Thanks for your response. I’d like to take just a minute to clarify.

In no way am I saying “the sky is falling”. I don’t think we should stick our heads in sand and think there aren’t going to be repercussions of this technology. It’s not a cure-all, and no edtech tools are. There are serious issues at stake, and a lot of people working behind the scenes to identify vulnerabilities and fix them. Most of these people are researchers in academia and support the OLPC effort. The sense I get is they want this to be a good tool for students.

If engineers went into Africa to build bridges with materials that have not been used before, and other engineers pointed out flaws that could cause the bridge to collapse, would it be best to ignore these flaws? Or to address them and build a much stronger bridge? I would hope, for the people who will be using the bridge everyday, that we would opt for the latter.

Neil Postman has spoken and written on the premise that for every technology there are “winners” and “losers”. That does not mean we stop the technology from being deployed. But we can be aware of the societal repercussions as they progress. In this way we might be able to minimize the negative repercussions while maximizing the positive.

Hope this helps clarify my thoughts.

Monica

While I think that the whole concept of getting children used to technology is wonderful – and projects like the Hole in the Wall in India have demonstrated that kids can teach themselves if they need to, though I can see where Will was coming from with his comments about pedagogy. Many of the teachers that I worked with used whole class teaching [not entirely surprising when you have 50+ in a class], and experimentation wasn’t encouraged. So, I think that it will need teachers to have a fairly serious re-think about how children can be allowed to experiment – in the classroom, not just outside it.

However, to return to the laptops / no laptops debate; as I’ve already mentioned – many kids aren’t in school.

Next week (April 23rd-29th) is Global Education Action week – when groups are trying to raise awareness of the 80million or so children who are not in school at all. There’s more at http://vso.org.uk/awareness_action/take_action/education/gce_main.asp – with ideas for teachers, students & interested individuals.

OLPC News guest blog: http://www.olpcnews.com/use_cases/education/generation_yes_laptop.html

Generation YES blog post on OLPC:
http://blog.genyes.com/index.php/2007/04/17/one-laptop-per-child/

Most of us have seen this in action many times. The class blog that takes off in an explosion of creative thinking and interesting discourses, the student who begins creating fabulous drawings after (seemingly only) minutes of instruction in a painting program, the kid who just has to figure out a way to make his game work correctly, and the shy girl in the back of the class who sits down and does a moving video documentary. A light goes on in the minds of our kids and fabulous things happen because of the new ways of thinking that computers provide.

Ironically, we can become our own worst enemies when we attempt to codify that process through pedagogies in an attempt to duplicate it amongst the unwilling (through more professional development that doesn’t work, as Gary points out) or worse, we allow a software vendor to convince us that they have the entire solution in a box–and it’s measurable!

At any rate, it’s always great to hear Gary’s provocative thoughts and Will, you did get the Number One question right when you wondered what it would take to “get kids access” here in the US. That’s the thing that has to come first–access.

“..is there nothing a teacher can do besides stand back and make sure no harm comes to her students? Is everything else “control?””

The difference is a teacher who brings in essential questions, big ideas, creates opportunities, shows interest, models good habits of mind, expecte excellence, shows their own passions and loves kids.

When a student (or child) lives under these conditions, they can flourish no matter where their own interests take them: history, music, math, journalism or anything. Control is a word that never comes up.

Roots and wings, stuff like that