On Sep 10, 2006, at 9:45 AM, radhika gajjala wrote:
Such projects are always written up with a great deal of celebration.
Yes, i remain skeptical.
I have seen other reports of the hole in the wall project - and needless to say it looks interesting and wonderful when taken fully out of context.
Of course the utility of computer literacy for a particular kind of global world (with it colonizing undertones) is unquestionable.Somewhat like "learning English" was in previous decades (still is) in the so-called "developing world"....
yes, i wonder about 'whose computer literacy' we are talking about. given the way people related to OLPC suggested that the simputer for textually illiterate users was a bad approach. human capacities don't always need to map into western ideations.
but is just "computer access" the goal? what does it mean to be computer literate in specific contexts?
or computer literate at all, or informationally literate. we have quite a few people here with clear, and well written opinions on that. There was actually a pretty good prior post critiquing OLPC prior to this posting on the school-discuss list. I'm wondering if we aren't seeing, much like happened here in our last set of discussions, that the evidence from the hole in the wall project is being used more as a trope than as evidence in the battle for funding/etc. However, right now it is being discussed in the e-learning forum of unesco again http://www.unesco.org/iiep/virtualuniversity/forums.php has links ... jeremy hunsinger Assistant Professor Pratt Institute www.cddc.vt.edu wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series