Slashdot Mirror
A View From Inside the OLPC Project
icknay writes "Here's an interesting rant on the OLPC from someone who worked there, including: 'The core mistake of the present Sugar approach is that it couples phenomenally powerful ideas about learning — that it should be shared, collaborative, peer to peer, and open — with the notion that these ideas must come presented in an entirely new graphical paradigm. We reject this coupling as untenable. Choosing to reinvent the desktop UI paradigm means we are spending our extremely over-constrained resources fighting graphical interfaces, not developing better tools for learning.' I have an OLPC, and the OS itself seems quite unfinished. I buy the argument that it would be better to focus on Sugar as educational software, and let it run on Linux, Windows, whatever."
That last comment about Linux/Windows/Whatever doesn't match up with the discussion about UI paradigm. UI paradigm means the way the user interface acts, not what OS runs it.
That said, the UI paradigm of Sugar falls into the Kiosk world, along with MythTV. I would have liked to see that run as an application, minimizeable and windowable, but under XFCE or IceWM for a Gnome-like UI and integration with a standard platform.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I've been disappointed and underwhelmed by Sugar in the form that it was delivered on the G1G1 units.
Now, I'm not a kid, and I've been brain-warped by decades of exposure to the Mac, but I really feel a lot of cognitive dissonance between Sugar's stated design goals and what's actually been delivered.
For example, one of Sugar's key design principles is "recoverability," and it says "However, the primary and essential means of recoverability remains the ability to undo one's actions."
Nevertheless, the keyboard has no marked "undo" key, and very, very few of the Sugar's activities appear to support any kind of "undo" facility.
Similarly, I've read the theory of how the Journal is supposed to work, and I may be wrong--I don't have any kids to try it on--but as nearly as I can tell, the only way you can find past Journal entries is by a very left-brained search capability that requires you to have labeled each Journal entry as you make it.
There's a long essay on how the Journal is supposed to work... revolutionary, non-hierarchical, etc. But I've found "tagging" to be a royal, royal pain. It's all very well to say that "Tagging will become a fundamental process for all types of data and activities on the laptops. Fortunately, children have a natural inclination to describe their world and the things they see and do." As I say, I haven't watched kids use the thing and maybe they "get" it, but I find it extremely hard to envision a ten-year old typing in tags every time he creates a journal entry.
While I'm intrigued by the idea of a GUI that is new from the ground up and informed by a fresh way of looking at things... to tell the truth my main motivation for participating in G1G1 was to experience Sugar... I'm quite disappointed by what's actually been achieved.
Right now, Sugar is a program launcher, no better than the Apple Dock or the Windows Tray... and to this aging brain, at least, the Journal simply doesn't work very well. Much less well than the Mac Finder as it existed in 1984, for example.
However, the problem is that I think open source is a key educational feature for OLPC. The concept of a "view source" button thrilled me. I grew up at a time when you could take the back off a TV set and see the tubes inside, and smash a tube in a vise and see the plate and filament and so forth inside. Maybe I couldn't build a TV or modify a vacuum tube, but just the conceptual readiness of looking inside was terribly important.
I was disappointed in the absence of a working "View Source" button in the G1G1 build. I think it's very important that all the code in the XO be open for inspection, and that definitely includes the GUI. So however bad Sugar is, I think it would be a disaster to replace it with a proprietary GUI.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I have to agree. In my mind something like OS X lite, the iPhone interface, would be ideal for this concept of learning. Rapid, limited OS decisions coupled powerful applications.
Negroponte's dismissal of Steve's offer, only to arrive at Bill's door is rather odd. But, as the eeepc has shown, we will arrive there one day soon with or without the OLPC.
What I can't get over is the fact that the OLPC project has been plagued by so many problems. First the price increases, then the Windows fiasco (depending on which side you're on), things that don't work... While I know it's not an easy task to design, implement, and distribute a $100 laptop to kids in developing countries, perhaps a group less prone to political infighting (HAHA!) should "fork" it and start their own project.
..for the Register. The review is here.
I'm seeing this same thing on every recent article about OLPC. Can someone help me understand?
1. OLPC repeats and repeats they are committed to Sugar.
2. OLPC then says they are unhappy with Sugar and are replacing Linux with Windows... because they are unhappy with Sugar.
3. OLPC says they are going to port Sugar to Windows.
So let me see if I understand where they are coming from. The think Sugar is a mistake so they are going to solve the problem by porting it to Windows and switching the underlying OS from Linux to Windows.
WTF! Am I the only person who gets braincramps trying to parse the doublespeak coming from OLPC?
