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Walter Bender Resigns From OLPC
westlake writes "Walter Bender, the former executive director of MIT's Media Lab, and, in many ways, the tireless workhorse and public face of OLPC, has resigned from OLPC after being reorganized and sidetracked into insignificance. The rumor mill would have it that 'constructionism as children [learn] learning' is being replaced by a much less romantic view of the XO's place in the classroom and XO's tech in the marketplace."
Did his final words as he left have anything to do with biting his shiny metal ass?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Summary and original speculation were complete BS.
To keep in the spirit of the thread, XP smells worse than your shiny metal ass.
Teach children how to learn to learn learning.
From a business standpoint, less romanticism is a GOOD thing.
That now that OLPC is no longer a threat that all of the other vendors of small low cost laptops will simply stop offering them... Just a thought... :)
Yah, yah.
1: Wait till it all falls apart.
2: Buy them up by the container load.
3: Spray the case a reasonable colour.
4: Reflash the OS to something businesses can use.
5: Profit!
There you go. Filled in all of the steps for you.
Deleted
The software stack may be questionable, but the hardware is brilliant.
Nothing else comes close for efficiency, cost, battery life (with working software), ruggedness, total lifetime, etc.
The thing is VERY tough (i've tossed mine several times), very low power (3 hours battery life with 100% broken power management. Good power management should get 6+ hours battery life for typical users), with a brilliant screen. Just put real software on it and its very nice.
Let alone the environmental tolerance: Normal notebook batteries die if you try charging them at 100F.
Test your net with Netalyzr
There were rumors posted at one point that Apple had offered to donate a core OS, but were turned down for not being completely open-source. Perhaps if those rumors had any truth, they could be fulfilled now. I'd sure rather have MacOS than linux or XP, given the choice, if I was a third world kid who wanted to learn something.
E pluribus unum
Yah, too bad for the whole point of freeing the world for the domination of a single US software company.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Maybe he was lured over to the fire nation.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
It was the demotion of Bender that prompted Ivan Krstic' to resign last month, so the damage to OLPC by their stupid demotion of Bender is not limited to just the loss of him. I wonder if anyone else will be leaving over this?
Direct Link to Resignation letter
I was going to submit this story after finding it on Digg or Reddit; the headline was focusing on Negreponte(sp?) allegedly wishing to partner with MS to put XP on XO in order to sell more units. After reading the letter and there being no mention of it I decided against submission.
What type of "real" software are you thinking of?
What does that mean? Does that mean OLPC is lacking paper clips or advanced audio technology that came hidden in a pink box? Or they lack negotiating skills that is needed to change a NO into a YES, aka ISO Norway style? May be they just need a can do guy like Bob...
I hope not. Look I'm as big of an OS X fan as anyone, but it is not really suited to the OLPC project in a number of ways. Also, the all OSS stack makes sense with regard to their mission, to bootstrap an intellectual property creation industry in these nations. Being able to edit and modify all the code provides a starting place for this project to sustain itself via the user base.
I'd sure rather have MacOS than linux or XP, given the choice, if I was a third world kid who wanted to learn something.The OLPC software is very well designed for its core tasks of educating children, which is quite different from general purpose computing. As a kid, I'd much rather have had an OLPC that allows me to learn with all the other kids in my school, than even a modern OS X system. Swapping it out for OS X makes little more sense than doing the same with WinXP.
... "bite my rubberized, lime-green ass."
Anybody want a peanut?
MS Office, of course! Tee hee.
Oh well I thought there was some news about Avatar, but I guess I'll just have to keep waiting.
Wasn't the point to help kids?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
I am writing this response on one of those laptops, running prerelease Ubuntu Hardy that I have just configured for it.
This laptop is not going to do any 3D modeling or video editing any soon, but for everything that belongs in a classroom it's fine.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Fuck the staving children in africa!
Software is the FUTURE!
Now where did I put that chair? Hmm...
A: The x86 used is already very low power and very high integration, supporting sub-millisecond sleep states. With Amdahl's law being what it is, replacing the processor with a mystic 0 power CPU wouldn't add all that much to battery life. The TOTAL power consumption is 5W already, and the CPU's share of that power budget (when you consider CPU and not the associated control logic for memory, IO, etc) is low.
And in return, x86 compatibility is a good thing, because it opens up a huge world of binary software. For one, x86 is far better supported by just about everybody.
B: The OLPC actually uses a 15 W-Hr LiFeP (Lithium Ferro-Polymer) battery. Which is actually 4x the charge lifespan of LiIon, and has far greater environmental tolerance, and can even be composted for disposal.
