Educational ideas

There are various ideas on how the OLPC can be used in education that go beyond Ebooks and Educational Content Ideas. The intention of this page is to provide useful ideas for educators who are planning how to make best use of the OLPC.

Models

The first and most important element of the educational model is constructionism. This could be summarised as "learning by doing in an environment constructed to facilitate such learning".

Inspiration from Seymour Papert

Many of Seymour Papert's ideas on education can be found on the Internet. One such document is here on his website http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html The OLPC team have also recommended that you read this paper http://www.media.mit.edu/publications/bttj/Paper11Pages96-112.pdf

(Links to "Situating Constructionism" in Spanish and a document by S. Papert and David Cavallo author of Paper11Pages96-112 can be found here.)

Language Issues

Teaching, Social and Religious Barriers

Suggested Educational Content

There is sometimes a fine line between an educational idea and the idea for some content. We'll try to move all the content ideas to their own page here: Educational Content Ideas

Assumptions

We need to remember that the OLPC is going into environments very different from Western schools. Minimalism is the key word to keep in mind. Instead of trying to outline an entire Western education curriculum we should be thinking about the bare basics. What 3 things will be most needed in any given part of the world where these things are to be distributed? Will it be readin' writin' & 'rithmetic, or will it the basics of digging a well and keeping it clean - presented as pictographs.

The OLPC will include Evince an ebook reader that supports DJVU format. Therefore it will be quite easy to scan and distribute existing content for teaching health, hygiene, and alternate technology. Also, the OLPC is not limited by its internal storage. It has USB ports which could be used to connect a USB CDROM drive. Then children could select books from a central library stored on CDROMs. This could even be a motorcycle circulating library similar to the related Motoman project.

All of this takes efforts by many groups in order to bring it into reality. The OLPC team is focused on the hardware and basic software. They cannot develop everything else. We need people to step up and organize projects around some of these topics.

Idea List

Datalogger

Teach science by using the OLPC as Datalogger. The audio input port on the OLPC is capable of being used to collect voltage variation measurements. Simple sensors can be connected to this port to do real scientific investigations.

Teach Kids How to Make Tools

The OLPC will be deployed into resource poor areas. The kids will not have pencils, paper, paints or other art materials. However, kids can still do art with natural materials that they can find in their environment. Develop art teaching material that starts by building the tools they need. For instance, wood carving tools, paint brushes, pigments, paints, canvases. Many fibres can be used to make brushes. Pigments come from all around us as George Washington Carver used to teach his students. Canvases can be made with any matted or woven fibrous material that is prepared with clay gesso before being used to paint on. Even sticks and sand will serve to begin with. This page needs some serious editing to align it with the realities of the OLPC and the environment into which it will be deployed. We need more ideas like the one on teaching Art by teaching kids how to build carving tools.

Adults & Elders

Adults are more concerned with economic matters than are children. However, the introduction of a communications tool into the village could be leveraged by adults to improve the family's economic situation. First and foremost, most agricultural villagers have a choice of where and when to sell the product of their labours. But in the absence of cellphones and landlines, they do not have market information to make the best choice. If the OLPC messaging software can support inter-village messaging as discussed on this page, Instant Messaging Challenges, then children can directly contribute to raising the family's standard of living.

Services Available to Teachers/Community Leaders

• A central website devoted to the posting of technical issues about the laptop hardware where MIT or

other certified people can respond and help

• Perhaps a site/wiki where the specific communities could have their own page and be able to post and

inform the world what their current activities are or what they’ve learned or are working on (could be a tool to spawn educational competition or collaboration amongst neighboring cities or nations or to get artistic work on the web)

Teacher Basic Training

The OLPC has 4 USB ports so it will be easy to distribute course material on CD-ROM to be read using a communal USB CD-ROM drive. Since this communal CD-ROM is likely to be in the care of a teacher, distribute teacher training material on CD-ROM.

Esperanto

Use of Esperanto is not part of any official OLPC plan. However, the OLPC is an open source project which relies on the freely given contributions of many people to make it a success. Theoretically, if a group of people were to produce usable Esperanto content, it might be adopted in one country or another. Please remember that the actual laptop units shipped will include software and content chosen by the Ministry of Education in the target country. Also, it could potentially help developers in translating content, as English to Esperanto followed by Esperanto to "a language" by two translators might be possible where English to "a language" might not be possible from any given collection of translators available to the project. There is a separate page to discuss the use of Esperanto.

Content

edit this list

Books Wikibooks (20+ languages)

Stories ICDL library of stories

Gruppo Logos children's books (20+ languages)

Primary source material Wikisource (20+ languages)

Project Gutenberg

Dictionaries Dicologos dictionary (250+ languages)

Dicologos children's dictionary (148 languages)

Wiktionary (100+ languages)

Other/Mixed The Internet Archive repository

K-12 Open Tech collection

Motherland Nigeria's KidZone

Instructionism vs. Constructionism

OLPC is turning the wheel of educational change. As Seymour Papert once said, ". . . with everybody having computers all the time, it is inconceivable that learning will be like it's been in the past. There will be new ways of learning. But it's up to you, and me, and all of us, to invent that future." Let us not fall into the trap of creating a competitive and instructionist learning environment when at our fingertips are the tools for empowering students, for creating a constructionist learning environment. This is the time to move education forward and to realize the ideas of Piaget, Papert, Montessori and so many others. Trying to mimic US textbooks, curricula, and standards would be throwing out the window the most powerful aspects of the OLPC project and it would be a huge step backwards.

Suggested Educational Content

Please read through the ideas already mentioned on this page and try to make sure that your text is brief and relevant. In particular, make sure you have some understanding of constructionism since any software idea has to fit into that context.

