One might say that we do not have time for anything but just-in-time these days. Of course it is important to learn backgrounds and philosophies - but the rest should be learning-by-doing - and learning by doing together - more fun and much more efficient. Learning facts just-in-case is a waste of time.
This time is the time for radically different approaches to most things.
"Learning facts just-in-case is a waste of time"
moahhh
Greetings from California, were we are currently conducting field research with the multidisciplinary InnoSchool project, collaborating with UCSB.
Schools on all levels are currently facing a big development challenge - the studying, teaching and learning processes take place more and more outside the school, enabled by technology.
The management of innovation and change in the schools and their developing networks is an exciting and relevant research area!
Heard today that the cost for a lap-top per pupil equals 2-3 books.... Time to do the obvious thing.
On the practical side of debate of the one laptop per child goal:
Where the OLPC XO laptop (the one laptop per child initiative of Mr. Negroponte) has sofar failed to deliver on its promise to provide a laptop for $100, it was announced this week that HiVision ()a Chinese manufacturer not surprisingly) is the first one to put a laptop on the market for $100 (€76).
It's only a notebook though. The specification are pretty basic: it's making use of an Ingenic Jz4740 processor of 360MHz , has a mere 128MB of memory and 2GB of storage. It only contains two USB ports; they're using the older 1.1 standard, in stead of USB 2.0.
It's running on Linux 2.6.24.3 and will be delivered with a pdf reader, e-book reader, Abiword, e-mail program and Internet browser. It will also have an emulator to play Supernes-games.
For this price all schools in Finland should be able to afford. And that ...the cost for a lap-top per pupil equals 2-3 books ... says as much about the low-price solutions as it does say about the high price of studybooks.
offcourse the costs of ownership of a laptop, especially one that is in the hands of a pupil and that needs to be both safe to use and usefull is more than the costs of buying the hardware,
training the teachers, making material available that can be used in classrooms, making the needed wlan architecture etc. it all ads up.
giving children access to internet under controlled conditions and training them to use computers is very important, but I don't think that giving them a laptop each, (they are fragile), is the best way to achieve that.
