[Olpc-open] Sorry, what are we teaching? How?

[Dave Crossland]

2008/5/19 Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com>:
> On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 5:08 AM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
>
> Hi, and thanks. Your post below has been the most informative so far
> for me. I'm going to transfer most of it to the Wiki, if you approve.

Sure :-) I'm planning to write to Gatto and ask him to make his book
available under a free culture license, so perhaps we'll all be able
to do things with his text one day :-)

> However, I think that you are taking too narrow a view of the issues
> facing us.

Perhaps, although I thought I was taking a quite wide view; I'm pretty
much down with RMS as far as stringently advocating free software and
not accepting proprietary stop gaps is concerned.

> Sugar is far more Constructionist than any other software.

Sure :-)

> It will have many of its intended effects whether or not teachers,
> administrators, or government officials know that that is what is
> happening.

This is true of Prussian schooling overall though, right? Many
teachers administrators and ministers in Prussian schooling systems
actually do want to make schools educational, but decades of these
people trying to reform schools has made no difference. This can only
happen by way of what you wrote. Gatto found that this was named and
fully described in the 70s at MIT -
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uNIG0gi4b40C - and he talks about
this in depth in his book.

The decision makers at the Ministries which bought XOs already want to
throw out the Prussian educationally-stifling schooling system. There
surely will be some teachers and administrators and
non-decision-making ministers in those school systems who won't want
this though, and will try to subvert it. But they are so few they are
not worth worrying about, and indeed I think they'll actually help to
demonstrate to everyone else how much better Constructionist schooling
is by their contrast.

But in the Prussian school systems, which is IMO all the ones who have
not bought XOs yet, the situation is reversed: The kindly teachers who
are actually educational are the real villains of the Prussian school
system, Gatto says, because it is they who keep a lid on things.

> It will have other effects that we do not know about yet.
> Gutenberg had no thought of supporting the Renaissance, the
> Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, or anything else that followed
> from printing. He wanted to print Bibles and other books that had been
> written by hand before, in expensive editions for those who were
> already buying books, mostly in the Church. Nobody knew that Aldus
> Manutius, Martin Luther, and Galileo Galilei were coming, or any of
> the others, nor what convulsions their productions would inspire.

We also got the British Empire out of Gutenberg, let's not forget :-)

The way the Classmate pilots have been run is just how they want the
overall OLPC movement to turn out, because computers can be used to
achieve more liberty, or more control, than any previous technology.

Classmate is a perfect demonstration that Prussian school systems'
decision makers are well aware of the threat posed to them by the
Internet medium and especially OLPC's 'core values.'

> But Sugar can have even greater effects as we develop it further,
> depending on the ideas that bubble up in these very conversations and
> others in our rapidly growing community. In particular, I propose that
> we create the Constructionist curriculum for teachers' colleges.

Your proposal is essential for the success of the OLPC movement :-)
Teachers' colleges are where the Prussian model is seeded, so its a
key area to work on.

> I would like to see their textbooks and have a community critique of them.

I'd be interested to hear if the textbooks are made by the Peruvian
ministry, or by a private company. If its a private company, I expect
that getting them published online for this kind of analysis will be
hopeless :-(

> Making, sharing, getting feedback, and improving is
> much of the Constructionist program, so let's have at it.

:-)

>> 2008/5/14 Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> Constructionism means at least two different things.
>>
>> confusing Constructivism, by Piaget with Constructionism, by Papert
>
> I was trying to simplify the account, on the basis that
> Constructionism includes Constructivism as a foundation, and then
> applies it particularly to learning on a computer.

IMO its better to say Constructionism means one thing and
Constructivism means another, instead of Constructionism meaning two
different things or more :-)

> No, that was a deliberate change of topic, from Piaget and
> Constructivism, to Papert's Constructionism.

(Glad to hear you weren't confused :-)

>>> The biggest question is how to deal with the culture clash that
>>> Constructionism inherently creates.
>>
>> OLPC has failed to challenge Prussian schooling directly, so it should
>> fall back to providing laptops and unrestricted internet access and
>> let the medium be the message.
>
> We have much more to discuss before we attempt to come to any
> conclusions.

'OLPC, Inc' _has_ failed to challenge Prussian schooling directly. It
could succeed but has given up, and Ivan's latest blog post confirms
this.

'OLPC, Inc' _has_ fallen back to providing laptops and internet
access. Nicolas' latest statement confirms this.

I think it _should_ do these things, and leave it to other
organisations to deal with the culture clash.

Like you say, reforming Teachers Colleges is a key way to deal with
that culture clash, and 'OLPC, Inc' does not want to be involved in
that work. Another organisation can do that work though, and is
something Ivan reported he advised Nicolas to do _months_ ago, and was
ignored. This is the specific part of Ivan's blog post I'm referring
to:

--- 8< ---
I continue to think it's a crying shame you're not taking advantage of
how OLPC is positioned. Now that it's goaded the industry into working
on low-cost laptops, OLPC could become a focus point for advocating
constructionism, making educational content available, providing
learning software, and keeping track of worldwide [one-to-one]
deployments and the lessons arising from them. When a country chooses
to do [a one-to-one computer program], OLPC could be the one-stop shop
that actually works with them to make it happen, regardless of which
laptop manufacturer is chosen, banking on the deployment plans it's
cultivated from experience and the readily available base of software
and content it keeps. In other words, OLPC could be the IBM Global
Services of one-to-one laptop programs. This, I maintain, is the right
way to go forward.

I'm trying to convince Walter not to start a Sugar Foundation, but an
Open Learning Foundation. For those who still care about learning in
this whole clusterfuck of conflicting agendas, the charge should be to
start that organization, since OLPC doesn't want to be it.
--- 8< ---

Indeed, to me, the words "one laptop per child" suggests a mere laptop
supplier; the words "open learning foundation" suggests "the IBM
Global Services of one-to-one laptop programs" far more.

Nicolas has spent a lot of time in the past saying OLPC is really
about learning not laptops, and around the time the phrase "$100
laptop" was being dropped, I wondered if OLPC would renamed itself and
drop "OLPC" and move to a domain other than "laptop.org"

Now that Nicolas is saying "actually OLPC is about laptops not
learning," keeping the name and the domain makes sense.

openlearning.* are all taken though. Hmm.

>> Mario Savio knew the deal.

(I refer to the first section of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcx9BJRadfw btw)

>> I wonder if things would be different if Papert was alive,
>
> Greatly exaggerated, as the saying goes.

OMG I am _so_ sorry, I honestly thought he had died in Vietnam! That's
great news he didn't :-)

-- 
Regards,
Dave