[Its.an.education.project] Ivan's latest blog entry on OLPC

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Ivan Krstić
<krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> On May 13, 2008, at 9:46 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>
> > Just make sure you read all the way through before trying to
> > understand it. I needed to read it through twice as he is a very angry
> > person and his anger seems to go at a lot of targets..
> >
>
>  Do you feel that particular points were not properly supported or explained
> in the essay?
>

Ok I felt the central tenet of the article was supposed to be  the
last section: How to go forward. However, I got lost in each of the
sections which seemed to be a rant about a ton of things. I think any
of them would have been good separate essays... but they seem to
almost be counter in tone to the last section.

First rant seemed to be about constructivism  on computers with my
first reading [I have no background in constructivism so don't know if
it is something to rant about.] My second reading was more that it was
possibly Negroponte's management of the project.. but that is a guess.
It could also be on all the 'Constructivism is the only way to go'
that have 'dominated' the 'its.an.education.project' and other lists..

The rant on Stallman was spot on, but I have come to realize over the
years, that in his mind your question about drugs and closed software
is a yes to him. Yes he does believe they do horrible harm to people
in the same way drugs do. His aspbergers/whatever brain just doesn't
click to see it in another way.

The third rant seemed to be about Free Software itself... with my
first reading that we should just go to MacOS-X and be done with it.
[Which for a learning environment I can agree with. Students and
teachers just want the damn thing to work... not dick around with
drivers or care that suspend doesnt work because some vendor wants to
keep tight lipped.] If it wasn't the fact that I kind of knew who was
reading it.. I would have stopped about there as I can understand a
lot of it.. but wasn't sure what it meant for OLPC.

The next sections were more in line with the 'conclusion' of the
paper, and I was able to refocus. Sticking through what the project
should be about... not constructivism by itself, not free-software
itself, but educating children got me going. It just took me a lot
longer than I was expecting to get there.

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"