World: r3wp

'A Costly Lesson' - interesting article about Birmingham's (Alabama) 
decision to buy XO laptops for all school children grades 1 through 
5 (originally 8) - I believe the first municipality in the developed 
world to attempt such a project:


http://www.bwcitypaper.com/Articles-i-2009-11-26-232786.113121_A_Costly_Lesson.html


It's hard to overstate the personalities involved in this story - 
the mayor involved was convicted only this month for taking bribes.

It seems incredible that they would go ahead and purchase all the 
machines without even a thought for how they'd be used, yet as they 
have been distributed, there does appear to be great potential in 
utilising them as educational tools...

Sure there is. Just watch any Alan Kay video demoing the XO and see 
how well they can be used and how clever the software really is. 
They are just so different from your average laptop, there may be 
a strong requirement of retraining of teachers.

Yes, and arguably the most difficult part is done, the distribution...

I was part of the school board for the elementary school where I 
live in and this kind of project would have been refused at the school. 
 its wrong in every respect.  every school is missing some amount 
of money, and when 5 million in cash is spent in such a random manner, 
unfortunately, kids loose in every way.  


this kind of drastic change  requires a top-down revisit of policy, 
structure, curriculum, teachers professionals, etc.   people don't 
realized that individual schools often have to pay for a lot of details 
which school boards don't readily acknowledge.


who pays for the (usually costly) full/part time technician at every 
school.  what happens in class when some laptops die, etc, etc.  


One (rich) school in montreal did something similar by purchasing 
a (real) laptop for every 5th and 6th grader.  Although the computers 
where school property.  


By the time they arrived, they where integrated into every aspect 
of the school's daily operations.  paper for all assignments was 
made illegal, educational games where pre-installed, and complemented 
the curriculum, every student was given training on some word editor, 
email, how to get, send assignments, and IIRC there was a school 
portal for the program, where kids could get/provide all they needed.

the best aspect of the programs for the schools probably was that 
every school was forced to have its network infrastructure upgraded, 
which would not have happened otherwise.

I guess if you are going to drop in equipment like this, the XO is 
a good choice as you can still get benefits without a structure. 
 Another possible advantage is that as there was no technological 
agenda (ie. not some tech company pushing), it allows some level 
of experimentation, allowing the best use for these machines to emerge 
- from the kids and teachers - instead of it being imposed.

But yes, the core point of retrofitting a semblence of structure 
contains a lot of painful hidden costs.

any sane person would have implemented the idea progressively.  

There are hundreds of way this progression can be tailored.  but 
just massively dumbing little noisy plastic boxes  at schools without 
any real plan... well, is just dumb  :-)

but by chance they where XO .... cause at least the kids had fun 
using them even if the adults around them had no clue how to use 
them  ;-)

There was a large scale test project in France for  8 years.

Every pupil in the Department Landes got a laptop. The costs were 
around 45Mio. €.

The project is regarded as failed, as the pupils used the laptop 
only for gaming.
At least some newspapers wrote that.

ordinary laptops are horrible for school use

not just from a software standpoint, but from a physical standpoint.

How evil, kids playing games. They're not going to learn anything 
from play ;-)

depends if its GTA or WoW... not sure  ;-)

not much you can learn from tetris

reflexes?

My daughter has a part time job at the city library shelving books. 
 She's the fastest shelver the library has .... they have to shelve 
all sorts of book sizes.  I told her its because she spent years 
practising with tetris :)

Watching my brother's 9-year old playing action games is amazing. 
He can move faster than I can keep up, which I never had the opportunity 
to at that age. I'm sure he gains a lot of knowledge in the area 
of quick thinking along with reflexes.

how is his health though ?  how much running, jumping, social interactivity 
etc is he getting while developing those wonderful keyboard skills?

He seems to have fine health and ok social skills. He's quickly becoming 
one of the smartest kids in the near family.

He still asks for help though, when doing Windows stuff. :-)

mankind has spent millennia developing physical skills .. tracking, 
hunting, killing ... I hope PS3 doesn't ruin the next generation!

Now we're hunting and killing paperclips in our cubicles. I think 
I little gaming doesn't hurt. :-)

I think it can also help aging people, if the games are appropriate 
for them.

well, mental faculties reach a peak in one's early 20s ... so anytime 
after that would be appropriate.

