations. A more perplexing challenge relates to basic > access to a school. For example, 76% of the children in sub-Saharan Africa > of the age for the last three years of the secondary schooling system will > not have the privilege of attending school or contact with a teacher. There > is simply not enough money to build enough classrooms or train enough > teachers to satisfy the needs of the youth who are eager to learn. > > How can OER help these children? This is why we need to think creatively > about technologies that can generate printed text books for children who > will not have the privilege of attending school. WE need to think of > creative solutions where we can combine the best of informal learning with > national accreditation systems -- in other word rethinking the traditional > models of educational provision. This is a tough challenge -- but with > concerted effort I think we can make a difference. I sense that OER is part > of the solution. > OER might want to consider Freedom Toaster as another way of distributing content, perhaps a subset of WikiEducator site specifically designed for off-line readers. http://www.freedomtoaster.org/ In the South Africa ecosystem, there's this notion of TuxLabs (free access to computer labs), though not all of them are branded this way. One Laptop Per Child remains a relatively exotic approach, coupled with its G1G1 marketing campaign (I have two XOs myself, which I loan out to curious students -- there's a Python connection). In addition to printed textbooks, sometimes blank notebooks and writing implements are in even scarcer supply. > That said, you allude and provide valuable insights into solving these > challenges in that we need to think about the eco-system and how OER fits > into the bigger picture. > > Cheers > Wayne > I'm glad this list is available for these sorts of discussions, looking forward to more. I'm pleased to discover OER is such a committed and creative organization. Kirby -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
