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A Laptop for Lauren My granddaughter, Lauren, is nine. Born in 1999, her life began as the 20th Century closed. It’s conceivable that she might live through every single year of the 21st. The 20th Century was the first in history to have a fully literate population. Previously, only the ruling elite could read. That century was characterised by mass media organisations selecting content and publishing it to a passive audience. Initially in print, the coming of electricity spawned radio, television and film broadcasting – but the audience was always passive. We sat there and absorbed what they offered. The 21st Century is already different. The arrival of information technology has made creating, copying, repurposing and publishing something that every human being can do. We are no longer passive receivers of information. Everyone is a publisher – blogs, social networking and YouTube are just the first signs of this new world. The prosecution of teenagers for copying music was an example of the death throws of the old system. Copyright law and the giant media corporations must adapt or die. In this amazing new world, the school curriculum has been trying to find ways to use ICT to improve test results – a classic case of doing an old thing with a new technology (see my film at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=n1-q9M2cYnU) A couple of years ago it was “proved” that embedding ICT in secondary schools was worth half a grade at GCSE! Wow. Billions of pounds of investment for half a grade! The reality is that this approach is just trying to automate the learning process using technology and its effect will be minimal. Information technology is actually making fundamental changes in the way we learn and the way we access learning. It is also having deep underlying effects. Just as industrialisation caused a pressure built up during the 19th Century for a curriculum to make the population literate and numerate, so the pressure is building again. In 1870 the pressure exploded in the form of the 1870 Education Act and free education for all. In 2008 the pressure is still building. Early signs are the frequent changes to the Primary and Secondary curricula but the explosion hasn’t happened yet. The trigger may well be the arrival of handheld technology. Smart phones can now access the web and bring Alan November’s 2003 prophetic question right to the fore – “At the moment we block unsuitable websites; what are we going to do when every child has 24/7 broadband access in their pocket on a toy?” (See the talk, after which he asked this question, at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QVLS_rlwnwI). What of the children who will be the citizens of the future? The current generation going through school is being taught a curriculum that was designed for the industrial world. In the future, schools may well be very different. Learning certainly will be. Professor Stephen Heppell calls today’s children the “lost Generation” (see http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ahbBfj_DjTM) One possible solution would be to give children such as my granddaughter access to the technology now and help them to become fluent and safe users. In this way, their school learning will progress unhindered (and possibly helped) but they will also begin to access learning in the 21st Century way – by communicating, collaborating and self-motivating. Taking all of the above into consideration, I have in mind buying a laptop for my granddaughter – and that opens up a whole new can of worms as you’ll see in this open letter written to her parents (my son and his partner): Open Letter: "I want to talk to you about the thinking behind the idea of getting Lauren a laptop and to ask you to discuss whether you think it's a good idea or not. Don't decide until you've read all of this a couple of times! The laptop I have selected, rightly or wrongly, is called the eeePC. It's cheap and cheerful and designed to be just that. It runs Linux not Windows. It's A5 in size and has solid state memory not a hard drive. It costs £200 - not exactly cheap but certainly not expensive for a computer. The
Reasoning Giving children access to the family computer can cause all sorts of problems, even with user accounts, so having one of their own has obvious advantages. It's their own. They can use it whenever they want to. They can do whatever they want with it (within safety constraints obviously). The world is changing and even the former head of Ofsted, Chris Woodhead, has said that the National Curriculum and Testing has failed. There are significant changes in the world and also in education and they are all caused by the effects of the new technologies. Being familiar with technology is now a life skill, more so than reaching Level 4 in the 3R's by the age of 11. Risks The notion of every child having technology in their pocket is becoming a reality. These devices are falling in price and the new solid state memory that is beginning to replace hard drives is going to make mobile computers move into the mainstream. The notion of kids having 24-hr communications access in their pockets on a toy is becoming a reality. Giving Lauren a head start can do no harm – providing we address safety issues. The eeePC can connect to the Internet - but it isn't connected all the time. It's something that you can choose to do or not, as and when appropriate. In the future kids are very likely to have 24-hour broadband access in their pocket just as many now have a mobile phone. In fact it may be their phone that connects to the Internet (mine already does). The dangers are obvious. But we're not going to turn the clock back and un-invent the technology any more than we're going to go back to using horses for transport. So we might as well grasp it and see where it goes - but in a safe environment. What
Does it Do? It may be that she finds herself bored with it and doesn't use it. Or perhaps she will. All this is fine. “One
Laptop per Child” There's a company by that name that set out to produce a $100 laptop for the third world. The OLPC laptop now exists and you can even buy it - actually you have to buy two - one for you and one to be given to a child in a developing country! How's that for an initiative? It isn't taking off at great speed but it's creeping forward. And they couldn't get it to under $100; I believe they cost about $200 each. Personally I wondered what on earth a third world child in Africa would do with a laptop when they haven't got electricity or even fresh water !!!! But it seems that people in the know reckon that the technology brings benefits that will lead to emancipation and freedom – I suppose by giving them access to knowledge (e.g. how to make water safe, how to build a well? – Your guess is as good as mine). Oh, and they run on solar or wind-up power - plenty of both in Africa. And of course with no Internet either, how do they get information? It seems that whenever two of these OLPC laptops are within a few metres of each other they automatically connect and open up a channel of communication (I suppose it's something like MSN but just between the laptops present). Imagine that in an African village – or a UK classroom! Children
Off Task? Conclusion But I'm hoping you'll talk about it and say, "let's have a look at it, let's play with it ourselves, and then if we feel comfortable with it let's give it to her". I'll investigate it first and see if I can work out what on earth you can do with it. Then I'll meet with you and show it to you and you can have it to play with. And then we'll discuss whether to give it to Lauren or not. If you've got any questions just let me know. And when you've read this through a couple of times, let me know what you think." |
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There
is also a something much bigger going on. The eeePC and other A5
laptops of this sort that you'll have noticed in the shops (or will
certainly see more of as time goes by) are running parallel with a
movement called "One laptop per child" (OLPC).