[ale] Uruguay beats us. Laptop for every child

[Jim Kinney]

On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 7:20 PM, William Fragakis <william at fragakis.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-10-17 at 12:22 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
>> Kind of like teaching "Drivers Ed" at school. Do you want the kids to
>> learn to _drive_ or learn to drive Ford Escorts.
> snippage of stuf I agree with

:-)

>
>> It's nice to hear about another school and the same process being
>> fought and won.
>>
>> Total World Domination one school at a time!
> In this case, one country at a time. It wasn't a school in Uruguay. It
> was the entire country. In the meanwhile, we have computer labs because
> we can't give every kid their own computer.

Clearly there are other countries that have priorities more focused on
the long-term improvement of their society than we do. Maybe we need
some economists to win a Nobel for research showing the societal
benefits of a well funded educational system.

Senator Ted "The Lion" Kennedy once bellowed from the Senate floor
that "for the cost of one month of the Iraq war we could have rebuilt
every public school in the country". He was wrong. It would have need
6 weeks worth of that kind of funding.

Short-term profit mentality breeds more short-term profit mentality at
the expense of long-term goals. As more people jump on that bandwagon,
the overall progress of society grinds to a halt. "Jobless Recovery"
seems to be an indication of this. 1 month of the Iraq war costs would
fund 185,000 public school teachers annual salary at the "top teacher"
rate of $65k/year.
>
> wf
>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 10:04 AM, William Fragakis <william at fragakis.com> wrote:
>> > Running Sugar.
>> >
>> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8309583.stm
>> >
>> > '"We have a lady who's been teaching for 30 years and when they gave us
>> > the computers and the training, she asked for leave because she didn't
>> > want to have anything to do with the programme. Later she changed her
>> > mind and now computers have changed the way she teaches."'
>> >
>> > 'The laptops have an open source Linux operating system with a user
>> > interface called Sugar. It has attracted some criticism from detractors
>> > for not being mainstream.
>> >
>> > 'However Mr Brechner believes that children should learn computer skills
>> > regardless of the software available. Blind children were being taught
>> > on a Microsoft Windows operating system, he said. '
>> >
>> > Exactly what Daniel Howard and I saw when we introduced K12LTSP at
>> > Brandon Elementary.
>> >
>> > wf
>> >
>> >
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>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness