[Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2010-11-01

[Walter Bender]

==Sugar Digest==

1. I first met Alan Kay in the late 1970s. I was working on a
personalized news project – think ''Google News'' meets ''Facebook'' –
for which Alan came up with the name ''NewsPeek'' – a play off of
George Orwell's ''New Speak''.

It was then that I first heard Alan's definition of technology:
"anything invented after you were born." Taking technology down off of
its pedestal is never easy for someone at MIT, but over the years I
have come back to those words again and again, as they help me to
combat the spell that cool engineering casts and thus I am reminded to
look at the essence of ''what is being accomplished by the
technology''. The words also serve to remind me to take the long view
– those to whom technology is just 'stuff' will be the ones who will
be best able to wield it to their advantage. It is in this spirit that
I have been advocating that computation should be "on the low shelf"
of every child – a "thing to think with" readily at hand to every
child. I'll return to this theme in a moment.

Another lesson from Alan at the time was his list of five things
computers were (or would be) good for: (1) getting and holding our
attention; (2) word processing; (3) information retrieval; (4)
simulation; and (5) interpersonal communication. A remarkable list,
especially considering that he compiled it 40-years ago. Perhaps the
only thing missing from the list is reflection: computers, with their
ability to capture a record of everything we do, can be a great medium
for reflecting upon our work. And arguably, these 5 (or 6) things
underly all of the best efforts to use computers in school and as a
facility to learning.

Why am I reminiscing about Alan Kay? When I read Christoph
Derndorfer's article on OLPC Peru
[http://edutechdebate.org/olpc-in-south-america/olpc-in-peru-one-laptop-per-child-problems/],
Oscar Becerra's response, and the subsequent follow up discussions
spread across several threads on the
[http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/olpc-sur/ Sur list], I was struck
by the dichotomy that seems to exist within the community: those who
see and voice problems and those who are trying, despite the
challenges, to amplify the things that are good. While criticism is a
necessary component of any effort to bring about change, it is
important to frame the criticism within a context whereby it can be
used in service of our collective goal: to raise a generation of
critical thinkers and problem-solvers by establishing a culture of
independent thinking and learning.

We can and do argue about how to achieve this goal (and some within
the community take issue with the goal itself, e.g., our focus should
be on helping children do better on their national exams, as if it
were a black-and-white choice), but as we argue and criticize, we need
to avoid the temptation to sensationalize (e.g., "it will require a
significant overhaul of the whole strategy") or draw premature or out
of context conclusions (e.g., the 'Romanian study'
[http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ecp2124/papers/computer.pdf] often cited by
Yamandú proves... [1]).

Christoph made a number of observations on his whirlwind tour of OLPC
deployments in South America. While his observations are of anecdotal
interest, none of them have any statistical significance and yet he
presumes to draw far-reaching conclusions. Even when he relies upon
data gathered by others, his conclusions are overstated. For example,
he cites from an IDB report
[http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getdocument.aspx?docnum=35370099]
"that almost 5% of the schools which have already received XOs don’t
even have electricity yet." He goes on to assert "that the Ministry of
Education’s data on the infrastructure available at schools doesn’t
seem to be up to date and accurate enough." I don't know how he can
draw that conclusion from the data. (As Oscar points out, the source
of the problem was that the solar panels were not available as soon as
expected.) Another way of saying the same thing is, "more than 95% of
the schools that have already received XOs have electricity." Or he
could have used the data as a rallying cry for support for OLPC's
efforts to build a more power-efficient, ARM-based machine.

Like Christoph, I too will cherry pick from the IDB report: "it was
noted that over 95% of teachers in schools receiving laptops think
they help improve education and children's learning and motivate them
to go to school. Moreover, between 90 and 94% of teachers indicated
that laptops improve the quality of teaching." (From the original
Spanish: "se observó que más de 95% de los docentes de escuelas que
recibieron los equipos piensa que las computadoras portátiles
contribuyen a mejorar la educación y el aprendizaje de los niños y los
motivan para ir a la escuela. Por otro lado, entre el 90 y 94% de los
docentes indicaron que las computadoras portátiles mejoran la calidad
de su enseñanza y la facilitan."

The Peru deployment is necessarily a process of iterative design. The
challenges (Internet, electricity, training) are formidable and
undoubtedly mistakes have been and will be made. The ministry is
neither "waiting for miracles to happen" nor is it ignorant of or
ignoring the challenges. By adopting an iterative approach, it is
refining its deployment model while trying to provide opportunities
for learning to children in the near term – rather than waiting for
perfection. We can argue about details, but progress is being made:
the ministry, the teachers, the community, and especially the children
are learning.

If can keep in mind Alan Kay's axioms as a guide both to not over
value technology and to be aware of what is its potential good; and if
we work together as a community [2] – not moving blindly without
critique, but also not engaging in sensationalism – doing, making,
deploying, mentoring, and sharing, we will make a positive difference,
in Peru and everywhere else.

:[1] Both Tony Forster
[http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2008/06/home-pcs-lower-education-results.html]
and Ivan Krstić [http://radian.org/notebook/distraction-machine] had a
nice blogs debunking this study. Since the deployment failed to even
get and hold the children's attention, clearly there were some serious
deficiencies in the implementation that make me think twice about
drawing any conclusions other than it is possible to stifle children's
interest in computers.

:[2] One place where Christoph and I are somewhat on the same page is
in regard to the level of community involvement in Peru. While there
are fruitful collaborations with some of the local universities, as
described by Oscar, and while parents are becoming more involved in
their children's learning, as hinted at in the IDB report, there is an
untapped potential in the people of Peru to engage in much the same
way that Ceibal RAP and Ceilbal JAM contribute to the efforts in
Uruguay. How to unleash that potential within Peru remains an
unresolved question.

2. A long-standing hole in the Sugar activity collection has been
filled by a 14-year-old Sugar hacker. NTT's Edit Activity
[http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/downloads/latest/4349/addon-4349-latest.xo?src=addondetail]
lets you edit plain text in a simple, collaborative environment.
Previously one had to use the rich-text Write activity for plain-text
editing, which had the potential of causing formating errors and,
unless one was careful, often resulted in the wrong mime-type being
associated with your text. So kudos to our young contributor on record
for developing such a useful tool.

===In the community===

3. We are finalizing the list of candidates for the upcoming election
to fill opening in the Sugar Oversight Board. I'm very pleased that we
have so many outstanding candidates:

* Adam Holt
* Steven Parrish
* Chris Ball
* Rosamel Norma Ramirez Mendez
* Gerald Ardito
* Sebastian Silva
* Aleksey Lim
* Claudia Urrea
* Pacita Peña

4. DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP, an international forum on development and
social inclusion through the use of ICT in Uruguay will be held on
29th and 30th November 2010 at the Uruguayan Laboratory of Technology
(LATU) in Montevideo, Uruguay.

===Tech Talk===

5. Aleksey Lim has been drafting some notes on re-architecting the
Sugar platform team (See
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Alsroot/How_Development_Team_should_evolve_or_How_to_"architect"_Sugar).

===Sugar Labs===

Gary Martin has generated a SOM from the past few week of discussion
on the IAEP mailing list.

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/File:2010-October-23-29-som.jpg (68 emails)


Visit our planet [http://planet.sugarlabs.org]for more updates about
Sugar and Sugar deployments.

-walter
-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org