[Edu-sig] OLPC (was FYI: PataPata postmortem link)

[Tom Hoffman]

On 11/29/06, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> On Nov 29, 2006, at 13:00 , Arthur wrote:
>
> > I fear not only that OLPC is turning into a toy,  but a toy for the
> > wrong follks, folks who have enough toys,  rooms full of them,
> > lost in
> > their toys, blinking and whizzing  hynoptic.
>
> Would you agree that the software (and not the greenish toy-like
> hardware) would make all the difference between that little machine
> being a toy and it being a serious platform for education? Why, then,
> are so few folks working on actual educational software for it? So
> far, you can count the specifically educational activities on the
> OLPC on one hand. Even if you lost most fingers.

I would point out that writing educational software for people who
don't have computers isn't very useful either, and that once kids have
computers (on a common, free platform) there's a lot more incentive to
write educational software for them.

--Tom