[Its.an.education.project] Sugar on the EEE PC

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Thursday 08 May 2008 1:50:59 pm Albert Cahalan wrote:
> From time to time, you get "computer day". It could be
> a few times a year or once a week. Most likely this is
> decided by the teacher, who must then try to reserve the
> computers for the desired day. At the beginning of class,
> somebody delivers the equipment to the classroom.
How is this different from other shared resources like globes, encyclopedias, 
microscopes, projectors etc.? IMHO, the real issue is not that computers are 
shared but most teachers have not integrated computing media fully into their 
teaching methods.

Even if you were to provide an computer exclusively to each child, they are 
unlikely to be in use all day long. Programmers in IT companies may spend 
their whole day before a computer, but children do have a life beyond the 
keyboard :-).

> In general, nobody gets much time with the computers.
> It certainly isn't yours; you can't keep any personal
> data on it. You're lucky when the computer you get handed
> has not been vandalized by a previous user
Looks like times have changed. These days, serious schools use multi-user 
systems like Linux to prevent vandalism and let children carry their personal 
data on a flash memory chip. With software like Squeak, one can carry years 
worth of school projects on a single chip.

Subbu