TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Sounds like John Dvorak is trying to be Imus of the tech publications. A ’shock jock’ at best. I didn’t see any specific suggestions on his part to enhance the project. I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that OLPC will end world hunger, or stop wars. It is only a small piece of the puzzle. It has captured attention because of it’s creativity and direct connection to enhancing communication among people.

Dvorak at times can sounded rather crass, but I think you are right when it comes to teacher training in the third world. I also wonder why we haven’t sent these lovely green thingys to our “third world” communities in the USA. Somehow I don’t think Thomas Friedman of the NYTimes would favor us parting with home grown technology before we visit it on our own children. Why are we allowed to export this technology when other products are barred?

“Let them eat cake” an apocryphal quote, but a meaningful one, betrays a lack of understanding by Dvorak. It refers to a shortage of bread, based on a shortage of flour, “eating cake” is thus a non sequitur, one of the world’s most famous.

Dvorak’s comments are little better.

Education does not solve poverty, but it supplies the poor with a brilliant weapon to form and pursue their interests in ending poverty.

Computers, as devices of communication, do not in themselves educate. But as a tool of education, and as communication devices, they give access to the means of eduction - literature of sciences and humanities.

For schools that hardly have any books at all, through such communication devices will have libraries, aside from any other features found on the computer. This has a beneficial effect on education.

Supplying the tools to build something is not the same as supplying the finished product, but try building something without the tools; it can be done, but it will take a long time and compromises in design are imposed.

As a practicing teacher, computers are not anything like a solution. No-doubt African children will find games far more interesting to play than doing work, distractions abound, but these problems too can be addressed.

The important factor is access to reading material, in this where all else is in short supply a computer is an excellent tool. In Australia, I would like to see readers rather than laptops, we don’t have enough computers, but in another sense we already have too many. Expensive, hard to maintain and running MS they are a pain.

I don’t see XO in quite the same way, but there might be a need for a lot of fine tuning.

Forgive this long comment, but here is a good place to illustrate a problem from a teaching perspective.

A good few years ago I had a small English class made up of the least “able” students in one of the worst schools in Darwin. I had access to an “old” Mac computer lab.

Their writing was terrible, worse their general knowledge and worse again their confidence in their ability to do anything worth while. The available books were not good, too few good ones, too many poor quality, undemanding, texts.

If I step through this the problems and possible solutions will become clearer.

I was able to get Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” via Gutenberg, quickly compressed typographically through OpenOffice writer, saved as a PDF and printed on a handful of A4 sheets that could be photocopied. I was able to supply a decent text to the class.

Six months spent, illustrating the text by exposition, side reading (Freud), related films “Sybil”, “Psycho”, “Marnie”, “Spellbound”, “Now Voyager” two versions of films based on the novellette, I was satisfied that the students had a bank of related knowledge on which to draw.

Put these students in front of a computer and nothing will happen, they are experts in self-distraction, and nothing upsets them more than the tyranny of the blank page (a necessary step in decent writing is confronting this). They would surf the net, play games, listen to music, but never write anything worthy of the name.

But I had an old disused Mac lab, and took out every piece of software except the word processor. I became a ruthless editor, always deleting dross so a few grains of gold showed through. The essays they ended up writing were 100% their own, and of good quality (they topped the state in that course). It worked well, and their confidence grew enormously, and overall it was one of my rare successes.

Same thing tried in normal computer lab, with much better students, was a complete disaster. Every minor problem was met with a distraction, which the computer was rich in supplying readily, and hidden quickly. I could do no editing spending the whole of my time trying to keep them on task. The computer was not a tool for education but the reverse.

The solution is simple, so I hope someone involved is reading. Having Modal Programs that can be started on each computer by the teacher, I would suggest a timer of one hour, that can be renewed required.

Computers are not a solution unto themselves, but as a tool properly honed to purpose they can be awesome weapons in the war against ignorance.

Greg, I second Mike. Why don’t you expand and polish it for an item in the main part of the TeleBlog? I’m especially interested in the issues of, “What works?” and “Why?”–both for the “least able” kids and the others (two groups with different needs). Perhaps you could write it as narrative and email it to me, ideally with a photo to go along. No length limit! The kind of reader I most care about will read your work to the end. Happy holidays. David

No hurry, Greg! I’m more interested in quality. Try a narrative and descriptive approach (while not leaving out ideas). I’m especially keen on hearing from teachers on the use of e-book-related tech. So the same offer applies to others. Happy holidays and thanks. David