Democrat delenda est
> There's a lot of spin and intentional ignorance here and it spills out best when he says this:
Spin? Spin is what organizations do to put bad news back "on message". This is one guy, ranting. One guy who was really involved, who went out to do the deployments to places that make the term "backwater" seem a goddam metropolis, and one guy who is really bitter about what he saw. If you read about, oh, one or two paragraphs more, it's quite obvious he doesn't think XP is going to save what he considers a fundamentally doomed project.
Imagine your IT department deployed 40,000 laptops (that's about as many people as work for Microsoft) and didn't have one single person on the payroll to actually deploy the things into the field. Now imagine that in Peru.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
When Apple approached OLPC about basing its mini laptop on a light version of Mac OS X, it was rebuffed because the project wanted everything to be fully open source and unfettered with proprietary software. Now it's ready to put Windows on the XO?
With Mac OS X, the XO would have a native environment for running free software including Sugar, along with or in addition to running commercial Mac software. Unlike clone PCs, there's no vast range of hardware to support. Development tools are simpler and Apple currently has no business plan for selling its dev tools. That seems to make far more sense than slapping on a OS designed primarily to run on full sized, corporate desktops with expensive Office software licensing.
It's too bad OLPC set such lofty ideals about open development, setting itself up to drop them immediately and become yet another extension of a monopoly that doesn't have the technical merits to run on low cost mobile devices.
iPod Game Console, Tablet at WWDC? Highly Unlikely
After reading the article, it becomes apparent that they did NOT have proper business management of the OLPC project, and you don't get managers of large projects from teaching staff and professors.
I found it a depressing read. With a key person who focused on the half dozen key concepts and stuck to them, maybe OLPC could have been better with fewer hiccups. It would likely have taken a Steve Jobs to make the decisions & push needed buttons.
I see the value in business picking the best commercial hardware choice.
I do NOT see the value in forcing proprietary solutions on the third world, but also do not see the value of having software OS & Applications that can get corrupted in a device to be thrown out in the middle of nowhere. In other words, I think it would take running the OS & core applications in flash memory.
The UI is a core issue. Why should it be materially different from what a billion computers already run? If the students are going to be able to go onward from OLPC, then their "language" must be "compatible" with the other "computers" they will see later.
Too many questions. Not enough answers. Then politics hits along with MS Money.
"The cost of developing it aside, what is the problem with having the ideas "presented in an entirely new graphical paradigm," when you're giving the machines to communities in which the per capita rate of computer ownership is practically nil?"
He wasn't talking about the problem of getting people to accept the interface.
I believe his point was that with the OLPC's limited resources they pretty much managed to do nothing BUT get the "entirely new graphical paradigm" MOSTLY working. Not much of educational value was produced, unless you really do believe that this hardware, OS and UI have mythic powers akin to the monolith in 2001...
It would be kind of like starting a transportation project and as a first priority deciding that you didn't want to use any wheels because they seem old fashioned. Sure you might come up with a fantastic mag-lev train for a handful of people, but was that the mission or was enabling the greatest number of people to get from point a to point b?
If there is indeed value in putting computing devices in the hands of children, then time becomes a paramount factor. The time it takes to truly innovate a "new paradigm", learn to use it effectively, and then produce the software that rides on top of it and makes it worth having done in the first place... is longer than it takes a child to grow up... That means deferring the supposed value of the project to a later generation.
The project of getting devices to children who can gain value from them should be a separate project that is NOT dependent upon the "new graphical paradigm" project. By all means pursue the second project, but don't block the first project while you do it.
Of course this whole argument begs the question of how much real value the devices would actually bring to the children's education. So far I have heard ZERO arguments for the project based on verifiable research. I've also heard ZERO arguments against the project based on verifiable research.
The freedom he's talking about isn't the "freedom to do whatever you want" but the freedom to explore. In the autocratic family structure you describe, the parents can be strict mormons who don't allow their kids to have fun and require them to marry off at 15, or they can be easy-going sure-have-a-couple-sips-of-beer-you're-18-they-can-draft-you types. The point of the learning argument about proprietary software is that you can only learn so much about the proprietary inner functions.
your buisness argument is pretty good though, however, the OS functioning differently didn't affect those of us who grew up in the 80's when schools were hooked on apple, and now use OSX, Linux, and Windows on the same machine. (maybe those of us are a rare breed... i don't know)
quoting TFA:
Stallman similarly called a Windows port of Sugar "not a good thing to do". Here's the thing: such a port is only a waste of time if free software is not the means here, but an end Well I would agree if development tools were equally available amongst the two. Development tools for windows are for the most part flawed unless you buy a license. Since part of the point of this experiment, I would think, is to see how the developing world can help us innovate from their own background experiences, I think FOSS makes sense as a basis for the project. Further, it helps prevent hardware obsolescence over the long term, and since this is a philanthropic experiment, I should think that would be a goal.This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
"and they are incredibly obscure for new users (although no more obscure than Windows and Macintosh)."
