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I hate One Laptop per Child. Which is to say, I'm so passionate about the idea that watching other people make choices that I disagreed with pained me greatly.

I hate One Laptop per Child. Which is to say, I'm so passionate about the idea that watching other people make choices that I disagreed with pained me greatly. I desperately wanted them to succeed, but I thought they were unintentionally poisoning the well for all future ideas in the same space. It's a nice enough idea, to make a computing device that is rugged enough, powered by humans, and mesh networked. That's a nice idea. But the vastly more important idea was to TEACH with computers. And I feel OLPC completely under-served that need. Putting all of their eggs in the Constructionism basket enraged me. I'd much rather see a team take existing hardware, existing operating system, and develop an app for it that acts as much as possible like the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age." It's not the total solution, but I think it would have been far better to take Khan Academy, and cram it in a computer. A little bit like "Khan Academy on a Stick." http://mujica.org/khan/ http://mujica.org/khan/ (Translated to each language, and culturally adapted where necessary.) I love the idea of a laptop being the cheapest possible way to give a kid a ton of books. ...but then they didn't cram a ton of books in each OLPC! Hand out enough books, and you'll get more Srinivasa Ramanujan's. And for full disclosure, I have a Masters degree in Computer Science, but no background in education, so my opinion is just my opinion. But as a CompSci geek, the OLPC always felt to me like "Computer Nerds Save the World." Rather than "Educators cram what they know about teaching into a computer, so every child can have their own, personal, education box."

jammmuel 13y ago
We're working on something similar for younger learners: https://onebillion.org.uk/malawi https://onebillion.org.uk/malawi
adricnet 13y ago
"but then they didn't cram a ton of books in each OLPC!" Why do you say that? The content packs used in the deployments are customized to local language and culture. Translating and sourcing the included materials was and continues to be a huge undertaking and the burden of that fall mostly to the local team and government liasons. You'll hit language barriers pretty quickly trying to keep up with most of those teams, but the links are around. EG: http://www.olenepal.org/ http://www.olenepal.org/, http://www.olpcmexico.org/ http://www.olpcmexico.org/ well, I do. apologies for projecting. Looks like Mexican school kids might get XO-4 before me. #firstworldproblems
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  I'd love to see a list of the included materials that you're talking about. Browsing the wiki, I'm not impressed.
  - adricnet 13y ago
    Before we descend to argument by contradiction ... what language or culture are you interested in seeing (evidence of) content for? For Spanish, Science and Math there are: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:102 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/ca... For XOs with network access (including just to a classroom network) included activities allow students to add books. http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 And the Vivtar tablet include non-free educational content from many licenses in English and Spanish (for the Americas): http://xotablet.com/#features http://xotablet.com/#features Wikpedia subsets in local language are included in the XO images I've seen, though I don't have detailed links to those handy (It's on my XO). Does that help?
    - VikingCoder 13y ago
      Yes, it helps, but I'm afraid it proves my point. (I'm happy to just look at the English Sugar Labs.) Maybe I'm just missing it, but I see learning activities, not books. I'd like to see lectures and/or text books. For instance, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra. I think Khan Academy has a nice map of their materials: https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard Wikipedia subsets are nice to have, but they're not Course Material. It's a good reference, not a teaching book, filled with problem sets, etc.
      - adricnet 13y ago
        I agree. CJB commented elsewhere in this thread ( cjbprime) and he knows better than I do what went on back then. I think that creating educational content is an incredibly important thing, and that it should be freely distributable to all and translated and localized broadly. It's a huge undertaking. There are a few projects around trying to do things like this (against the impressive might of the textbook publishing industry) and I wish them the best of luck. OLPC will be only one benefactor of such efforts, and KA is certainly a great project. Another hub of free educational content and tools is is Moodle. XO Server ships Moodle with content packs, but again, I'm not sure what is in them, sorry :/ You can start near here to check on them: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition links to http://schoolserver.org/ http://schoolserver.org/ hth and thanks for discussion, adric
fidotron 13y ago
OK, I've noticed the same constructivist trend you did, but am on the other side of the fence in terms of approving of it. OLPC was clearly of that school and did fail to provide alternatives, but I'm far from convinced that a viable alternative to constructivism exists. It's one of those things that's very easy to criticise, yet hard to suggest replacing with some other actionable idea, which is why it's destined to keep reappearing as the technologist's solution for education ad infinitum. It's worth saying that things like the Khan academy just didn't exist at the inception of OLPC, nor did netbooks at all. I'm very critical of the project (I think Negroponte is a smooth talking arse) but things by technologists rarely are what they say they are, and more often than not the purpose is merely the development of more technology not the actual stated aim of whatever they're involved in. OLPC was never an education project at all, and anyone persuaded otherwise was merely deluding themselves.
NotOscarWilde 13y ago
> I'd much rather see a team take existing hardware, existing operating system, and develop an app for it that acts as much as possible like the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age." I guess that's any compsci person's dream when they read that book, including mine. One thing that I've noticed in recent days is something that is related to Popcorn Time (another top story on HN as of this time) -- young people love streamlined workflows and tend to avoid complex ones. I think this observation is reflected in many popular apps/services of today (Facebook, WhatsApp, Spotify) but also in many startups -- most ones are like Uber and deliver something that we already know and use (taxis) but with a streamlined process. I am getting a bit worried that this migration to the simple is killing a lot of projects that are noble, but "clunky". OLPC might have been one of those -- the interface was never as polished as Uber/Spotify, even though they certainly aimed at it being rather simple. And here's my main point: I am worried Project Gutenberg is exactly one of those projects that will disappear because they're clunky in the eyes of the young. The website is old-looking (a Wikimedia engine, likely) and it is not that easy (compared to shopping for apps on a phone) to search for the right book -- look for Emile Zola and you will have to look for many, many results, some of them being the same book but in a different language (and there is no sorting based on say your location). Worst of all -- most consumer ebook devices are pushing their own bookstores, making it more difficult to load and read books from outside sources such as Gutenberg. Loading up tons of free books to any kid's "device" sounds like the first baby step to a Primer, and yet even the basic foundation of that -- Project Gutenberg -- is as clunky as OLPC (and lacks a lot of old books, too).

