SXSW slides, CSCW paper, and more

[chimerically]

Last month I gave a 12-minute talk at SXSW about One Laptop Per Child as part of a Future 15 panel. The crib of that talk (with picture-heavy slides) is now available on my website at http://research.morganya.org/ames-sxsw-futures15-olpc.pdf. I'd love to hear your thoughts about it. It's a pretty short read, and for those of you who have been

Comments

[chimerically]

Yep, I interviewed all of their parents, and they were all very supportive of education (they did a range of things themselves). I also used Turtle Art/Logo in elementary school, actually! It was a once-a-week sort of thing. Some of those programs were indeed antecedents to OLPC.

Games aren't necessarily bad, but it's funny how we set up a double-standard regarding them depending on which kids we're talking about. If it's in the US, games are villainized. If it's elsewhere, it's lauded as time with technology. But really, what kids are doing in each case isn't all that different. Part of my dissertation will be deconstructing the category of "games" to talk about how diverse an area it really is.

The results from Montessori are mixed -- in the long term, I've read it doesn't make much difference, though for some kids it helps in the first few years of elementary school. But the schools are expensive enough that there's a strong selection effect already (parents who are willing and able to put time into education at home are also more likely to be willing and able to pay for Montessori).