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

[Sarah Ziegler]

I am homeschooling my child and I'd like to stress that there are a
large variety of homeschoolers homeschooling for a very diverse set of
reasons.  I myself am homeschooling my daughter because I want to
provide more freedom to explore the world and her interests than I
feel is available at school.  Her XO is a tool I feel will help her
discover the world.

I will now get off my soapbox.

Thank you,
Sarah Ziegler

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 9:09 AM, sheila miguez <shekay at pobox.com> wrote:
> 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.
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>