That fallacy keeps getting repeated.
Soon after my son's 1st birthday, I set up an Ubuntu system for him. I loaded gCompris, and spent about 5 minutes showing him how the mouse works. A few days later, I spent maybe 5 minutes showing him how to load gCompris from the menu. Within a few days of that, he had no problem loading his computer and loading his software. I soon found that he was also loading other programs he liked to use. Klotski seemed to be a favorite of his. It took all of 10 minutes of 'training' to teach a 1 year old child how to navigate the Gnome desktop with no problems. He couldn't even read, and he had no problem loading the programs he wanted to use. There is no way that Gnome can be called a difficult to understand UI.
This is also why to the chagrin of many geeks, the desktop metaphor just won't go away. It works, and it works well. It is incredibly easy to understand both for advanced users and novices alike. I can't count the number of articles and comments I've read where someone is saying that the 'desktop' needs to be replaced because it is 25 years old. Really, it doesn't. There have been many refinements to it, and I am sure that more will come, but the premise is rock solid.
When the Freeplay Foundation designed the Lifeline Radio they chose not to re-invent the wheel.
Instead focusing on the design of a rugged multiband portable - in appearance and operation a radio like any other. Building on the infrastructure and experience of eighty years of educational broadcasting.
It was and is a project that would rank zero for ideological or political correctness. But the radios are out there and the program is on track and on budget.
While it's sad that Ivan believes OLPC has lost sight of it's goals, you might want to keep an eye on what's happening with OLPC Australia.
The Rudd government is looking at providing sponsored laptops for children. OLPC has set up an Australian office as a consequence. Jeff Waugh has been appointed board director, and seems to understand the issues well.
"The easy answer to that question is that at the moment Windows doesn't exist on the machine," says Waugh. "It is completely irrelevant to the value of what the whole project is all about. OLPC Australia has been set up without that ever being on the agenda. The core principal that's repeated often about the project is that it's an education project not a laptop project. Part of delivering on that idea is the open source platform. The community built around the not only the technology but also the content and the use of the device. There is a community angle that permeates everything on what the device, how it works for kids and that sort of stuff."I have no idea as to why Windows is regarded as relevant to this and some of the stuff in the press about running Sugar on Windows and things like that - well Windows is just an operating system that doesn't deliver on the vision of OLPC."
I have no doubt that Microsoft will attempt to subvert this project, as it does everything else, but so far, the Rudd government has delivered on most of their promises."I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
At that time, you could browse the ROM and OS of an Apple II or C64 (the Apples even provided a nice disassembler - and the original II had an assembler and the Sweet-16 virtual processor) and, with some work, fully understand it. You could study it and, with the proper tools (an EPROM programmer, some soldering), modify it. You could package and sell your modifications.
You can't do that with any modern computer. You can't learn from watching a multi-layer motherboard where you can't find out what connects to what in what fashion without a multi-thousand-dollar lab and a high-res X-ray machine. You can't just look up what a modern thousand-leg GPU does the way you could with a 74LS74. There are no books on that. You can't cut a trace and rewire something, not anymore.
Different times require different tools. Open source is probably the only way to see what happens in a computer these days. That's why the OLPC should be open from top to bottom.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Amen. Up until now, I have been a huge supporter of this project. This article pretty much made me write it off as dead. I work in a semi-rural school district in North Carolina with about 14,000 kids. Many of the kids and a fair number of the teachers are comfortable with computers. We have a decent WAN and a fairly stable Internet connection. Even given this, there is no way in hell I would try to implement a 1:1 laptop program yet. Deployment would be a nightmare. I can only imagine deployment in the wilds of Peru. The problem is that you can't just throw laptops at the populace and wait for the Angelic choirs to start singing. You need policies, ways to charge the things, training for teachers on how to do wikis, blogs, etc. It takes time, effort, and a willingness to be open to new, paradigm-shifting ideas about education. This is hard enough in tech-savy America. I had always assumed that a big part of the OLPC project would be OLPC people going out in the community to help students and teachers integrate the machines into education. I was shocked to hear that there is pretty much NO plan for integration and deployment. You see, computers in education are really not about the software. Computers are a tool. It's all about how you use the tool. Get ready, this thing will crash hard and Bill Gates won't need to do anything to make it happen.