October 26th, 2008 | nubae
windows xp XO vs Linux XO
Recently there's been a bit of speculation about how one kid using 2 xo laptops, one being windows xp based, and the other linux based, reacted when using the machines. Although the conclusion of the article was that the kid doesn't care which OS they are using, as long as its unique, novel, and fun, the experiment really missed the mark a bit. The article, found here, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10074298-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 takes one user and shows the user experience on some very limited uses of the laptops. Reading it, one gets the feeling that the experiment was done without much planning or research.
As has already been pointed out by education specialists, without setting up a learning environment with a group of kids, using collaboration as it was intended, it is not an educational experience, just a computer user experience. Sugar was created specifically for collaboration, allowing users to share the educational computer experience amongst peers and a teacher. In this way they can work together on assignments, get feedback from each other and the teacher, and collaboratively create something unique and wonderful. Sugar is radically different and novel to the way computers have been used until now for education.
An experiment of this kind should have involved children using windows and linux xos to collaborate and create audio, video, documents, and journal/blog the experience. It is not hard to set up something like that, and would bring new methods of teaching one step closer to the general public.
Of course, most people involved in OLPC, Sugar and collaborative teaching already know all this, and its most likely preaching to the choir, but to be effective, this message needs to get across to everyone including parents, students and teachers. They need to realize that there are other methods of learning, methods that will break the rigid boundaries that currently focus usage of computers in the most rudimentary direction.
Computers and the collaborative experience can be so much more, some examples of which might be:
- using an astronomy program collaboratively in the field while actually looking at the skies
- experiments in recording and cataloging nature and really doing scientific field work like the scientists they might one day become.
- making music in groups with each person focusing on a particular part of the song, then remixing, tweaking and re-releasing, like real musicians.
- playing educational games in groups where team building becomes a natural element, just like in online/lan games.
- creating teaching materials that can be distributed and shared across groups, classes and schools, thereby facilitating an easily transferable repository of teaching content.
- online discussions about particular moments in history, sensitive laws, todays culture, and the politics of life, all which encourage interaction and sharing of ideas.
- the uses of sensors to measure the environment, be it measurements, temperature, ph levels, or atmospheric pressure, and recording these.
Not only are all these activities fun, but they are practical real time user experiences that allow children and teachers to trace their educational progress.
