[OLPC-Philippines] Pilot Software and Content

[Carlos Nazareno]

> Another way to make it work is have a private school do a pilot to be
> able to come up with a proper model for future deployments. Why a
> private school? It has the facilities (technical) and manpower to make
> a program possible. However, it should be planned ahead as private
> schools have different approaches to learning.

I completely agree with this.

IMHO, throwing laptops at groups which do not have the infrastructure
to handle basic IT tasks is asking for trouble. #1 should be some
members of staff that can deal with the laptops. A really bad scenario
would be that the teachers are completely clueless about how to use
the laptops and then the kids will be running circles around them. If
a student borks a laptop by mucking around with the terminal as
super-user and playing around with rm -rf like discussed in the olpc
developer list, there should be someone at hand who can undo the
damage done.

I'm also more inclined to having the laptops stay in the schools than
having kids bring them home for many reasons that have been outlined.
It's also going to be more cost-effective that way and better care
will be given to them. It's very similar to the way we in high school
"rented" books from the school. Because books are expensive, at AdMU
high school, most of our textbooks were leased to us students, and at
the end of the year we had to return them.

Also, on an accountability level, I think this is better. Honestly
"giving" impoverished children laptops for me is like giving them
expensive celphones. From a book perspective, I think putting up a
public school library is more effective and responsible than giving
away books to kids.

Moreover, there's the problem of mugging, etc.

> the current group that are active are not exactly educators
> in a sense that we are not knowledgeable in the techniques. Some of us
> are here are parents and we have done our share to teaching our
> children, but this is not exactly the optimal way of doing so, hence
> an educator being active is desirable.

Yup. That's why I think we should start with getting mindshare and
participation from schools.

Also, did you guys know that top universities have a hand in the
quality control for books public schools use? Like for example, the
History department at AdMU proofreads some of the textbooks used in
public schools for errors and they've caught quite a few.

Oh, I have a next piece of email that's very interesting.

-- 
Carlos Nazareno
http://www.object404.com

interactive media specialist
zen graffiti studios
naz at zengraffiti.com