Talk:Marvin Minsky essays: Difference between revisions

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(Yes, but...)
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What makes mathematics difficult to learn?
What makes mathematics difficult to learn?

== Yes, but... ==

These are all great ideas, and powerful ones. However, if the OLPC project is to succeed on a general level, it has to have something to offer the average teacher who suddenly gets a shipment of these. Thus, it needs to have some response to the following challenges:

* Why should I change what I'm doing? (Anecdotes and disparagement of traditional practices are not enough.)

* How can I apply this in my classroom? (Many of these ideas are much easier to apply in one-on-one situations than in a classroom of 30 or more students)

* How can I do this step-by-step? (OLPC has a philosophy of leapfrogging some educational hurdles, as developing countries leapfrog wired infrastructure by jumping to wireless technology. But in some cases, this leads to faddish pedagogy; a few overambitious failures can discredit an idea, even if the failure can be traced to lack of planning or some other extraneous factor. Wise educational administrators thus have a suspicion of ideas which are pitched as being so revolutionary that they cannot be implemented in an evoltionary manner)

None of these are easy questions to answer: they all involve sustained effort. Thus, another question arises:

* How do we, as a project, motivate and sustain the necessary effort? (Open-source principles are great, and definitely have a lower critical mass to maintain progress than many other business models. However, the hardest thing to do in an open-source fashion is integration, and the questions above demand integrated answers. I think that in order to gain enough real-world users to have a winning critical mass, OLPC cannot disdain traditional educational models. That means finding/developing integrated TEXTBOOKS and even some minimal support for drillware/quizware.)

[[User:Homunq|Homunq]] 15:37, 28 February 2008 (EST)

Revision as of 20:37, 28 February 2008

What makes mathematics difficult to learn?

Yes, but...

These are all great ideas, and powerful ones. However, if the OLPC project is to succeed on a general level, it has to have something to offer the average teacher who suddenly gets a shipment of these. Thus, it needs to have some response to the following challenges:

  • Why should I change what I'm doing? (Anecdotes and disparagement of traditional practices are not enough.)
  • How can I apply this in my classroom? (Many of these ideas are much easier to apply in one-on-one situations than in a classroom of 30 or more students)
  • How can I do this step-by-step? (OLPC has a philosophy of leapfrogging some educational hurdles, as developing countries leapfrog wired infrastructure by jumping to wireless technology. But in some cases, this leads to faddish pedagogy; a few overambitious failures can discredit an idea, even if the failure can be traced to lack of planning or some other extraneous factor. Wise educational administrators thus have a suspicion of ideas which are pitched as being so revolutionary that they cannot be implemented in an evoltionary manner)

None of these are easy questions to answer: they all involve sustained effort. Thus, another question arises:

  • How do we, as a project, motivate and sustain the necessary effort? (Open-source principles are great, and definitely have a lower critical mass to maintain progress than many other business models. However, the hardest thing to do in an open-source fashion is integration, and the questions above demand integrated answers. I think that in order to gain enough real-world users to have a winning critical mass, OLPC cannot disdain traditional educational models. That means finding/developing integrated TEXTBOOKS and even some minimal support for drillware/quizware.)

Homunq 15:37, 28 February 2008 (EST)