oh my dear Walter...
I must apologize.
I thought my track record was clear enough, at least with you, that I
would not be understood to consider Windows "real software", unless it
were as a parody/sarcasm. My bad. I hope that the lesson is learned, and
that going forward I will tag things better.
Yet, I am mildly peeved that you would think our "disagreement" is about
the value of keyboarding or how to launch Internet Explorer. ;-)
JFTR it has to do more with the evidence that what is useful for
"learning", but not useful for "using", has very little "value".
In this context, were it that the XOs are perceived as "useful", they
would be "valuable", whether S.Papert is present or not, and whether
such usefulness is in updating Facebook.
Maybe you have lesser awareness that, for less privileged people,
"learning" seldom is seen, or valued, as something convertible into
food, shoes, or lodging, and certainly not done for fun? Which, of
course, is a shame, but that's the way it is.
I may be mistaken, but I have sort of a strong feeling that most people
will appreciate, and use, and value, and keep using, and learn despite
themselves and their own limitations, in a medium they do not label as
connected to "school". Which, even limited as they are, they regard with
some justification as a mostly content-free environment, just a series
of hoops to some privilege and an exit from manual labor.
As long as XOs are seen at the same level as last year's classroom
notebooks, they will fare as well.
Meaning, a few, very, very few, will find some actual use and benefit,
"value" in them.
Now, if they are useful for something... Different paradigm!
(kudos for Gnome! BTW, I had been pushing for some XO-based
microcontroller work - http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/OLPC_XO-1
as part of eat-my-own-catfood in enabling the XO for real-world use)
(last weekend I was at a local (Austin, Texas, USA) High School track.
Nearby were the dumpsters. End-of-the-year dumpsters. Since it probably
does not happen that way in Boston, let me indicate that here they were
overflowing with "learning" materials. Pricy stuff, not necessarily
useful, but what passes as education in these parts.)
On 06/11/2012 07:09 AM, Walter Bender wrote:
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Yamandu Ploskonka<[email protected]> wrote:
Hope you are recuperating from such fun :-)
Question,
are these teacher using XOs as *their* primary tool to access internet,
Facebook, etc?
I don't know. I did not see any teacher use any other computer all
week. But that said, most of them said that they used Facebook
regularly, and since they hadn't used an XO or Sugar before, it would
seem that they used computers other than XO in the past as their
"primary* computer. Whether or not their *primary* computer was at an
Internet cafe is yet another question.
That would be, IMNSHO, enormously meaningful in their "buy in".
The XO is either a real tool, or else perceived as a "toy" vs. the real tool
that is used by the teachers, obviously with real grown-up software, such as
Windows.
We can continue to disagree about what is "real grown-up software." I
cannot think of the last time I used Windows, and yet I think I have
managed to get few things accomplished, both professionally and
socially. These "toys" come with GNOME as well as Sugar and, for
example, in response to a question about tools for creating images: We
wrote a paint program together in Turtle Art, and discussed the range
of possibilities from the Paint activity to using Inkscape. But I
digress, because while I agree, it is important that the teachers see
Sugar/XO as a real tool, a large part of what we achieved in
Chachapoyas is that they have a more clear idea of what is a real tool
*for learning* and that there is more to learning with technology than
learning how to keyboard or launch Internet Explorer. But you and I
have a long-standing disagreement on this point.
regards.
-walter
On 06/10/2012 06:23 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
regions from Amazonas. We began the week with a question: "how do you
use XO/Sugar for learning?" It was no surprise that most teachers
answer with, "No sé." Even the few that had had some minimal
experience with the XO answered with mundane themes, such as doing
research on the Internet. We asked the same question at the end of the
week, and although I haven't seen the survey results, I am certain
that the teachers expressed a wealth of ideas around communication and
expression, math, science, and the arts. We also asked the teachers if
and where they hung out on-line. Almost all of them were Facebook
users, so Raul set up a Facebook group,
[http://www.facebook.com/groups/370964266297045/ Amazonas XO], for
them to use as a forum for sharing experiences.
_______________________________________________
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