Marten Vijn wrote: >I would like to hear your ideas. What would be the best choise in the > Netherlands to choose for an organisation?
Hey Marten, I have lots of ideas on the subject! I have been heavily involved in grassroots organization here in Nepal. I strongly feel that OLPC X Country should be an umbrella organization that represents all organizations interested in OLPC but does not implement OLPC. If there is one OLPC Netherlands that implements all the OLPC pilots in your country, you give OLPC as a movement a single point of failure in your country. You also limit the diversity of implementation approaches. In India there is an informal umbrella group OLPC India with distinct organizations like Reliance Telecom and Anthony Charity running large-scale and small scale pilots. There are many, many different ways to implement OLPC in school environments as evidenced by the current pilots. Some groups are adhering very strictly to the curriculum while others, like the innovative Waveplace Foundation, are focusing on teaching kids creative media skills. Constructionism for education is not a narrowly defined theory, rather it is a broad philosophy with a lot of different implementations. I recommend that you not constrain OLPC in the Netherlands to a particular interpretation of what constructionism is. Further, I recommend that you not limit OLPC in the Netherlands to the constructionist philosophy at all. There are alot of great educational theories out there that deserve consideration, such as the Montessori Method, Vygotskyian social cognition, the Bank Street Method, and a whole lot more http://www.funderstanding.com/about_learning.cfm So here is my recommendation. Create an umbrella organization called OLPC Netherlands that represents all groups involved in OLPC in the netherlands, promotes OLPC, provides a meeting space for those interested in OLPC, but does not implement it. Then work w/ the Dutch counterparts to Waveplace Foundation, Reliance Telecom, individual schools to implement pilots. This umbrella organization could be a club or foundation. >## vereniging (club/verein) > > - easy hostile take over (by moneymakers) > If you make it clear that OLPC Netherlands won't implement pilots, that means the $ for pilots won't go through OLPC Netherlands and moneymakers will be less interested in taking you over. I feel very strongly that there should not be an authoritative OLPC organization in any country. There should be an OLPC organization that promotes OLPC, helps groups interested in it, and provides a meeting point for supporters. I believe you share this opinion. > 1. My idea is to do _no_projects_ in the grassroot, but do these outside > the grassroot. It sounds like a foundation is the way to go if you can afford the startup costs. I guess I should say something about the organization I work w/, Open Learning Exchange Nepal. I compare us w/ Waveplace Foundation or Reliance Telecom. We don't represent OLPC for the nation of Nepal, we are implementing pilots this year but there is nothing to stop another organization from also working on OLPC here in Nepal. In fact we want other groups to embrace OLPC and implement it in their own way. My strongest suggestion is that you limit the possibility of serious funds coming into the OLPC Netherlands organization, otherwise I can guarantee that you will be taken over by "moneymakers." In my own experience in the grassroots, things can get really ugly, really quickly once serious funds get involved. Sorry for the overly long e-mail. Hope this was helpful! Bryan Kathmandu OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org _______________________________________________ Grassroots mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots
