[Olpc-open] The Illinois Children's Low-cost Laptop Act - another call to action!

Sat Apr 5 13:56:02 EDT 2008

I was doing some research this morning when I ran across interesting podcast of a speech by Maine Governor Angus King from April, 2005. Governor King was the primary force behind creating the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (http://www.state.me.us/mlte/). Governor King, in conversations with Seymour Papert, realized "that a major transformation <in education> would happen only when student and teachers worked with technology on a 1 to 1 basis and that any other transformation would not produce the transformation everyone sought." This insight eventually led the state of Maine to deploy laptops to every student and teacher in 7th and 8th grade throughout the state.

Following is an excerpt from that speech:

The MLTI project has "got to have champions in the community. You've got to be the champions who talk to your legislators and say 'Hey, you can't let this go. This is fabulous what’s going on. Come over to the school and see it.’ It drives me crazy the number of legislators who have never come into the classroom.

They (the legislators) say, ‘I’m against it, it’s a terrible idea, they wanna…’.

(Governor King says:) GO SEE IT!

(The legislators say) ‘No, well, no, I don’t have time.’ 

Don’t let them do that. Make them do it. Because my experience is once they get into the classroom and see what’s happening, that’s the best argument we can make. I can talk until I’m blue in the face (and often do). But it’s getting them into the classroom. But you’ve got to, you’ve got to… 

And believe me, you can influence the legislature. The Maine legislature is so accessible. People say ‘politicians aren’t accessible’. Nonsense! The Maine legislature is incredibly accessible. Five letters is a tidal wave. I’m not kidding (to a legislator). Ten letters, you know, that’s it – you’ve got it. And they really listen. And they really listen to stories.

Tell them the stories of the kids in your districts, the kids you’ve worked with, the special ed kid who was in a shell and never communicated and didn’t participate and who suddenly the iBook has opened him up and allowed him to communicate and participate. I’ve gotten letters from parents that have just brought tears to my eyes like that. That’s what move people.

And so you’ve got to take this on…”

I would encourage you to listen to the entire speech (it is just over half an hour long). You can access it at http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=20. Governor King ends by discussing his two favorite philosophers - Charles Darwin and Wayne Gretzky. You'll have to listen for the details... ;-)

Governor King calls this audience to action by saying "You've got to be the apostles, you've got to be the advocates, you've got to be the champions. And you CAN". And so can we...

The Illinois Children's Low-cost Latop Act will only be the first step. I agree with Edward Cherlin's post recently that "the devil is in the details". However, the bulk of the details come after the bill's passage. There are too many special interests involved to think that a bill of this magnitude could be passed if it was written specifically for OLPC/XO. Wouldn't we be excited if the Illinois Legislature passed a $25 million dollar bill dedicated to OLPC and XOs? If 25% of the money in this bill is spent on XOs, then isn't that what we're looking at here? Shouldn't we welcome the opportunity to compare well-done Constructionist XO pilots against other pilots?

I believe we should focus our attention on at least the following four things:

1) Advocate that the bill stipulate individual schools (not that State Board of Ed) get to choose the low-cost laptops to purchase with their pilot funds
2) Get the bill passed
3) Focus our attention on schools local to each of us to encourage them to apply for pilot funding and educate those schools to the strengths of the XO and the OLPC philosophies
4) Work to get schools to measure the things Edward listed as important: "evaluate the children's interest in learning, whatever they learn outside the curriculum, or their progress in collaboration, independent learning, discovery, creativity, or problem-solving."

There is NO "chicken and egg" issue here. We MUST get money to fund laptop pilots where every student gets a laptop before we can have the evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of this paradigm. Obviously there are dangers. There are a lot of ways this can go wrong. I don't think we can legislate away from many of those dangers up front though. We have to work our butts off to minimize the mistakes once the money is there! We have to work toward Constructionist application of the laptops, not just computerizing what is already done. We have to work to measure what is important. We have to work to publicize the successes (because there will be failures and sadly those will be news). Many of the ideas of Constructionism will scale and others may not. We have to work to identify and communicate best practices. We have to volunteer to help one school at a time, one teacher at a time. We have to involve the children - they are the best spokespeople for this!

Best Regards,Larry Langellier
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