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

[Edward Cherlin]

On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 8:09 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?

It is common among a certain class of Christian home-schoolers who
don't want their children contaminated by secular culture. I home
schooled my children for entirely other reasons. So, yes, it's fairly
common, but no, it isn't the majority or even close to it.

> 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.

As am I, but as a Buddhist. Well, you know your sister better than I
do. And if there is any question, you can always ask her.

>  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).

You can't currently buy XOs anywhere but on eBay. Yes, there are Live
CDs, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Live_Cd, and you can also install Sugar
from packages on several varieties of Linux, including Red Hat,
Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, SUSE, and Slackware.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Category:Installing_Sugar. You can't install
Sugar on Windows, and it is difficult on Macs, but in both cases it is
simple to install on an emulator.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Emulating_the_XO

I am on PyCon staff for next year in Chicago. We are discussing
setting up collaborative programming over the Net for the code sprints
next year, and inviting the world in, children included. Yes, you can
program with people in other places if you can get on the same jabber
server. Collaboration is one of the essential features of XO software.

>  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.

Yes, it is amazing to see multiple brushes on the same canvas,
multiple cursors in the same document or program text, and multiple
musical instruments playing at the same time on each child's computer.

>  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.

Pair programming is great for professional software development, but
for learning it is essential that every child have their own to take
home.

Properly used, XOs will radically transform education. Consider free
interactive electronic textbooks built on NumPy and SciPy, which will
break the stranglehold that Texas and California now have on
textbooks. We already have one example of a textbook written by
students, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Social_and_Cultural_Foundations_of_American_Education.
That's only the beginning.
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-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay