Seeking Stamp Collectors for OLPC

My brother Joe, who is famous in the world of population genetics, tells how for decades those working in his corner of biology (phylogenetic inference – the science of constructing inheritance trees) were scorned by the reigning molecular biologists as “stamp collectors”. While the molecular biologists pursued the secret of life itself, the stamp collectors puttered around with statistics and large data sets, working out how to make sense out of data patterns.

Then came the crowning triumph of molecular biology – reading the human genome. Note that I do not say “decoding the human genome”, as it suddenly became clear that no one knew how to make sense of gigabytes of gene sequence data. Who, the moleculars wondered, could make some order of all this data?

Then everyone looked at each other and exclaimed in unison, “the stamp collectors!” Joe and his colleagues were showered with money and attention. Their grant requests were now favored for approval, and at Joe’s university a brand-new Department of Genome Sciences was created which welcomed his august presence.

The parallel is this – the OLPC project is about as far as it can go without empowering its own “stamp collectors”, by which I mean those who have long labored in the field of experimental education. Yes, there are others besides Seymour Papert, and the official OLPC line on the topic, that the educational research had already been done and that the engineering was all that was left, was always blatantly untrue.

The arguments in the comments of OLPC News about what “killer apps” are needed indicate that very little input is coming from those with experience in trying out new approaches to learning. A fast check of Google turns up lots of hits on “experimental education” (which seems also to hit on “experiential education”, which may not be too far from its probable subset “constructivism”), and it is clear that there is a robust literature and publication ecosystem in that field.

Good places to start inquiring would be at education schools at local universities. Not all the profs there are involved in experimental ed, but most should know the ones who are. OLPC fans should seek out contacts there and should arrange to get together in groups with interested education people (profs and students) to discuss the potential of the XO and to provide assistance in programming for those who wish to try something. Audio transcripts of the discussions should be posted on-line so the meetings can be broadened in time and space.

Education is a notoriously stodgy and bureaucratized field, and most students in the subject won’t see the point of trying something new, but the ones who do are likely to be motivated to try something really new rather than incremental improvements. They’re more likely to come up with alternate solutions to the orthodoxies than to make slight improvements on test-taking.

I particularly want to mention someone I first met four years ago who is implementing Montessori teaching methods on computers, and who needs help in the process. Danielle Martell has her website at www.montessorisoftware.com , and she’s been hoping to get hold of an XO (and, I presume, some help in programming in Python as well as financial support) to help her get the software in working condition for this level of computer. Her work is applicable all the way down to infancy.

I’m going to take the XO I just received (yes, I bought one through a friend who ordered G1G1 – or G2G2 in this case) and see if an old friend of mine is interested in looking at it. He spent several years traveling around visiting various late-‘60’s alternative education situations, and was instrumental in shaping my thinking about computers in society back in 1971. He has just retired after a career teaching elementary-school science at private and alternative schools, and has published his thoughts on science teaching on his website. Sorry not to give a URL for you, but I do want to discuss it with him first, and he is recovering from a life-threatening illness.

If you’re serious about making the XO a success at its stated goal you have work to do. Find the “stamp collectors” who have spent their lives finding out what does and does not work as well as what might work, and get in touch with them. Show them something of what the XO can do so they can broaden their thinking to include it as a tool. Help them connect with other groups who are doing the same thing.

This will all be work that OLPC initially discounted as unnecessary – but it will be needed to save the project. Intel/Schmintel – they may have more money but we have the enthusiasts, and it was enthusiasts that created the personal computer industry. Just don’t expect everything to happen by magic (the original OLPC model). Get busy!

Comments

[cheap cigarettes]

Of course, communication infrastructure is one of the first targets of any invading military force to control or destroy. Therefore, one may say, a nationwide cellular network would not survive the depredations of any military force.

[Tinker]

Alexandre,
While NN may now think this is now just a laptop project, and be ready to turn it over to Gates... we are getting open systems into the field, so forget what they want to do down the road and take some ownership over what you can toward the 'original' OLPC mission right now. Everything missing from the packages now, especially in the way of lesson plans, software, textbooks, experiments, etc., YOU can help supply!!!.
Lee, this is another step in the right direction, but I'm looking for more... If you don't want to wade into the olpc wiki, start up your own educational computing stamp collectors wiki and/or forum and run it like your old club, targeting it toward small and large systems, from linux phones, PDA's, XOs, Deskmates, all the way up to clusters. (hmmm.. XO cluster...) Be the bridge between the ivory towers and the villages! I'm sure Waylan will keep it linked in for reference to olpc folks, whichever way you take it.

[John Huelsenbeck]

I like this entry, and just want to comment on your stamp collecting analogy using phylogenetics. Your comments are right on. I started work in phylogenetics around 1990. (Your brother was central to my development in the field. He responds to e-mail correspondence within minutes, it seems, and he answered many of my early, dumb, questions with patience.) The field was not treated very seriously for a long time, and I believe that many people who were working in the area in the 1970's and 1980's had difficulty being funded. It is remarkable how the field of bioinformatics has essentially grown up around phylogenetics. I think many of us who were working in the area 15 to 20 years ago feel a little like Chance the gardener (Peter Sellers) in "Being There"; the utterances of stamp collectors are now respected by people interested in making sense of genomic data.

[Francois]

One of the first article that i have found about the OLPC-XO had a profond effect on me. In it was a statement by M. Negroponte that all of this was not about a laptop but about an education project. A new way of empowering the children in third world country by giving them a learning tool that they could use in and out of school to gain new knowledge and aquire new skill that where previously out of reach for them.

Before reading it, the XO was just another piece of clever technologie to play with.

I believe that you are right about the need to get more peoples from the education world involve in the project. A lot of work needs to be done to make this tool as effective as possible.

People like me are usually more incline to dig into the technical aspect and to often forget about the actual "mission" of a device like the XO.

Thanks to the ideas of peoples like you we, sometimes, get back to earth and start tinking in the right direction.

[Alexandre Enkerli]

Quite refreshing!
I happen to be testing out an OLPC XO-1 (loan from a friend) and reading documentation by and about the OLPC. Was getting increasingly concerned that people close to the project were shutting out dissenting voices and that few people outside the project had a nuanced view of what it really was.
I first found some thoughtful comments through Erik Hersman's White African blog (including Binyavanga Waiwaina's Bidoun piece). Then I found your blog through a comment left on one of the OLPC FAQs.
I'm an ethnographer and a (university level) teacher. As it so happens, I was raised by a practicing constructivist and I can relate to social constructivism in many learning/teaching situations. Yet, I'm quite uneasy about the approach favored by the OLPC people. It does sound as if they were experimenting blindly, without even paying lipservice to *current* research in pedagogy, educational psychology, or educational technology. It sounds as if they all live in a bubble and get defensive any time someone applies critical thinking or creativity to their pet project.
Your stamp collector analogy seems fitting. Those who have done the groundwork are willing to help, easy to reach, and able to work. Why are they not heard? Such a high-profile project needs to collaborate with the largest number of people possible. Of course, I would include teachers, social scientists, and academics from the "host countries."
I still get excited by the OLPC's original mission. Not because I think laptops are the best way to help children all around the world. But because it could help everyone have an honest conversation about learning and cross-cultural communication.
Too bad the OLPC is now a technology project...