Test your net with Netalyzr
On departure, Bender was spotted saying
"I'm going to start my own laptop project with blackjack! and hookers!"
Getting African hooked on Microsoft products is helping them? Or teaching them tools that they can later modify and build on themselves is helping them? I mean really, do Slasdotters really have to stretch their imaginations that much to see how using non open platforms helps them less? It is definitely better than nothing, but at this point it isn't nothing. It is going from open to closed. If it had started out closed then the discussion would be different. Seriously, this is purely depressing at this point. Thanks guys. Really.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
And how does making them dependent on a foreign company for any computer-related job (which, by the time they are grown up is likely to mean pretty much any job) helping them? Phase two of the project aims to have the countries that bought the first generation laptops manufacture their own version two, based on the designs and code from version one. If you install XP on them, then none of the children will develop the expertise to to write version two of the software stack.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Nowhere in his exit statement does Bender contradict the rumors about him being forced out. Instead he gives the standard "leaving to pursue other interests". This is a conventional explanation people give to avoid antagonizing their former colleagues. This concept might be strange to shot-from-the-lip Slashdotters, but it is common among people who don't view life as extended flame war.
You give a quote that seems intended to contradict the story, but doesn't really — this isn't just about whether or not the XO should run Windows. Besides, you don't say who you're quoting. One of your sock puppets, perhaps?
4: Reflash the OS to something businesses can use.
How would one "reflash" a child-sized keyboard to one suitable for use by adults' hands?
The OLPC software is very well designed for its core tasks of educating children
I happen to think the Sugar UI and its activities contain a lot of terrific innovations, but being that I am not well-informed on the subject of educational pedagogy, I really can't say how well the software actually achieves its core tasks.
It may be exciting for students to hack together small Python scripts in Pippy or have a collaborative jam session in TamTam, but how does that mesh with a core learning curriculum based on The Three R's?
really, for just under $200 you get a brand new and "much more powerful and real laptop"? That is pure bull and even the Eee PC at ~$300 is missing many of the required features the XO has. Dust, water, and physical abuse resistance is built into the XO but not even the ~$300 Eee PC or the Intel Classmate PC. The outdoor readable display and low power draining wireless mesh, also missing from these 'other' devices but standard on the XO.
Sorry but you're a quack and don't know what you are talking about. And the OLPC XO is designed to be a learning tool by means of being a platform for interactive and collaborative applications while at the same time being a device to read electronic documents( ebooks ) because in the harshest environments where these are intended to be used, paper books don't last long at all.
Do you somehow think that this devices is designed to be like an adults laptop and should therefore be used just as an adults laptop would be used? That and adults general purpose laptop computer and all it's complexity are what kids should be taught? WTF have you been over the last three years this has been talked about? It is a dedicated learning tool and not your standard laptop computer. It is by no means a toy.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
interesting, now try this after adding the multiverse and/or universe repositories:
;-)
sudo apt-get install sugar sugar-activities
logout and then change the session type to Sugar and see what you get.
You can also use the standard application install tool(s) if you're not a commandline speed junky. FYI, Sugar has not "logout" option so you have to either reboot or restart gdm to get back to the login screen to boot the XFCE desktop or what ever one you've installed.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
that maybe true for TimTam but one of the eToys does animation along with story telling. There's alot for kids to learn in just this one activity. There's the writing part in the story telling. There is the picture by picture part which might relay the concepts of cause and effect. Also, that small events tied together can create a very difficult or complex event. Whole classwork sections on story telling can be used to teach writing skills and and content creation while at the same time, they're having fun doing it.
I hope that somewhere there is documentation on what the activities provide in the way of learning and what others have done to implement classroom sections using these activities. I believe this is the kind of open source-like education and sharing that Mr Bender is striving for. Teachers helping teachers around the world create better and better coursework in an open environment. I'm still hoping it'll happen.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Quick, grab the samples before they disappear! http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples
Everytime I hear "corporate restructuring" the voice in my head says "That's c.e.o. b.s. for stepping on people in the name of money, despite the 1st rule of death being 'you can't take it with you'", at which point an audible and double-edged "duh" escapes my lips.
Come on, with the size of demand that's been uncovered for them? Nah. Certainly I can't see Asus giving up any time soon, since they're shifting Eees faster than they can ship them... and since I'm both broke and cheap, I've promised myself an Elonex ONE if/when they arrive.
