Things to do with network learning, flexible learning, and online learning.
Last night Sunshine and I had dinner at Michael and Fran Nelson's house to see their new baby! We spent most of the night talking about how much we need to get off the computers and spend more time in the real world with our families... no sooner had Sunshine and I gotten home, and Michael had sent me an email with the latest news on MIT's $100 laptops!
Jeez Mike, you do have it bad.
Images from
recently posted on the progress:
The 500MHz laptop will run a "skinny version" of the open-source Linux operating system. It will have a two-mode screen, so it can be viewed in color and then by pushing a button or activating software switch to a black-and-white display, which can be viewed in bright sunlight at four times normal resolution, according to Negroponte.He estimates the display will cost around $35. The laptop can be powered either with an AC adapter or via a wind-up crank, which is stored in the housing of the laptop where the hinge is located. The laptops will have a 10 to 1 crank rate, so that a child will crank the handle for one minute to get 10 minutes of power and use.
When closed, the hinge forms a handle and the AC cord can function as a carrying strap, according to Negroponte. The laptops will be ruggedized and probably made of rubber, he said. They will have four USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports, be Wi-Fi- and cell phone enabled and come with 1G byte of memory.
Each laptop will act as a node in a mesh peer-to-peer ad hoc network, Negroponte said, meaning that if one laptop is directly accessing the Internet, when other machines power on, they can share that single online connection.
The lab will initially target Brazil, China, Egypt, South Africa and Thailand, according to Negroponte, as well as the U.S.state of Massachusetts, which has just committed to equipping every schoolchild with a laptop. Negroponte hopes to start mass production of some 5 million to 15 million laptops for those markets towards the end of 2006. Come December 2007, he estimated production of the laptops at between 100 million and 150 million, three times the number of annual shipments of commercial laptops.
But MIT's media lab makes it plainly clear that:
Please note: these laptops are not in production. They are not, and will not, be available for purchase by individuals.
WHY THE HELL NOT!
Could it be that MIT want to see Governments take responsibility for closing digital divides? Somehow I can't see any Australian Government waking up to this in less than 10 - 15 years! "Linux!
", they'll say "we don't support Linux"...
From what I can tell by flicking through the blogs there appears to be nothing but praise and good words about the prospect of a $100 laptop for the kids. I can't wait!!
Literally can not wait! There must be some way we could achieve the same here in Australia within 3 - 4 years. It'd probably take longer than that for the MIT ones to reach us.
MIT hints on how they do it:
- First, by dramatically lowering the cost of the display. The first-generation machine may use a novel, dual-mode LCD display commonly found in inexpensive DVD players, but that can also be used in black and white, in bright sunlight, and at four times the normal resolution, all at a cost of approximately $35.
- Second, we will get the fat out of the systems.
Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways.
- Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers (millions), directly to ministries of education, which can distribute them like textbooks.
We in Australia may not be able to pump them out in the millions, but what will that mean? $200 laptops? Let's get started.
No publicly educated Australian person need be without a laptop by 2007.
Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software (in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education.The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such counterfoil research on education--and also to those who seek alternatives to other established service industries.
(By Ivan Illich, 1970:para 3)
Then Sean jumped on the GoogleTalk and messaged me to read up on :
I wish to present some very brief remarks, in the hope that if they bring forth any reaction from you, I may get some new light on my own ideas.
a) My experience is that I cannot teach another person how to teach. To attempt it is for me, in the long run, futile. b) It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively inconsequential and has little or no significant influence on behavior.
c) I realize increasingly that I am only interested in learnings which significantly influence behavior.
d) I have come to feel that the only learning which significantly influence behavior is self-discovered, self-appropriated learning.
e) Such self-discovered learning, truth that has been personally appropriated and assimilated in experience, cannot be directly communicated to another.
f) As a consequence of the above, I realize that I have lost interest in being a teacher.
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