On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 10:17 AM, jtd <[email protected]> wrote: > On Monday 22 November 2010 01:29:21 Narendra Sisodiya wrote: > > > On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 8:41 AM, H.S.Rai <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 4:16 AM, Narendra Sisodiya > > > > > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Let me put my voice on the biggest hurdle in FOSS adaptation. > > > > This hurdle is "Proprietary Hardware Drivers" > > > > > > One school bought bulk Tablet PCs. The brochure: > > > > > > > > > http://www.classmatepc.com/pdf/Intel-powered_convertible_classmat > > >e_PC_Product_Brief.pdf > > > Yesterday Nagarjuna, Alpesh, Amit and Ganesh from HBCSE and myself got > Sugar running on a pad device. Some work is still pending to make it > an alternative to OLPC, but it is well within striking distance. > > Good news. No, great news. It needs to be noised about in the mainstream media.
> More important is the pedgogy and training that accompanies the Sugar > platform thru Dr.Nagarjuna's initiative in HBCSE, who have conducted > 20+ workshops across the country. > However, the perception that anything will work if enough money is thrown at it dominates decision-making processes in both private industry and government. As anyone who works with software knows, the fun is in the details. However, as far as learning goes, significant numbers of people do take to learning, even if they are from extreme poverty backgrounds, given the tools and enough freedom to play with them. This has been shown time and again in the 'Hole-in-the-Wall' experiments initiated by NIIT nearly a decade and a half back in Delhi, and repeated in several places in Africa. I can confirm that it also worked in a totally non-IT scenario, a village radio station we (Radiophony) helped put up some 8 years back, which managed to produce some regular programming with virtually no training for about six months, after which a single training course was conducted. > Merely handing over pcs to teachers and kids does not serve any > purpose. > Some of the major barriers to learning in fact arise from the protective attitude* adopted by those who are charged with 'teaching'. At places, this can lead to major disruptions. It is in addressing such barriers that hands-on training with Sugar comes into critical importance. *protective of the hardware, the software, the content - name it, anything becomes a convenient excuse not to let learning take place organically. imho, this is why really cheap tablets that do 90% of what is conceivably needed are better for the Indian environment than expensive machines that do everything. Tablets that act as wireless edge devices in a local client-server configuration may also help learning facilitators set up and run pupil exercises and monitor homework (ie self-learning exercises) etc in a very practical and engaged manner. -- Vickram Fool On The Hill <http://communicall.wordpress.com>
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