[OLPC-Chicago] home schoolers was Re: The Children's Low-Cost Laptop Act - Contact your Illinois Legislators NOW!!!

[sheila miguez]

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 12:49 AM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:

>  In the Chicago O'Hare airport on my way to PyCon last month, I offered
>  a child a chance to try an XO. His mother wouldn't let him touch it,
>  because she is a Christian home-schooler. (The boy turned on his
>  mother and said, "I hate you." She said, "No, you don't," which is no
>  doubt true, but not helpful.)

Is this a common attitude among home schoolers? I have not written
home about PyCon yet because I've been so busy, but I am excited at
the prospect of being able to share ideas from the OLPC community with
my sister, who is home schooling her kids, and who is also very
religious.

I was thinking it would be neat if I could buy some XOs for my nieces
and nephews (or perhaps some low cost laptops with similar programs,
or perhaps even a live cd that they could use on the family desktop)
and if any of them enjoyed programming I could provide help (though
they live in Texas while I am in Chicago).

Oh, and I just  got an XO and have been playing around with it. I
haven't spent time around other XOs yet and my intuition is that there
is a lot more to get out of a group of XOs than one XO. Which is why I
would want to be able to see a group of kids with a group of XOs.

I am curious if it is important to have one per child or if "pair
programming" would be better considering parts of the key note from
PyCon 2007 which discussed different ways computers get used in the
school. The sharing element seemed important.