Negroponte said Bender was burned out after helping to shape OLPC for two years" But Bender already has new plans: to launch an independent effort to further the development of the XOs' homegrown software, known as Sugar, and get it to run on Linux computers other than XOs. "Sugar is in a narrow place and it is ripe to be unleashed," he wrote in an e-mail exchange. The AP article alos goes on to quote Negroponte as saying: "that an overriding insistence on open-source had hampered the XOs, saying Sugar "grew amorphously" and "didn't have a software architect who did it in a crisp way." For instance, the laptops do not support Flash animation, widely used on the Web. "There are several examples like that, that we have to address without worrying about the fundamentalism in some of the open-source community," he said. "One can be an open-source advocate without being an open-source fundamentalist." Negroponte added, Windows might be the sole operating system, and Sugar would be educational software running on top of it. That might disappoint advocates of open-source software who helped bankroll OLPC and cheered the challenge it represented to Microsoft's dominance. Unlike proprietary software like Windows, open-source applications are developed by a community of programmers and the underlying code is freely shared.
I'm currently doing a Bachelor of Education, so I'll try explain what it could be -- I don't know OLPC's educational philosophy. Its all about constructivism; if it is 'pure' constructivism then the students decide what the problem is and solve it with the tools available, for more moderated constructivism the 'teacher' gives a goal, explains the use of the tools, then sets the students off to solve the problem "just like in real life." How this relates to the software, I'm afraid I haven't experienced it. I should probably try get it, I think.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
It appears Slashdot's editors didn't not even click the links. OLPC News is a Microsoft FUD shill. Don't like them except to point out that they are lying baboons.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Deleted
OLPC's educational philosophy was officially based on Papert and Kay's constructionism, which is related to constructivism but not the same thing.
The idea is that students build actual things (even if software is rather abstract) which they can share with other students and the teacher as a reflection of the knowledge they have built inside their minds.
60% of Microsoft's revenues come from outside the U.S. and these revenues are growing at a fantastic pace.
Microsoft has an R&D presence pretty much everywhere in the world. It is working with an African university on the design and launch of a comsat for Africa. Microsoft has become a multinational.
You don't cite any sources or define what you mean when you say "Asus is doing very well with its flagship offering.". However the chief error is more profound than that. Asus' business model isn't our problem either. Asus isn't running an educational project. Asus is just another corporation making just another laptop.
Many people conflate OLPC's work (which really is an educational project) with making a low-end ultra-inexpensive laptop because they view everything through first world consumer's eyes. These same people tend also to be shocked that OLPC isn't using the G1G1 program to generate lots of profit.
Digital Citizen
There were rumors posted at one point that Apple had offered to donate a core OS,
;-)
The offer was dumped because the OLPC guys already knew that BSD is dead.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
If you were engaged in a discussion with a person and suddenly six others showed up to shill and agree with the original one, how would you like that?
Everytime I say something, I see a six or seven nutballs screaming Twitter. In this case the off topic thread is large and suspiciously well moderated. Oh well.
I quoted the article. You would know that if you followed the link instead of flaming me. The author updated himself and quoted Bender quashing those stupid XP rumors.
All too often those who claim proficiency in pedagogy are merely hiding their lack of brilliance behind a stack of journal articles and study results. I draw inspiration from Shin'ichi Suzuki, founder of Talent Education, who with no formal training in education single-handedly created one of the most successfull methods of teaching music to children. Back in the 70s Suzuki was widely criticized by American violin pedagogues who denounced him as a crackpot. The Suzuki method was built on a common sense view of learning which begins with this observation: children naturally learn their mother tongue without the help of experts. Therefore, children know how to learn, and mothers are the best teachers.
Now apply that view to homeschooling and an interesting picture develops. Parents are fully qualified to teach young children. As children get older they benefit from subject matter experts, but it does not require a brick-and-morter school to provide them. K-12 teachers complain about the lack of parent involvement, especially as the children get older. With homeschoolers, the parent is always involved.
Hold on, there! Who says education has a core of three R's? Or a core of anything? This is just pedagogical pablum passed along year after year as if it were inscribed in stone by the almighty himself. Stringing together Python scripts could very well be much more relavent to today's children.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
I am aware of that.
It should be relatively easy to run Sugar in Xephyr, so both environments can coexist (good for development, bad for UI testing).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
3d modeling and video editing do belong in classrooms.
Liberty uber alles.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
No, we should do as much interesting stuff as early as possible. If you force kids to 'learn' what you term "widely applicable" (but, to them, pointless and boring) things like algebra, it fails. They don't really learn algebra. The only kids who learn algebra are the ones who go on to a science or similar career and would have learned it anyway in the course of their study/work in that field. What kids need is interesting, challenging stuff, including things like video editing and 3d modeling, that they will really sink their teeth into voluntarily. They will learn much, much more on projects they are interested on.
