This quake is actually good news: it's better to free energy little by little than to have it all in one big shake. It's the difference between slowly opening a shaken soda, and opening it at once.
In the Red Escolar project, the computers are not directly in the every-day classroom, but in a separate lab. This takes away the possibility that computers may distract students from their every-day learning.
The computers, set with Internet access, are used to share ideas with very distant schools, which have different social, economic, cultural and geographic situations. This brings a richer understanding of the world to the child.
-o-
I agree with the idea that programming has helped a lot of us during our early days, helping our creativity and abstract thinking, and probably marking our way of thinking, and career preferences forever: it did in my case. I was one of those lucky 8-bit processor computer owner, as an infant.
But you have to admit it: learning programming requires a lot of exposure to the computer for the kid, and that just doesn't happen at school; at least not in Mexico, where the kids recieve from 1 hour to 30 minutes of computer exposure a week. But this is enough to participate in collaborative groups, and get to know people from far away parts of the country.
-o-
Programming distracted me from a lot of other school activities, but I was more distracted with games. Actually, it was the games that motivated me to start programming ("I'd like to make the machine do that by myself!").
-o-
You won't get any bad postures if you stare at a screen for as little time as 30 minutes or one hour, but you can try harder by getting a computer of your own. Too bad mexican reality doesn't let you ask this to 95% of the population.
-o-
I can imagine a salesman trying to think about the "advantages" of a computer inside the regular classroom, to get a better comission check for the month.
Slashdot Mirror
This quake is actually good news: it's better to free energy little by little than to have it all in one big shake. It's the difference between slowly opening a shaken soda, and opening it at once.
Friendly, compared to DirectX.
Here I go, spoiling my Karma again.
In the Red Escolar project, the computers are not directly in the every-day classroom, but in a separate lab. This takes away the possibility that computers may distract students from their every-day learning.
The computers, set with Internet access, are used to share ideas with very distant schools, which have different social, economic, cultural and geographic situations. This brings a richer
understanding of the world to the child.
-o-
I agree with the idea that programming has helped a lot of us during our early days, helping our creativity and abstract thinking, and probably marking our way of thinking, and career preferences forever: it did in my case. I was one of those lucky 8-bit processor computer owner, as an infant.
But you have to admit it: learning programming requires a lot of exposure to the computer for the kid, and that just doesn't happen at school; at least not in Mexico, where the kids recieve from 1 hour to 30 minutes of computer exposure a week. But this is enough to participate in collaborative groups, and get to know people from far away parts of the country.
-o-
Programming distracted me from a lot of other school activities, but I was more distracted with games. Actually, it was the games that motivated me to start programming ("I'd like to make the machine do that by myself!").
-o-
You won't get any bad postures if you stare at a screen for as little time as 30 minutes or one hour, but you can try harder by getting a computer of your own. Too bad mexican reality doesn't let you ask this to 95% of the population.
-o-
I can imagine a salesman trying to think about the "advantages" of a computer inside the regular classroom, to get a better comission check for the month.