As many of you know, I’ve been working on Australia’s first OLPC trial, which is in place, and now I’m just waiting for their go ahead to talk about it more publicly. In the meantime, I couldn’t wait to blog this charming diary entry by one of the XO recipients at one of the schools we’re working with. I’ve transcribed it below. I’ve corrected the spelling in my transcription 🙂
“Monday 28th September 08 – Today it is an exciting day because Pia and Colin have come to our school to do some work with us. Pia and Colin are going to give us a talk about all the things they have hooked up to our new laptops. We are also going to play some games. Pia and Colin have set up the Internet on our new laptops. The Primary’s (9-12 yr olds) are going to have a meeting with Pia and Colin to tell them what they have done with the laptops to help us learn better. After the Primary’s have had their meeting we are going to have our meeting with Pia. It is a fantastic day and it is a world first event!!! I am so excited so I will use my laptop every day.”
AWWWW!!! 🙂 Colin and I were also given a merit award and sticker for the project from the kids. I love doing OLPC projects 🙂
It lost something being handwritten instead of typed on the OLPC? 🙂
Great +ve — must be a nice warm feeling all over
Of course they love it…
What a great blog entry and a uplifter spirit-wise. Thanks for sharing that, Pia!
hhmm How are they going to learn proper writing, spelling and grammer skills when an online word processor is going to do it all for them.
I appreciate the new learning abilities that will open up for the kids, in fact my kids love all the things the web brings but having more data available doesn’t make it useful information.
AlphaG: How am I gonna learn proper horse riding skills when I drive a car? How’s your flint knapping by they way? Hope you are keeping the chips nice and even.
Anyway, Pia: The OLPC thing is starting to make be think of the Steiner Schools, which is another educational experiment that sort-of took off. I mean good luck with it and all, just remember that the established system has massive inertia and many hundreds of years of established teaching tradition. It isn’t efficient, but it turns out a consistent result.
Good to see you keeping yourself busy with it all, you’re a true believer and we need that (you know, the reasonable woman would have adapted herself to suit the world). Kids are happy to be getting attention, doesn’t matter what you show them, they’ll go back and figure out their own stuff.
Hey, can you write about the Labor govt “Laptops in Schools” program, and the NSW reaction to that (and where OLPC fits in)? Not sure what position you are in to speak your mind in public.
Thanks for the replies everyone 🙂
@Tel, OLPC doesn’t fit in with Labor’s plans at this stage as they are focused on Yr 9-12, whereas the XO is really just for K-Yr6. But the Government are certainly aware of what we’re doing and interested 🙂
HaHa Tel, it goes well, so does my usage of quill and parchment. Call me mordoc.
The problem I see today is most of the Gen Y in employment can’t spell. write or put together sentences. They SMS in abbreviation and have started writing the same way. It may be an outcome of less than capable teaching staff or maybe a change in learning. Being online and using smarter tools like a self correcting word processor doesn’t make the student any smarter. It smacks of the current line that all students get a participation award rather than some competition. We have gone soft on the new generations and giving them new tools to dumb them down, rather than teaching the core capabilities and then expanding them with progressive tools to enhance the learning
Quite the contrary, as technology makes old skills obsolete, it also makes new skills necessary (but no one even takes the trouble to fully explain what the new skills are). It takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place, if you want to actually get somewhere you’ll have to run twice as fast as that.
Spelling and grammar were overrated IMHO, language tends to change ever few hundred years. It seems pretty obvious that Engrish is set to be the world language this century.
“Spelling and grammar were overrated IMHO, language tends to change ever few hundred years. It seems pretty obvious that Engrish is set to be the world language this century.”
Yes I agree Engalish is gunna be the write one for the warld maate.
@Tel: Funny you mention Steiner schools in this context. At the Steiner school where my daughter goes we are currently fighting the Victorian government to stop them imposing computers on our kids while still in primary school. Apparently the battle was lost in NSW and parts of the Steiner curriculum had to be left out so the grade 6 kids could have their computer time.
If you got the NSW government to change their position, then the computers in those Steiner schools could be given to the OLPC project 🙂