[IAEP] A video about a 1-1 Apple laptop middle school in NYC - School Surveillance and a discussion on Multitaskingr

[Bastien]

"Benjamin M. Schwartz" <bmschwar at fas.harvard.edu> writes:

> Dennis Daniels wrote:
>> That's one of the reasons I was initially attracted to Sugar in that
>> the peer networking was built in... please tell me that one station
>> monitoring of all students is built in as well.
>
> Nope. No monitoring built in.  However, I have recently implemented it as
> an Activity called "Watch Me" [1].
>
>> If it isn't then it
>> should be for the teacher's sake.
>
> 1.  As a technical matter, this is not so easy over a congested wireless
> network.
> 2.  We care much more about students than teachers.  Is it good for the
> students?

Who is "we"?  

I personally think this reasoning is very wrong.  I wish Sugar can be
developed in a way that "caring about the students" and "caring about
the teachers" are complementary challenges, not opposite tasks.

Everytime someone sees the teachers as a barrier to learning, he gives
credit to the illusion of spontaneous learning, and we loose the Sugar
audience.

Learning by oneself is very different from "spontaneous" learning, and
good teachers have a great expertise in guiding students throught what
they want or need to learn "by themselves".

In fact, "learning by oneself" should be considered kind of a tautology:
what we learn is what WE learn.

If the first learner was Menon, let's not forget he had a great teacher.

> In other words, Sugar's design comes from a culture with a deep distrust
> of authority figures.  I got my programming start by hacking my school's
> computer systems, and I'm sure the same is true of many other contributors
> here.  You will find plenty of opposition to letting teachers watch what
> students are doing without permission.

I don't think there is a relevant connection between dictatorship and
teachers monitoring their classrooms via the system Dennis is calling
for.  But maybe there will be a link between the lack of such system 
and the lack of Sugar in classrooms.

Regards,

-- 
 Bastien