Talk:Marvin Minsky essays: Difference between revisions
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What makes mathematics difficult to learn? |
What makes mathematics difficult to learn? |
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== Yes, but... == |
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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: |
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* Why should I change what I'm doing? (Anecdotes and disparagement of traditional practices are not enough.) |
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* 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) |
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* 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) |
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None of these are easy questions to answer: they all involve sustained effort. Thus, another question arises: |
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* 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.) |
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[[User:Homunq|Homunq]] 15:37, 28 February 2008 (EST) |
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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)