[wsfii-discuss] olpc presentation

Mon Jan 2 10:48:12 UTC 2006

On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 07:40:03PM -0800, Michael Lenczner wrote:
> this presentation by negroponte on his One Laptop Per Child project is
> worth checking out.  he seems to make it clear that the priority is on
> changing the mentality of kids through a different epistemology
> (through using computers as engines which children would teach and
> thus learn by teaching -
> http://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/Wired/WIRED2-07.html)
> 
> i'm probably just repeating myself in saying that the exciting part of
> this project is that the laptops are running squeak, not that they can
> do mesh.  my 2 cents.
> 
> he's saying that encouraging children to do peer-to-peer learning is
> more powerful than making a small increase in no. of teachers.

I guess the kids in Africa will have not better average mentality than
say European kids.

Therefore when you give them laptops, they will probably start playing
games, sell them, throw them away, and be interested in drugs, free sex,
alcohol and partying anyways.

Read about gang structure.
http://www.lincolnnet.net/users/lrttrapp/block/gangs101.htm
Kids don't think like economists to plan secured future. They are social
animals (homo sapiens). The force driving the society is social
acceptance - coolness.

Drugs, alcohol, sex, games - cool
Education - uncool.

We first have to make education cool - take a project like Ronja and
make a cool hype around it. Kids want to engage in motor coordination.
Stimulating their brains is usually not enough.

Free technology projects have gang structure. That's good. The article
says how gang structures are powerful in creating a coolness hype to
recriut members.

Make such a hype around the project that kids will want it the way they
want drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

If this was possible with skateboarding, it must be possible with Ronja.
Stacy Peralta did this with his cool action documentaries about
skateboarding (Dogtown and Z-boys) If you do cool action documentary
about Ronja, you have chance of getting access into those kids' heads.

Then these kids can manufacture simple Ronja parts at home and sell them
on Ebay. And when they grow up they get a chance of getting employed in
some of those dumping-price PCB manufacture factories.

Giving them just hypercheap plastic laptop with handle that breaks off
will probably achieve nothing.

CL<
> 
> 
> link to presentation:
> http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/05/12/30/1957201.shtml?tid=126&tid=219
> 
> mike
> http://mtl3p.ilesansfil.org
> 
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