[IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and "Mastering" Educational SW

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Thursday 02 Jul 2009 5:19:58 pm Alan Kay wrote:
> Knowledge - On the other hand, Henry Ford was not nearly as smart as
> Leonardo, but was born at a very good time and in a good place, so he was
> able to combine engineering and production inventions to make millions of
> inexpensive automobiles.
As I look out of my window at the smog hanging over the city, I wonder if this 
is really progress :-). But I digress ..
> Being around adults who have interesting outlooks works the best for most
> kids.
This was the crux of the point that the farmer raised. He didn't want his kid 
associating with people whom he thought were ineffective as guides. BTW, his 
feedback was crucial in fixing some of the lacunae in his school and helped 
raise the bar. The kid is back in school and making good progress.
> I was brought up on a farm (a somewhat unusual one), but the farms in the
> region were not at all conducive for learning powerful outlooks, nor were
> the schools particularly. However, my grandfather was "a writing farmer"
> and had a huge library of books of all kinds in his farmhouse.
Parents set a minimum bar. As I pointed out earlier, a school is relevant only 
to the extent that it can do better than that level; much better.
> But, if I were trying to make things happen with IAEP, I would try to do
> just a few main things, and one of them would be to make a
> program/user-interface which could do a great job of teaching a child to
> read and write their native language without requiring any more from the
> adults around them than a little encouragement.
This is exactly what we do (sikshana.blogspot.com) but in a way that differs 
from Sugarlabs. Kids use computer as a tool to discover, to create, to 
simulate ideas; not as an appliance to be owned. Their projects are 
accumulated on a personal flash chip, but the tool itself is shared (and 
changes every year) and augments other learning aids in the schools. We don't 
know if this is the best way to use a computer. We started with this 
assumption and will tweak it as we learn more about its effectiveness.

Subbu