[p2p-research] Thanks for: Suggestions wanted for education to p2p practices and attitude

[M. Fioretti]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 08:52:52 AM -0500, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:

> My analysis of the OLPC project:

Paul,

before I answer, would it be OK for you if the two of us continued
this discussion off list in order to transform what we're saying in an
interview for http://stop.zona-m.net ? That would be great for me, of
course, because I do need the money from the ads in every article I put
there. If you prefer to put it on the P2P blog or at www.olpcnews.com,
instead, that's completely OK with me of course, what matters is to
spread the word.

This said, may I observe that all you wrote in the first part seems to
prove my point?  Especially this:

> * The hardware focus was misplaced. Software really was where it was
> at. A simple reading tutorial program and a simple math tutorial
> program that were self-paced would have probably been a bigger net
> benefit.

which I take the liberty to decode as "ANY computer would have done
the trick, there was no need to make( or start from) a whole new
computer, and to make such a big epiphany of it"

> More than US$20 million dollars was spent on the OLPC project just
> for hardware development and software infrastructure like Sugar.  I
> think it has very little to show for it in that sense

Same here. Giving software based edu-tool to each single children =
good, if done right and starting from there. OLPC "sold" as
_absolutely_necessary_ and a saviour of the world =bad, hype,
unnecessary.

> older cellphones that could be repurposed (some people edit
> Wikipedia from their cellphones), and maybe even reprogrammed as
> terminals with a local network.

This is one of the things that made me pay attention to OLE, cfr their
program:

http://stop.zona-m.net/active-citizens/plan-universal-basic-education-discussed-kathmandu

they accept any hardware that will do the job, and are indeed very
interested in cellphones as personal edu-terminals. And people are
already doing these things anyway, google for Wannigame to see what I
mean.

Must leave now. Later,
			Marco