Before you argue back, keep in mind that your presence on slashdot probably means you were in the crowd that _was_ interested in math when they were pushing it in school. Unlike you, for most of your classmates, algebra class was worse than a waste of time.
I wasn't arguing whether they belong on a laptop, just in school. Having said that, I'll point out that you can use iMovie on a pretty small screen with good results. You can have very interesting 3d modeling applications running on small processors and screens, I'm sure. Just takes a little creativity and the realization that you won't be using an XO to produce the next Lord of the Rings.
What kind of processor ran Battlezone?
Liberty uber alles.
I quite agree. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. I have been screaming that they should have used Maemo or some other Webpad GUI. Keyboard and mouse support is built in and the icons are big already. Add Open Office then SHIP.
If you don't think 3d modeling is useful to learning math, sciences, and engineering, you are a genuine idiot. And if you do not think that video editing can help you learn literature you have no imagination, to boot. But perhaps I'm just misunderstanding you? Regardless, your comment is proof positive that a low slashdot ID doesn't mean anything.
Also no one should learn 3D modeling and video editing on a computer he can carry -- inexperienced user needs massive amount of resources and very large screen to be able to do anything with it.While my laptop is WORLDS ahead of the XO, I have a Compaq nw9440 which is MORE than adequate for learning 3d graphics with its Core Duo, 2GB memory, and nVidia Quadro FX1500 with 1680x1050 resolution. It is in a meganotebook (17") form factor with a three button touchpad and a full keyboard.
Given that many people got their start on an Amiga running Lightwave 3D on, say, a 25MHz processor and with maybe 8MB of RAM, and at NTSC resolutions (even interlaced with overscan you're looking at maybe 800x480 or so on an OCS or ECS Amiga) I'd say you pretty much have no idea what you're talking about.
By the way, google sketchup is a 3d modeler which can be immediately useful in a variety of projects and which doesn't require a degree to use. Perhaps you've heard of it? I bet many kids could learn to use that if they weren't being treated like idiots by arrogant assholes who think they know everything about how everyone else learns.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Children are small humans (shocking but true) and humans learn best when they are involved with something with which they are interested. Computers are useful for this sort of thing because they are applicable to basically everything.
Here's a simple truth for you: Those who are able to manipulate information have an edge over those who do not. For instance I can make my own vector maps instead of paying for them; I can also get my own information on the nutritive value of foods instead of buying a carb counter book simply by downloading a freely available government database.
I was in a GATE program in elementary school and they told me I could not participate in astronomy because I was too young. Today I am a math idiot. Perhaps if instead of quashing my enthusiasm, they had presented me with mathematics related to something I was interested in, I would be more comfortable with it today? Unfortunately, even so-called "Gifted and Talented" programs are really just a means to "deal with" "problem children" (I was disruptive because I was bored) and to park them somewhere.
What I'm trying to say is that presenting children with the maximum number of options is critical. Lots of the functionality on the system isn't necessary for all purposes. You have the option to not use it all. Meanwhile, including it may be what gets one more child interested in something that saves our collective bacon. You never know.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
3D modeling and video editing done right are VERY HARD AND TEDIOUS WORK, they require good spatial awareness and taste, and they contribute very little to one's knowledge. Done poorly they are much worse than painting, drawing or music done poorly, so they are deep in the area with diminishing returns when it comes to general education.
This is why they are not in the basic curriculum of anything -- least of all schools that are going to use those laptops.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I suppose that once they're done, every child will be able to surf the net and get trolled on MySpace even though they can't eat...
What good is a laptop to you when you can't even say where your next meal will come from?
Mathematics done right is extremely exacting. It resembles what is done in school not one iota, except possibly the proofs done in geometry. 3D modeling and video editing at the professional level are, indeed, way beyond the range of the average student. So is what a professional mathematician does. Completely outside the realm of possibility for all but the most prodigious students. That doesn't matter. The point is that kids will learn what they are interested in learning, and they will not learn what they are not interested in learning. They may regurgitate it, temporarily cram it in, whatever, but by and large it's a waste of time.
If you have cool projects for kids to do that interest them, they will learn. It doesn't have to be professional level. It just has to be, as some people put it, "hard fun". That's the sweet spot for education. Interesting and challenging but doable.
Liberty uber alles.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The Open Source community could build something that would make a real difference in the developing world --
if we stopped dicking around with laptops and started collaborating on high-yield, low-input agricultural methods, water reclamation systems, sanitation, and low-conventional-energy devices generally. Great examples: the discovery that pouring water through silk provides enough filtration to substantially reduce the incidence of cholera; the development of solar cooking technologies to help stop deforestation and prevent women from having to gather firewood alone in regions with prevalent rape gangs.
