One Blog Per Child

If I were teacher, I would not hide from wikipedia. Many teachers do. Citing it is often forbidden. But why run away from a giant book of everything, when it's fun to read with links and tabs. Better to adapt to it.

Rather than infrequent big projects, students should have lots of mini research projects. Asked and allowed to go questing through wikipedia, following links that interest them. Learning history or science, geometry or UFOs. Their reports would be digital. Blog reports summarizing what they had read. They would be supervised by teachers or by older students as part of their education. Teaching is a valuable skill, and experience is a virtue. And the OLPC is a necessity for this sort of thing.

We need books to outline a curriculum for schools without books. And tell us how to revive the relationship between the pupil and the teacher.

Meanwhile, I think personal technologies will be tearing off in two directions. That of the iPhone, Jeff Han, touch screen magic, and that of the OLPC. $100 laptops, mean the internet is finally everywhere. Breadth and depth.

from OLPC News: