[OLPC India] India Digest, Vol 37, Issue 3

[Edward Cherlin]

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 1:19 PM, damitr <damitr at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yes. When it comes to developing content that can be developed by the community, its clearly a community driven effort. As far
>> as I can see, technologies like OLPC can hardly be developed by the community while the content surely can be.

Entirely correct.

> I guess Apple
>> may bea better example. The value of using it lies in the communities. So the applications need to be developed by what some
>> call crowd-sourcing though I find community easier to understand.

I don't know what you mean. Is this in reference to iPhone apps, which
are mainly produced by commercial developers?

> Yes, probably you cannot see as far as others can, so you miss the
> point again and again.

Personal insults about the capabilities of others fail to advance our
discussion. You may argue forcefully with another's ideas, but not
belittle them.

> Philosophically as OLPC stands now, the
> 'technology' and the 'content' are both integrated. The 'technology'
> has evolved with the 'content', and will continue to do so in the
> future. Separating the two creates a distinction where there is none.

This turns out not to be the case. Philosophy has nothing to do with
the matter. Elements of the OLPC offering are created by anybody who
is able to. There are four groups of contributions to OLPC
development:

* XO hardware

* Sugar education software

* Content, specifically Open Educational Resources in the form of
documents. Some are Web pages, word processing documents,
spreadsheets, PDFs, EPUBs, and so on.

* Next-generation Open Educational Resource incorporating software for
interactive learning.

The hardware is being developed by engineers to requirements put
forward by educators and other experts.

Sugar Software incorporates educational software from the last 40
years, including Logo and Smalltalk from the 1960s as well as much
that has been done since. However, any programmer can contribute to
Sugar either by working on existing software packages, or creating new
ones, while non-programmers are welcome to work on localizing and
testing the software. We have projects in more than 100 languages.
There are students in OLPC programs writing programs for other
students to use. Here is how to do it.

http://en.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/

FLOSS Manuals is one of the important content contributors, writing
manuals for XO hardware and Sugar software.

The Sugar Labs program for Replacing Textbooks is another, and is also
taking the lead in developing interactive learning materials
incorporating Sugar software. But we are not tied to existing XOs and
Sugar. We can explore new avenues, including Algebra books in which
every statement is executable. Students have complete freedom to
evaluate expressions, treat them as equations to solve, graph them, or
dissect their code in order to understand how it works.

http://booki.treehouse.su/algebra-an-algorithmic-treatment/

You would be welcome to join with us.

> Giving an analogy form Apple just misses the point. Apple does not
> have any FOSS projects to begin with and is totally commercially
> driven [hope you know this already].

This also turns out not to be the case. I will cite only the Squeak
version of Smalltalk and the Open Firmware boot software, both adopted
by OLPC after Apple put them under GPL.

> OLPC is, as far as the vision
> document on the main page says is an educational and a FOSS project.
> The value of the 'technology' as well as the 'content' both lie in its
> use on the communities [where else would it lie?]. If there are no
> takers in the community for such projects, where would such projects
> go?
>
>>As far as I can see, your point about the community seems to be the current thinking within the OLPC organization. The
>>content needs be developed by the community and those who believe in its value.

Content needs to be developed by those who know something about the
content. That will be world experts in some cases, such as math and
the physical sciences, and the community itself in others, including
history, geography, literature, music, agriculture, civics,...There
are also topics that require major contributions from both
communities, such as health, where we need both scientific and
clinical knowledge and experience together with knowledge of local
conditions.

> ...and for those who don't believe in its value, should probably stay
> away from such projects.

By no means. They should get to know the projects better.

> Damitr
> --
> What TeX version are you using?
> I am  3.141592...
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india



-- 
Edward Mokurai (默雷/निशब्दगर्ज/نشبدگرج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks