I commented on a recent OLPCnews.com post about the XO and education. First go read the original post as it was authored by Corey Ewing, an IT professional in a school district who is also a parent. This is what I’ve been able to figure out anyway from the beginning of his post.
Here is my comment, which I will expound on in a future post:
Hello.
I am doctoral student in Educational Psychology and Research (learning theory is at the core), a 6th grade teacher, and a parent to a 5 year-old.
Oh, and I got my XO on December 21. I’m pretty good with Linux, running Ubuntu on two machines at home, but no expert by a long shot.
I disagree with the notion that these machines provide a magically constructivist environment. If anything, the confusing environment makes it terribly difficult to navigate and is counter-intuitive. In fact, I would posit that the level of cognitive load experienced by users not familiar with the operating system will be very high initially. Would it be so high on Windows? No, because there is established schema.
Now, does that mean they are not useful? Certainly not. I speak Spanish and lived in Peru for a while so watching the interviews with kids in Arahuay has proven interesting. They are not doing anything with the laptops in terms of education that they could not do with less expensive equipment. For example, they take pictures of the few plants around their school. What is the affordance of this as compared with sketching the plant on construction paper? The technology is not necessarily a benefit.
Perhaps video is a bit of a benefit, but we’ve not seen any videos created in that environment, and the lack of editing makes only a certain quality of video available.
The Internet is a big deal, but a previous commenter mentioned that the kids read up on soccer and do research. I would imagine that kids are using web sites for research without checking for validity. I don’t know this first hand but access to a spotty internet connection does not a smart kid make.
I’m curious to see more of what comes out of these areas, and I’ll post more about this on my blog at www.crucialthought.com.
Chris
Chris,
I share your concerns. I was hoping that my lack of familiarity with Linnux was the main reason, but based on your experience, I guess that probably isn’t it. On the other hand, familiarity with any computer OS can help them prepare for a type of thinking and working common in more developed countries. That may be of use. Likewise, I’d hate to underestimate the potential here, especially if Scratch and other similar apps become available. I’ve seen elementary aged kids spend hours exploring, experimenting, creating with tools like Lego Mindstorms. Even the simple HTML coding I teach my students consumes some of them. And since the computer goes home with them, if we can get hand cranks, yo-yo or other power supplies to them so they can work at home, good things may start to happen. When one child comes to school having successfully hacked his/her computer, others will follow suit, or at least start to think that way.
Yeah, I’m being idealistic again. It feels good to smile about education again.