more critical-ness of the OLPC
Such are the challenges of introducing not just a strange new machine but an alien world to a child brought up in isolation from outside culture. The leaders of OLPC believe the laptops must be much more than electronic substitutes for textbooks if they are to profoundly effect learning. The group, an offshoot of MIT’s Media Lab, which Negroponte launched 23 years ago, has based its educational philosophy on the theories of Seymour Papert, a Media Lab professor who pioneered the use of computers in elementary education in 1967. Papert, now retired, developed a theory called Constructionism, which posits that young children learn best by doing rather than by being lectured to. So to create a tool that could deliver more than rote lessons and e-books, OLPC designed the machine and its software to enable collaboration, exploration, and experimentation. “We’re hoping that these countries won’t just make up ground but they’ll jump into a new educational environment,” says David Cavallo, OLPC’s chief education architect.
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM?
While this philosophy is essential to the mission of OLPC, it’s also a source of tension. Current educational leaders in Peru embrace Constructionism, but most countries base their education systems on the idea that teachers pass their knowledge to receptive students. That was a problem for OLPC in China as well as India. India’s education department, for instance, calls the idea of giving each child a laptop “pedagogically suspect,” and, when asked about it recently, Education Secretary Arun Kumar Rath barked: “Our primary-school children need reading and writing habits, not expensive laptops.”
Some observers accuse OLPC of cultural imperialism. “It’s arrogant of them. You can’t just stampede into a country’s education system and say, Here’s the way to do it,’” says William Easterly, a professor at New York University and author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.
link (from businessweek. neat.)
– Just got my copy of Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace. Mark Tovey interviewed me for it. I’m looking forward to reading through it.
– I’ve had some good conversations with different folk recently criticizing social entrepreneurship. It seems that other people grock my concerns and some of them already share them. It’s been interesting. And definitely not over.
– Tracey has a neat abstract up of a paper (her comprehensive).
I like this part:
“Community communication networks / infrastructures (CCN/Is) are emerging as significant grassroots technosocial movements worldwide. These can be a Wireless Local Area Network, a sneaker net, or a fully connected Internet mesh network. Irrespective of the infrastructure’s architecture, CCIs are community created and maintained. CCIs often consciously and sub-consciously embed local, social, cultural and political values in the technological and social infrastructures being constructed. The expertise, commitment of members, the spirit of open source coding, hacker/tinkerer ethic and free culture associated with these and the unique mix of citizens involved, combined with the propagation of knowledge, support, and inexpensive technology is quite unique and characteristic of the Web 2.0 ethos. Infrastructures are complex social, technical and culturally specific artifacts that are shaped by and in turn shape societies. It is suggested that citizens can be active agents in the creation and maintenance of as opposed to passive recipients of infrastructures.”
I like the transition from CWN to CCI. Something we’ve talked about a lot together (the I part, not sure if I like “communication” over “information”. tbd). Been thinking more about Local Information Ecologies and what they would mean. And wishing that they didn’t spell “lie”. jeesh. although maybe that’s a sign not to appropriate powerful real-world metaphores and apply them to abstractions of invented artifacts.
–Meeting the G.G on wed at her Quebec residence. Because of my work with ApathyisBoring. I’m looking forward to that.
Speaking of AisB, I encouraged the marketing people from both orgs that i work with - Coco and AisB to attend a web training for social change event in Toronto last week. I’m on both of their web committees and I’m really looking forward to contributing to those projects. It will be fun to just be able to discuss and give impact and not have any decision making power.
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Lastly, I think i’m going to head to Ottawa next week for Anne Galloway’s defense. Weird thing to do, but I’m definitely interested.
