[OLPC-Jamaica] Bryan Berry's interview on FLOSSWeekly

[Sameer Verma]

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Maurice McNaughton
<mlmcnaughton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Very interesting.. I like the idea of the Open Learning Exchange to
> facilitate the development/sharing of content.. We would do well to
> replicate some of the Nepal efforts/approaches in our own efforts..
>

+1

> The interesting point made in the interview is that the easiest part of the
> initiative is getting the Laptops funded, building content and separating
> the OLPC community effort from politics were much bigger challenges.

Indeed. In another conversation I had with a colleague yesterday, the
same question came up in the context of Bangladesh. Where will the
bulk of the work be, in a deployment? Well, after the laptops ship and
get delivered to children, what happens then? There needs to be a
critical mass of content that can help the teachers, children and
parents ease into a computer-based learning environment.

Interestingly, this is no different than what happened in my classes
when I switched from chalkboards and transparencies to Moodle. The
computer environment did enhance communications, but the experience
needed a lot of effort in getting content "digital ready".

Creating content locally also gives local communities a sense of
ownership. After all, who would know better about appropriate content,
both its flavor and depth, than the local community?

cheers,
Sameer
-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/

>
> Mlm
>
> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Interesting interview. Bryan Berry is CTO at OLE Nepal.
>> http://www.olenepal.org/ Listen to the interview at
>> http://twit.tv/floss66
>>
>> cheers,
>> Sameer
>> --
>> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor of Information Systems
>> San Francisco State University
>> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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