jammmuel 13y ago

We're working on something similar for younger learners: https://onebillion.org.uk/malawi https://onebillion.org.uk/malawi

adricnet 13y ago

"but then they didn't cram a ton of books in each OLPC!" Why do you say that? The content packs used in the deployments are customized to local language and culture. Translating and sourcing the included materials was and continues to be a huge undertaking and the burden of that fall mostly to the local team and government liasons. You'll hit language barriers pretty quickly trying to keep up with most of those teams, but the links are around. EG: http://www.olenepal.org/ http://www.olenepal.org/, http://www.olpcmexico.org/ http://www.olpcmexico.org/ well, I do. apologies for projecting. Looks like Mexican school kids might get XO-4 before me. #firstworldproblems

VikingCoder 13y ago
I'd love to see a list of the included materials that you're talking about. Browsing the wiki, I'm not impressed.
- adricnet 13y ago
  Before we descend to argument by contradiction ... what language or culture are you interested in seeing (evidence of) content for? For Spanish, Science and Math there are: http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/cat:102 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/es-ES/sugar/browse/type:1/ca... For XOs with network access (including just to a classroom network) included activities allow students to add books. http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4304 And the Vivtar tablet include non-free educational content from many licenses in English and Spanish (for the Americas): http://xotablet.com/#features http://xotablet.com/#features Wikpedia subsets in local language are included in the XO images I've seen, though I don't have detailed links to those handy (It's on my XO). Does that help?
  - VikingCoder 13y ago
    Yes, it helps, but I'm afraid it proves my point. (I'm happy to just look at the English Sugar Labs.) Maybe I'm just missing it, but I see learning activities, not books. I'd like to see lectures and/or text books. For instance, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Geometry, Algebra 2, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra. I think Khan Academy has a nice map of their materials: https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard Wikipedia subsets are nice to have, but they're not Course Material. It's a good reference, not a teaching book, filled with problem sets, etc.
    - adricnet 13y ago
      I agree. CJB commented elsewhere in this thread ( cjbprime) and he knows better than I do what went on back then. I think that creating educational content is an incredibly important thing, and that it should be freely distributable to all and translated and localized broadly. It's a huge undertaking. There are a few projects around trying to do things like this (against the impressive might of the textbook publishing industry) and I wish them the best of luck. OLPC will be only one benefactor of such efforts, and KA is certainly a great project. Another hub of free educational content and tools is is Moodle. XO Server ships Moodle with content packs, but again, I'm not sure what is in them, sorry :/ You can start near here to check on them: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition links to http://schoolserver.org/ http://schoolserver.org/ hth and thanks for discussion, adric

fidotron 13y ago

OK, I've noticed the same constructivist trend you did, but am on the other side of the fence in terms of approving of it. OLPC was clearly of that school and did fail to provide alternatives, but I'm far from convinced that a viable alternative to constructivism exists. It's one of those things that's very easy to criticise, yet hard to suggest replacing with some other actionable idea, which is why it's destined to keep reappearing as the technologist's solution for education ad infinitum. It's worth saying that things like the Khan academy just didn't exist at the inception of OLPC, nor did netbooks at all. I'm very critical of the project (I think Negroponte is a smooth talking arse) but things by technologists rarely are what they say they are, and more often than not the purpose is merely the development of more technology not the actual stated aim of whatever they're involved in. OLPC was never an education project at all, and anyone persuaded otherwise was merely deluding themselves.

NotOscarWilde 13y ago

> I'd much rather see a team take existing hardware, existing operating system, and develop an app for it that acts as much as possible like the "Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" from Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age." I guess that's any compsci person's dream when they read that book, including mine. One thing that I've noticed in recent days is something that is related to Popcorn Time (another top story on HN as of this time) -- young people love streamlined workflows and tend to avoid complex ones. I think this observation is reflected in many popular apps/services of today (Facebook, WhatsApp, Spotify) but also in many startups -- most ones are like Uber and deliver something that we already know and use (taxis) but with a streamlined process. I am getting a bit worried that this migration to the simple is killing a lot of projects that are noble, but "clunky". OLPC might have been one of those -- the interface was never as polished as Uber/Spotify, even though they certainly aimed at it being rather simple. And here's my main point: I am worried Project Gutenberg is exactly one of those projects that will disappear because they're clunky in the eyes of the young. The website is old-looking (a Wikimedia engine, likely) and it is not that easy (compared to shopping for apps on a phone) to search for the right book -- look for Emile Zola and you will have to look for many, many results, some of them being the same book but in a different language (and there is no sorting based on say your location). Worst of all -- most consumer ebook devices are pushing their own bookstores, making it more difficult to load and read books from outside sources such as Gutenberg. Loading up tons of free books to any kid's "device" sounds like the first baby step to a Primer, and yet even the basic foundation of that -- Project Gutenberg -- is as clunky as OLPC (and lacks a lot of old books, too).