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What. A. Find. We are now living in the era of the $200 Chromebook for every child. But the ideal scenario Papert imagined is far from realized. Blocks-type env

What. A. Find. We are now living in the era of the $200 Chromebook for every child. But the ideal scenario Papert imagined is far from realized. Blocks-type environments, but extending past programming, to robotics, physics, biochemistry and beyond. And kids empowered to not just repair and administer complex systems, but to actually invent new objects themselves ;)

mwcampbell 6y ago
> We are now living in the era of the $200 Chromebook for every child. But the ideal scenario Papert imagined is far from realized. There's no contradiction in those sentences. The $200 Chromebooks are a realization of what another commenter described as Shaw's neofeudal vision. Contrary to what Papert suggested, the kids themselves can't maintain them (at least not without sitting through a scary warning every time they boot into developer mode, IIUC), let alone assemble them. Outside of developer mode, Chromebooks can only receive OS updates from Google, and only as long as it wants to provide them. And as for the dispute between Shaw and Papert on the expected lifespan of a computer, while some new Chromebooks will receive updates from Google into 2028, I expect that their practical useful life will be much shorter, unless we software devs can somehow stop the bloat treadmill. Un-disclosure: A few weeks ago, this would be the part where I mentioned that I was a developer at Microsoft, on the Windows accessibility team. I'm no longer there. Of course, they're not really any better than Google when it comes to really empowering kids like Papert envisioned. Indeed, the fact that both of them want to sell their systems and services to schools is IMO a big part of the problem.
- seg_lol 6y ago
  Do you want the C64 for the modern age?
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    Fair question; I shouldn't have ranted without proposing a solution. I guess what I'd like is for each student to have a Raspberry Pi, Pinebook Pro, or similarly cheap and open computer (and yes, I know Raspberry Pi isn't free enough for the purists), with which they are free to do whatever they want. And they should be encouraged to go as deep into it as their abilities and interests will allow.
freeopinion 6y ago
I live in a community where an incredibly generous individual bought a chromebook for every student in 4 schools, spanning K-12. They are completely locked down. For obvious reasons. This is very unfortunate. I would love to spend $199 a piece to replace them all with Pinebook Pros. It would add up to about $300,000 for the hardware. Many would suggest this is a poor choice because of lack of an app ecosystem. But the current chromebooks are not allowed to have any apps anyway. Still, the school district would refuse them because they are not so locked down. The freedom to use them any way you can imagine terrifies administrators. Pine64 sells replacement screens, keyboards, motherboards, harddrives, whatever. A knockoff parts market would evolve very quickly. You actually _could_ have students maintain these. They could learn enormously. This terrifies most adults in the chain of power that can prevent it from happening. And some of the most important of those people are not educators. They work for SV companies. They convince the educators it is a bad idea.

mwcampbell 6y ago

> We are now living in the era of the $200 Chromebook for every child. But the ideal scenario Papert imagined is far from realized. There's no contradiction in those sentences. The $200 Chromebooks are a realization of what another commenter described as Shaw's neofeudal vision. Contrary to what Papert suggested, the kids themselves can't maintain them (at least not without sitting through a scary warning every time they boot into developer mode, IIUC), let alone assemble them. Outside of developer mode, Chromebooks can only receive OS updates from Google, and only as long as it wants to provide them. And as for the dispute between Shaw and Papert on the expected lifespan of a computer, while some new Chromebooks will receive updates from Google into 2028, I expect that their practical useful life will be much shorter, unless we software devs can somehow stop the bloat treadmill. Un-disclosure: A few weeks ago, this would be the part where I mentioned that I was a developer at Microsoft, on the Windows accessibility team. I'm no longer there. Of course, they're not really any better than Google when it comes to really empowering kids like Papert envisioned. Indeed, the fact that both of them want to sell their systems and services to schools is IMO a big part of the problem.

seg_lol 6y ago
Do you want the C64 for the modern age?
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  Fair question; I shouldn't have ranted without proposing a solution. I guess what I'd like is for each student to have a Raspberry Pi, Pinebook Pro, or similarly cheap and open computer (and yes, I know Raspberry Pi isn't free enough for the purists), with which they are free to do whatever they want. And they should be encouraged to go as deep into it as their abilities and interests will allow.

freeopinion 6y ago

I live in a community where an incredibly generous individual bought a chromebook for every student in 4 schools, spanning K-12. They are completely locked down. For obvious reasons. This is very unfortunate. I would love to spend $199 a piece to replace them all with Pinebook Pros. It would add up to about $300,000 for the hardware. Many would suggest this is a poor choice because of lack of an app ecosystem. But the current chromebooks are not allowed to have any apps anyway. Still, the school district would refuse them because they are not so locked down. The freedom to use them any way you can imagine terrifies administrators. Pine64 sells replacement screens, keyboards, motherboards, harddrives, whatever. A knockoff parts market would evolve very quickly. You actually _could_ have students maintain these. They could learn enormously. This terrifies most adults in the chain of power that can prevent it from happening. And some of the most important of those people are not educators. They work for SV companies. They convince the educators it is a bad idea.