Educational ideas
Introduction
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.
Educational 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".
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.)
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.