The brain can be trained like a muscle. The more one uses the brain 
to solve all kinds of puzzles, eye-hand reflexes, etc. the better 
one become at using the brain overall, also in different situations. 
I think, games can help a lot in exercising the brain.

music is one of (if not the) best brain training things you can do. 
 it forces every part of the brain to work together and in sync. 
 senses, reasoning, coordination, memory, reflexes.  A study showed 
that adults only learn musical instruments a bit slower than children. 
 its the practice that's the good part.   

its also one of the best anti-stress things out there.

mental faculties reach a peak in one's early 20s

 - I've always wondered if that's true, or coincidental - that used 
 to be around the age people would have gotten used to their first 
 job after they're done with high school.  (Here in the US, at least) 
  Now there's college, which may push that age back a bit...

at twenty IIRC the number of neurons stops increasing, peaks and 
then starts to decrease slowly.

Doesn't matter, because you keep learning to use them better

It's indeed one of those FUD stories

About two months ago I stumbled upon Tonido  and the Tonido plug 
computer. I ordered a Tonido but then canceled the order because 
the application software supplied was not multi-user. I have recently 
ordered the Pogoplug which does appear to allow multiple users. Check 
it out.

You can find info on these devices at www.tonido.com or www.pogoplug.com. 
 I strongly believe that Rebol needs to be in this market. How difficult 
would it be to port Rebol to ARM running Linux? Wouldn't be nice 
to see Rebol Services running on these devices?

Better to ask Carl on R3 chat and or directly using feedback or submiting 
it as a wish on CC -> www.curecode.org/rebol3/

Hi Oldes, I did submit something via feedback a couple of weeks ago. 
My thought in posting here was in hope of drumming up more support 
from some of you Rebol gurus in recognizing the importance of being 
in this marketplace.

Ports will be the domain of the community when the host code is released 
(except for those REBOL inc. considers musts)...I would love to se 
R3 running on ARM as they are nice, lowend, cheap devices that rebol 
apps would fit well

RT will have to port the R3 kernel to ARM, but I think it is inevitable

I think you only need to campaign if you DON'T want R3 on ARM :-)

mental faculties reach a peak in one's early 20s

I don't think, that's true either. I can do many things better and 
faster now, than 20 years ago, when I was in my early 20ies. I can 
program a lot faster and with fewer errors now than back then. Now 
and then I try a computer game on my Amiga, that I haven't touched 
in 20 years. I can finish games now, I couldn't figure out back then. 
My reactions might be a bit slower now, even if I'm not really sure 
about that either. But I solve the puzzles better now. Many years 
of practise has also made me a better piano player now, than 20 years 
ago.


I don't know, where that saying come from, but I can't see it being 
true.

the two are not synomyous.

See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4995546/Old-age-begins-at-27-as-mental-powers-start-to-decline-scientists-find.html

Clearly skills that require training improve with time eg. programming.

27 Is around the age that most people would have had most of their 
children throughout history, so it makes a lot of sense that evolutionary 
selection wouldn't have cared much after that

Eh?  I thought you wrote about that it was FUD

That you get dumber starting in your twenties, yes

But the start of the breakdown of the body in general around 20 is 
well known

Also, the deterioration of the brain is not the only that happens. 
It was found recently that neurons are not static after that age, 
but keep growing

I more often find it harder to find words now than 20 years ago. 
But I know more words today, so it's mayby logical. Languages never 
was my big thing, and my english really sucked, especially when I 
was a teen. I don't understand, what they mean by "mental faculties 
reach a peak in one's early 20s". Sure, if they measure on people, 
who don't exercise their brain after school-years, then they'll see 
that. It's the same, if they measure muscular abilities for someone, 
who used to do physical exercise and then became lazy.

My spelling was better when I was a kid, but I think the older you 
get, your brain gets filled with all sorts of junk, diminishing your 
capacity to see the right answer in simplistic matters like spelling, 
or perhaps you care less about it, because you realize how important 
or non-important it is to get right, saving brain power.

I'm a way better programmer now, more thanks to various thinking 
techniques, than to specific learning about algorithms. I'm better 
at leaving a problem alone when I know it will take days to solve, 
if I bruteforce it. "Wiser birds" and such.

I think if I went back to university and took the same courses again 
that I did back then (but have forgotten all about), I would do a 
lot better in them.

Today in my 30's, I feel my brain is developing a whole lot more 
than in my 20's. Even my short-term memory is improving.