[Sugar-devel] versus, not

[Martin Langhoff]

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Bill Kerr <billkerr at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure what is meant by a "big tent"

Personally, I am building tools so...
...
> when I look at minsky's theory of mind I see that he supports multiple
> models of thinking but also argues against models of thinking that he thinks
> are incorrect or which emphasise only one way of doing things,

Exactly. I try to work to build things that are open (and useful) to
many users, many (most?) of which may not agree with me. If you ask me
what do I think is best, I may have an opinion, but I am an adaptable
person. My software[1] is adaptable too. A tiny bit opinionated
perhaps ;-) , but flexibility is more important.

After all, practitioners have enough trouble with real life, I am not
going to add a small-mind-designed bit of software to their problems.

[1] Note:  Most of my education related work is on Moodle but I'm not
its designer. So "my software" is "my sometimes interesting changes to
Moodle". The mind behind Moodle is Martin Dougiamas, and it's from him
that I've picked the "flexible" mantra. People use Moodle for teaching
in very open ways... and other people use Moodle in incredible
small-minded, beancounting-style corporate training. A very big tent
indeed.

Very glad to be reading Alan's posts in this thread too.

cheers,


m
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff