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

[Christoph Derndorfer]

Zitat von Ties Stuij <cjstuij at gmail.com>:

> 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.

Another example that I recently learned about (and something that I 
would have never thought to be the case!) is that something as simple 
as division in Mathematics is taught quite differently in Austria than 
in Germany.

It might be the same concept all around the world but if we can't adapt 
interactive learning solutions to such a vital requirement in a country 
than there's little chance of teachers actually using it.

So in this case it doesn't necessarily make sense for someone in Berlin 
(let alone New York) to design a Maths learning activity to be used in 
an Austrian school.

Just my 2 eurocents,
Christoph

--
Christoph Derndorfer
co-editor, olpcnews
url: www.olpcnews.com
e-mail: christoph at olpcnews.com