On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Dave Bauer <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Martin, can you point to Bryan's "theory" or give me a hint on > search terms to find it?
I googled for it too, don't think he's posted anything google-readable. He mentioned it in a couple of presentations at OLPC. Boils down to the fact that most of the early trials / pilots of technology or technique in education, including things like the Paper/Negroponte adventure many years ago, Montessori's own work with kids, etc succeed because they are done with small groups of children and passionate talented educators. So IIRC Bryan shows one of the pictures of Papert back in the 70s working with kids and computers in Dakar, and points out that you have Papert and 12 kids. The computers are "redundant". You could do the same with a picture of Montessori herself, with kids and her specially designed learning tools. It is a controversial take on things of course :-) -- but helps me keep focused on making simple tools that just work (see my sig!) for teachers and kids in crowded schools. "There is no silver bullet" the foundational book on programming said. It may as well have been about teaching, or any complex human endeavour. cheers, m -- [email protected] [email protected] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff _______________________________________________ Olpc-open mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