THAT is the kind of tech that we should be working on collaboratively. Though there isn't any Linux involved.
OLPC is a great idea, but it doesn't actually address the real problems of the developing world--which aren't web browsing, intuitive programming, and videoconferencing, but security, environmental repair, and conventional-energy-independent development! All this talktalk about laptops has always been the well-meaning but sorely out of touch "help" provided by people who know tons about OSS but have no idea what people in developing countries really need.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
it does work and if I can remember the final steps, it shouldn't be too difficult for many to try it out.
1) boot the Ubuntu LiveCD with a network connection
2) open Synaptic Page Manager( System->Administration->Synaptic...)
3) enable the Universe repository found in Synaptics Settings->Repositories menus
4) reload as the dialog will suggest
5) do a Synaptic search for Sugar using the search icon in the upper right of the application
6) select Sugar and Sugar-Activities
7) Click the Apply button
8) when all is done, go to the Login Manager(System->Administration->Login Manager) and unCheck the option for only single user login.
9) switch user from the top launch bar on the desktop, change the Session Type to Sugar, and use the "ubuntu" username with no password.
You should now be running Sugar with a bunch of activities already installed. I only tried the chat activity and it works great. Start it, share it with the network and then invite people to join from the network view(f1).
For some reason, I could not get the web activity to work though it works fine in my installed version of Sugar on Ubuntu 8.04.
Really, this desktop system( Sugar ) and the Journal are a really nice UI for the classroom so that the teacher does not have to spend much time on the UI. Also, students can easily get to their assignments right from the Journal and finish up what they were doing in class. Again, without very much training at all.
FYI, some activities like eToys are not 'real' Sugar activities and are instead Sqeak/Smalltalk applications wrapped in Sugar. Many of the native Sugar activities work as would be expected.
Anybody who's thinking of chiming in on this thread should have spent a couple of hours exploring this system with the understanding that it is designed for children in a classroom with a teacher organizing classwork and homework. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Why?
Anyway, you can get just as much power (with a bit less resolution, naturally) in a 15" or smaller package. Hell, geeks.com has a ~$2300 12" core duo (or was it core 2 duo?) tablet right now. Expensive, 'cause tablets are.
Whatever Amiga could do in 80's, this laptop can, too. I am sure, if I wanted to remake Tron on it, I would end up with a result technically superior to the originalTechnically superior? Only if it actually looked better somehow. Which I doubt you would achieve on your own.
Neither of those things is in any way suitable as a part of a school curriculum because, as I have mentioned before, it's hard, tedious work, and few people care for it more than, say, knitting.The school curriculum is designed to produce factory workers and soldiers. Period, end of story. They are not actually trying to educate children to be successful. They are making drones. Why else would you get them up at an unnatural hour (teenagers do NOT function well in the morning, no matter when they go to sleep) and put them under fluorescent lights (shown in clinical studies to reduce efficiency, increase irritability, and in fact to produce symptoms of ADD) for eight hours?
(Actually, producing ADD symptoms is a great way to sell Ritalin and its ilk; these drugs became prevalent only after the huge worldwide boom in military amphetamine use in WWII; the methamphetamine abuse epidemic began soon after. The entire school system is a machine which chews up kids and spits them out. Sending your child to public school is child abuse, plain and simple. I have said this to the faces of parents I know who send their children to public school, and I will do it again.
Actually I support the idea that kids (and some adults) should be KEPT THE HELL AWAY from tools that enforce a particular, narrow model of thinking and organizing one's work, lest they will learn not how to think about the things they are doing, but how to mindlessly follow a strict pattern of thought that follows from functionality of a tool.Computers aren't that tool, though, unless you're locked into a very small way of looking at them.
The Computer is the uber-multi-tool. It can become so many other tools (albeit similar ones) that to talk about using it forcing you into a particular mindset is so myopic as to be functionally blind.
You are presenting a "particular, narrow" point of view, the idea that computers must somehow stunt your development. Instead, they can be transformative. If I have a narrow way of thinking as a result of my long association with computers, it is only because other aspects of my development were neglected (like practically all of them) and the computer and the library were the only things that saved me. Which brings me to another point; you act like the computer must necessarily replace all other forms of learning. But maybe you've got such a mental block about the computer being a "bad" learning tool that you don't even see your mistake. While I am a big ol' computer nerd, I am also interested (and involved!) with other disciplines. I can build things out of wood, I can fix cars including electrical and A/C (so basically everything, with the book anyway) and
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"