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If Libya can see the benefits…
January 2, 2007 | |
Seems that the $100 laptop project is still alive and well…in this CNN article on Cheap Laptops for Third World Schoolchildren, Nicholas Negroponte and the folks behind the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project will soon begin delivery to students in a number of nations in the developing world of a laptop designed to provide access to the Internet and technology for the benefit of education. Seems the world will get a whole lot flatter for these kids real soon.
One of the most intriguing features of the new laptops is the design of the user interface. While the OS is Linux-based, it looks nothing like Linux, Windows or Mac… OLPC worked to develop a new style of interface, labelled Sugar, that doesn’t use traditional folders, but instead tracks documents through a journal based system. The laptop includes a browser, an RSS feed and a word processor.
Negroponte touches on a point in the article that cracks a solid double to me…
… the main design motive was the project’s goal of stimulating education better than previous computer endeavors have. Nicholas Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab two years ago before spinning One Laptop into a separate nonprofit, said he deliberately wanted to avoid giving children computers they might someday use in an office.
“In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint,” Negroponte wrote in an e-mail interview. “I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools.”
This is something that I have been musing a lot about lately - how do we get kids away from PowerPoint and into creativity. While I admit to using MS Office on both my Mac and PC laptops for a lot of my daily work, I wonder about the benefits of introducing stardardized software to students as an integral part of their schoolday.
First of all, while MS Office has many benefits in a professional bureaucracy, I think it stifles the very learning and creativity we want to encourage. I doubt if any of the truly innovative and cutting edge knowledge flowing from all the corners of the world today was developed using PowerPoint and Word. Don’t get me wrong, these applications have their place, but they hold little for the web 2.0 generation. They stifle thought and harness thinking to a linear fashion, much like textbooks. With the incredible access to open-source applications and web-based publishing/creation tools, our students have a much better shot at developing the 21st century skills they need to succeed using free technology.
Secondly, the use of standard software for all is a barrier to many. I have been involved in a 1:1 laptop project for two years now where students do not take the computers home at night. Suprisingly enough, the vast majority (90 - 95%+) of our students now have access to Internet capable computers at home. They can easily transfer their work from home to school and back again using email or USB drives. The barrier is not access to computers, but access to software.
MS Office is expensive. Even the educational version runs close to CAN$200. This is far beyond the budgets of many families. To have our students working on Word and PowerPoint at school, but not have access to those programs to continue their learning at home, defeats the purpose of anywhere/anytime learning. This is why I am promoting the use of free, web-based, cross-platform creative publishing tools with our classroom teachers.
The future of a truly creative, 21st Century-ready education system for our students (and ourselves) lies in providing access, not to the linear, standardized software packages of the business world, but in the barrier-less, creative publishing environment of the web.
Technorati tags: education, future, flatclass, Negroponte, sugar, OLPC
Comments
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Clay,
I was intrigued about whqat you said, but my comment would be at what grade level would you purpose that we start breaking away from the traditional use of computers for intstruction of power point…et al.? It seems to me that what you purpose would be to identify a grade level to move beyond the traditional educational presentation.
[Reply]
Patrick…
Thanks for the comment.
I really am reconsidering if we should be “teaching” boxed software at all, at any grade level…I think that with so much web-based authoring resources available, is there a need to “teach” students how to “use” PowerPoint (et al) at all? Granted, these can be useful tools in the right environment, but they appear to me to be overused and stifling creativity in schools.
Jeff
[Reply]