[LINK] NSW Nettops for Students to Keep

[Richard Chirgwin]

Brendan Scott wrote:
> Michael Skeggs mike at bystander.net wrote:
>   
>> I'm going to disagree a bit here.
>>     
> []
>   
>> Regards,
>> Michael Skeggs
>> Disclosure: I did a Masters in Education about computers a decade ago.
>>     
>
> You might want to criticise my post on this then:
>
>
> Wouldn’t $1Bn worth of Open Coursework be better?
> http://brendanscott.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/wouldnt-1bn-worth-of-open-coursework-be-better/
>
> Now, much as the prospect of Linux laptops in the hands of 197,000 NSW school students warms the cockles of my when-I-have-my-open-source-hat-on heart,  it’s less than impressive to me with my parent hat on...
>   
My not-detailed-enough-to-count-as-a-critique...

If you found a way to (say) reduce the cost of a $40 textbook to $10,
the likely effect would be administrators saying "great, a reason to cut
the budget!" -- rather than the intended outcome of textbooks-for-all.

Today, the coursework in a public high school ends up being squillions
of pages of stupid worksheets, because this is cheaper than
incorporating the same stuff within the textbook and distributing the
textbooks as consumables. The result is that even a straight-As student
can be repeatedly criticised on the basis of "organisational skills",
which means "unable to keep track of 20 loose-leaf worksheets a week".

If you reduced the cost of the textbooks, I would bet that the ****s
that distribute incomes would *not* look at the more efficient spending.
They would, instead, say "but why can't we have the textbooks thinner
with the worksheets and save even more money?"

Of all the upsides to the computers-in-schools idea, the one that makes
the most sense to me is that the worksheets could be e-mailed to
students and they wouldn't have to waste otherwise valuable education
time acting as filing clerks - which is, in essence, what's demanded. I
really can't my head around filing paper as some kind of high-value life
skill ...

As an aside, I've got a fiver for charity that says *no* government will
resist the vendor blandishments and actually go through with a Linux
solution. Not a hope, however desirable it might be (yes, I have in
general become a complete Linux bigot).

RC
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