[IAEP] 70 minute interview with Bryan Berry on XO deployment in Nepal

[Ties Stuij]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
> hard to argue against someone who is doing such great work in Nepal but I
> thought Bryan overplayed the local factors  too much:
>
> 10) Open Source software critical to high quality education – education has
> to be very customised, to the kids, the teacher, the environment and the
> country – not something you can design in New York city and will fit another
> country
> http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2009/04/olpc-nepal-project-overview.html
>
> The counterbalance to that is that The Enlightenment is what made us, what
> created modernity, what transformed diverse cultures into our modern culture
>
> I hope it doesn't become unfashionable to say that modernity is a good thing
> see
> http://learningevolves.wikispaces.com/nonUniversals

I think you're misinterpreting Bryan as having said something
culturally relativistic. Think more practical. The most practical
example for Bryan's point is that if we wouldn't make stuff that is in
line with the Nepali curriculum, week by week, subject by subject, it
would be very hard to sell here. And would be pretty useless for the
teachers. Also the level the teachers and children are at is pretty
different. You can't just give the teachers Moodle and expect them to
put in their wildest teaching dreams; not in a lot of other countries
as well I guess but in our teacher training course we cover things
like moving the mouse. We leave in the grade 2 activities for the
grade 6 students, because a lot of them don't have a strong grasp of
grade 2 material.

This requires presenting the material in a different way, depending on
the local situation, just as already within one classroom different
kids will be better helped by different methods.

/Ties

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