Memorisation and Regurgitation Support

At first glance this seems to be counter to constructionist principles but it doesn't have to be that way. Many of the cultures in which the OLPC will be deployed, have strong traditions of roite memorisation and regurgitation of material. Examples are the Chinese with their ideographic writing system, Islamic countries with memorisation of the Quran, and various African countries in which oral culture is still treasured. Many of the great literary works of western culture such as the Iliad, Kalevala and Rig Veda, began as memorized and regurgitated texts.

There is an old Arab saying There are two doors to learning, memorization and understanding. Unless one has entered the first door, they can not pass through the second.

For example, let's look at how memorization of the Quran could be supported by the OLPC so that children learn it faster and use it as the door to understanding. Instead of distributing the Quran as a plain text file, it could be distributed in XML format with some Javascript embedded into it. The Javascript could include mouseovers that provide tooltip boxes with translations and explanations in the child's native language. Memorization is easier when the words have meaning.

The XML could have embedded support for voice output of the text. Sometimes a voice output driver needs hints to get the correct pronunciation of certain words; this would be hidden in the XML and used by the voice reader. In voice output, it does not make sense to speak partial words and often not even single words. Therefore, the XML would indicate phrase and sentence boundaries for a speech selection tool. And finally, the Quran is filled with stories and parables that are meant to teach children how to live a good life.

Phrases in the Quran text could be highlighted to indicate that they are links to other content. This content could simply be an exposition of a parable or it could be another application. For example, the phrase Allah will deprive usury of all blessing, but will give increase for deeds of charity could be a link to an application about Islamic banking principles and investment, calculating risk, accounting principles, etc. In this way, the Quran text leads to education in mathematics.

School Books

In many countries the children don't have much school books. The children don't have an atlas, the schools don't have many maps. The governments should have the ability to put school books on to the laptop. As a starting point, existing paper books can be scanned into DJVU format and displayed by Evince, the ebook reader included with OLPC. This sidesteps any font issues because DJVU compression does not require fonts.

Health and Hygiene Education

Collect and create educational content for Health and Hygiene education. We want educational games for children of all ages, written text and graphical information that is simple to use and easy to understand. This would include HIV/AIDS but should not be limited to this because teh OLPC will primarily targeted to younger children who have other health/hygiene needs. Washing oneself, dealing with snakebites and cuts on their bare feet, nutrition, etc. Collaboration with international AIDS organizations is recommended for material targeted at older children. Possible partners include the Nkosi Johnson AIDS Foundation in South Africa.

The program 'the World starts with me' is a complete digital curriculum on sexual health and hiv/aids prevention. It was developed for Uganda and is currently being adapted for other countries. It has an experiential learning approach and can be very suitable for using on the OLPC. see: http://www.butterfly-works.org

Spanish version

• Wikipedia in CD A proposal, where some Wikipedia users are studying how they can create a Wikipedia CD.
• Content from Wikichicos Proposal where users write specifical content for children.

Though these projects do not offer significant content yet, if olpc shows interest and need, surely many Wikipedia users will participate. --Javier Carro 18:20, 19 April 2006 (EDT)

Language Skills

I would prefer to see people fluent in 2 of the main languages (lets say, UN "official languages"). These are English, Spanish, French, Russian and Chinese.

The main goal must be to enable the children to read and write the language(s) spoken in their own country. The boot prompt of the laptop should be in the language the children speak. For many children the language they use at school isn't the same as they speak at home. We should help them to be proud to have their own language.

Social Sciences

I hope that the "SOCIAL SCIENCES" are not forgotten, as I request frequently at Science Exhibits: Where are the social sciences exhibits?... I usually get the "...uh?" answer, and I tell them, "yes, the history exhibits, with the history of housing, transportation, communications, labor, etc."

USB Library

This laptop will not have a CD Rom drive. USB will be medium of transport - if no internet connection is available.

Let's not forget that a wide variety of USB peripherals are available and supported by Linux ranging from CD-ROMs and memory-sticks to video cards and soundcards.

Even though the laptop will not have a CD-ROM drive integrated, it is not a far stretch to assume that CD-ROM drives will be readily available. Even in a dirt poor remote agricultural village in Southeast Asia, it is perfectly feasible for a circulating library to travel from village to village on a motorbike with 2 USB CD-ROM drives and a big stack of CD-ROMs containing content. In fact, such a circulating library can also act as an email network by collecting and delivering emails using store-and-foreward techniques. This is not just imagination. There is at least one instance of an email network relying on motorcycles carrying the messages from location to location.

It is worthwhile to do some research in the FidoNET BBS technology which is still in use in the 3rd world to do store and foreward messaging where Internet access is unavailable.

Curriculum Standards

In most western countries there are standards for the curriculum material that is covered in public schools. These have been developed by national organizations of teachers, professors and school administrators, e.g. the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA in the USA. These have the advantage of having been developed by a broad swathe of groups with some stake in the learning and with groups that are knowledgable about what and how students learn. Using these standards as a guide for curriculum development will have these advantages:

1. Information deemed needed for the future in a technological world has been identified in these goals expressed as standards.
2. Major textbooks already follow these outlines.
3. Accreditation will be easier to obtain if such is desired.
4. The structure is already in place and teachers and students taking education degrees will already be familiar with the structure.
5. The standards are easily available from many websites.
6. The organizations responsible for the development of the standards will most likely take responsibility for updating them in the near future.
7. The books associated with these standards will be a valuable resource for teacher training and therefore a way to share a common sense of community and educational goals to all users.
8. Evaluation tools such as standardized tests for subject matter are currently grounded in these standards as required by most state department of education policies.
9. What to teach and how to teach in the broad terms of these standards provide a structured curriculum deemed appropriate by the vast majority of educators.

A useful project might be to survey and compare curriculum standards of several countries.