Talk:Learning learning

Dvorak and V for 200million wrists

If enough are to be manufactured, maybe it would not cost too much to

1. Use a split keyboard in the shape of a V for 200million healthier wrists
2. Configure it with the Dvorak layout or some other better than QWERTY layout

And God bless you --Rogerhc 01:54, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

Above comment was inspired by the parables but I have since found and added this idea to the Hardware Ideas page. --Rogerhc 18:36, 28 May 2006 (EDT)

See the Hardware Ideas page for futher discussion of Keyboards.

Learning as a Culturally Variable Construct

It seems strange to me that one of the few pages to which contribution is limited (unlike other OLPC-maintained pages which allow one to edit, but encourage additions to be made only in the talk/discussion pages) is this one on which radical pedagogical thoughts are put forth as the foundation for the OLPC initiative.

Certainly I agree with everything that is written here, and I commend the project's challenges to the status quo, but these comments and concepts are all grounded on a certain understanding of the status quo, and certain assumptions about what the state and goal of learning is. It is an understanding of an educational status quo that is based on classes, schools, and school systems which admittedly does represent the type of systems into which it would be most easy to distribute the $100 laptop, but then it wouldn't be one laptop per child. This would mean that often the poorest children would be left out of this project, but more importantly that countries and cultures upon which the construct of "school" has been imposed (whether through colonialism and imperialism, or the economic pressures of globalization) are undergirded by inherently different models of learning which should not be dismissed (given particularly David Cavallo's assertion that the concept of "school" limits learning reform).

Constructionist learning is clearly a very progressive pedagogical foundation for OLPC, but to present it as the right way, the most effective way to learn, is a hegemonic imposition of moral proportions. To insist on constructionism is to insist that, "education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists," as Piaget is quoted in Conversations with Jean Piaget (Bringuier, Jean Claude, 1980, p.132). And since most of the people contributing to this project are from societies, cultures, or at least educational systems that value this individualist, entrepeneurial, non-conformist esprit, we don't question that it is universally good, and we don't look for the good in traditionally conformist, communitarian cultures. Thus there is an underlying, unstated goal to OLPC, that is probably subconscious to most of the developers and contributors: To produce geniuses. This is not necessarily bad, obviously; in fact, probably most contributors will think, "of course, that's great!" If we translated the statement to economics though, it would read: "to produce millionaires;" and that is ultimately the motto of capitalism's wealth accumulation ethic.

And many of us may think that is great - I am not saying it is inherently bad, but it is only one system, and the same with OLPC, and the constructonist trajectory it is on now. It is only one system, a system that will facilitate and encourage individual inventiveness, scientific inquiry, and a unique opportunity for kids who are smart to go above and beyond what they might have been able to do before. But it is not necessarily going to change things on a huge scale for the masses of children who may not fit into or be best served by the pedagogical model that OLPC is setting forth. Just as constructionism is a radical response against the fossilization/stagnation of the institution of "the school" or what might be called "neo-scholasticism" (this is not as unfounded an assertion as it might seem when understood that Habermas, upon whose theories much of constructionism is built, was bitterly opposed to Derrida and the deconstructionist "Contemporary Scholastics" as they are sometimes described) we need to open up this space to come up with radical responses to other educational systems and pedagogical theories which are prevalent in the world.

--Jdmitch 18:03, 10 June 2006 (EDT)