On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 3:05 AM, Jan Visser <jvis...@learndev.org> wrote: > 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. >
Greetings Jan -- OLPC is a fairly esoteric and futuristic project, is helping drive down the cost of laptops by turning them into netbooks. The XO-2 has an even smaller form factor. The XO comes pre-loaded with some educational materials, otherwise has a rather ordinary Mozilla-based web browser. This idea of one laptop per child (1:1 ratio) is not the development model in many ecosystems, and can't be presumed by every curriculum writer. As someone who works around the Python subculture, I'm linked to OLPC in the sense that the default user interface is implemented in the Python language, as are many of the activities. The machine also knows FORTH. I just upgraded one of the XOs the other night, getting some expert assistance. My other one is still running a rather ancient version of the RedHat system. I was in a long meeting with Alan Kay fairly recently in London, courtesy of Mark Shuttleworth. Guido van Rossum, the inventor of Python, was also at this meeting. We agreed that many educational initiatives are orthogonal to OLPC meaning great if there's a 1:1 ratio, but we're prepared for other contingencies. > > > 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. > The idea of a Freedom Toaster is its a filling station for static media such as CDs and DVDs. You may not have easy Internet access but if you go to a freedom toaster you can legally burn all manner of digital assets to sharable media. I don't know to what extent said Toasters are themselves self updating. Juke boxes (music players) in some public places now phone home for the current music, don't sport any disks locally. > > > 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? > Freedom Toasters could easily contain copyleft audio books etc., not sure to what extent they already do as we don't have any of said toasters in my neck of the woods (Pacific Northwest near 45th parallel, Seattle's longitude), think we ought to, maybe by the next Open Source Conference (OSCON 2010)? We do have a lot of XOs around, plus billboards for G1G1 (the "give one get one" campaign, where you pay for two, donate one to the program). http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157...@n00/3224155740/sizes/l/ (example poster from a previous run) Kirby > > > 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/ > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
