Okay, I'll bite on ths. Disclosures for the new folks are that I work for Microsoft but that these opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of my employer.
I'm not sure that OLPC running Windows is equal to " The decision marks the end of the effort to spread Constructionist learning pedagogy-learning by doing-to tens of millions of poor children in villages around the world." Especially when one considers that neither FOSS or the interface that presumably is optimized for this type of learning, Sugar, is going away. In fact I'm under the impression that there is a desire to make Sugar run on Windows. But I would argue that constructionist learning is agnostic of computing in general and platform in particular and it's disingenuous to say that FOSS was a critical or even necessary component to enable it--some people no doubt wanted it to be that way but those reasons really didn't have a thing to do with constructivist learning. You could enable it on just about any OS. In fact, one could argue that the way just about any developer that learns how to build and develop software today is doing so using very similar approaches that could easily be considered as similar to constructivist techniques. OLPC has been challenged because too many dynamics of the effort were simply ignored and agendas that had nothing to do with learning rose to prominence (pushing computers and pushing FOSS at the expense of truly understanding what their target audience and all its stakeholders needed). A few of the most glaring missteps follow: 1.) How critical are computers to constructivist learning? Before Microsoft I spent a few years at IBM working on their global IBM On Demand project (an effort designed to enable IBM employees all over the world to volunteer in the communities in which they live and work). Although we probably didn't throw the term constructionist learning around a lot we were in fact doing just that. Computers were a part of but certainly not the central focus, they were merely tools that were occasionally used to facilitate the ideas being communicated. IBM in fact rejected an idea very similar to OLPC that had be presented to them by the Institute of Design in 2004. OLPC has admitted many times that this was about getting technology into the emerging world. I think the original intent was to focus on constructivist learning but I think that intent got hijacked by competing agendas way before Microsoft ever showed up on the scene. 2.) OLPC didn't seem to understand the market they were selling to. Which wasn't the user but the governments or sometimes institutions, like NGO's, that would provide them. In fact, one could argue if the real mission was about constructivist learning, even with computers, they shouldn't have been trying to sell anything, but rather find patrons at the get go that would give this crap away--a strategy that was only tried after the OLPC had failed to achieve momentum. But their initial model was simply out of touch with both how aid and assistance gets pushed out and how governmental institutions make decisions. It almost seems like they presumed that the dynamics of microfinance and small-scale capitalism had something to do with these organization and big institutions. I'm by no means an expert but in my limited experience with organizations like this nothing could be further from the truth. The market they were actually trying to engage (The people that were going to write the checks) function much more like a traditional IT customer or public sector enterprise than many of the bottom of the pyramid efforts we might be familiar with. 3.) But by far the biggest issue was this. They tried to ascribe constructivist learning to the idea of actually maintaining these devices. This utopian thought is what ultimately caused this effort to go off the rails. Who was going to fix the 100 million of these things out the wild? Windows is still (for better or worse depending on where you sit) a defacto standard with over a billion installations all over the world. There are tens of millions of people (even in the emerging world) that are well equipped to work with it, that even might prefer to work with it. This ecosystem means that Windows on OLPC might be its salvation in fulfilling its original mission of being a tool for constructivist learning versus a harbinger of its demise. Chris Bernard Microsoft User Experience Evangelist [EMAIL PROTECTED] 630.530.4208 Office 312.925.4095 Mobile -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Saffer Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 9:11 AM To: IXDA list Subject: [IxDA Discuss] The Continuing Saga of OLPC It's been a weird week for the One Laptop Per Child project, and I'm surprised we didn't discuss it here. First was the news that: Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child organization admitted defeat in its effort to sell millions of open-source computers in Asia, Africa and Latin America by joining with Microsoft to load Windows XP onto its green and white laptops. The decision marks the end of the effort to spread Constructionist learning pedagogy-learning by doing-to tens of millions of poor children in villages around the world. <http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2008/05/the_end_of_the.html > <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7094695.stm> Now comes the news of OLPC 2.0. And check it out: dual touchscreens. No keyboard, just two touchscreens that fold together like a book: <http://gizmodo.com/392060/olpc-xo-laptop-20-has-dual-touchscreens-looks-amazing-and-future+y > <http://blog.laptopmag.com/first-look-olpc-xo-generation-20> Is this the end of the Sugar UI? (See the previous IxDA discussion on it: <http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=23928> ) Dan ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
