One Laptop Per Child Talks

In July 2006, Barry Vercoe served on a panel entitled "One Laptop Per Child: Hope or Hype?" at the National Educating Computer Conference (NECC)

Barry Vercoe's panel video/audio.

The transcript of Barry Vercoe's panel:

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Necc Live, It's called Necc Live

"Good afternoon and welcome back to Necc Live. I'm Chris Walsh from Weston and we are broadcasting live from San Diego, CA the Necc 2006 conference. We've had a great time so far and we are pleased to bring you umm a great segment here on the One Laptop Initiative.

Hope or Height obviously this morning the key note from Nicholas Negroponte got a lot of people excited about the One Laptop Initiative and we have three great, umm, panelist here to kind of talk about that and other issues related to one to one computing today so welcome guys. We have Eon Gukes, Barry Berko & David Thornburg. Why don't we start by just introducing the lot real quick and tell us what you are up to these days and then we will circle back to One Laptop."

"52 time zones in two weeks. Uh Singapore twice, traveling, working on four different books at this time and in my spare time resting on my laurels."

"So, nothing it's a slow month (laughing)"

"Absolutely"

"Well I have been staying pretty close to home. I'm in media lab and developer of the One Laptop Per Child. A lot of my software is running on there and for us owned by the 7 days a week habit."

"Wow, David"

"Umm, I have been umm traveling in countries with state department advisories and doing things like that. Uh our big focus for the last year has been Open Source software and the, uh, fact that the United States is finally starting to pay attention to Linux so large parts of the world are already there now starting to happen here so we are doing a lot of work in Open Source"

"And you got a new book"

"I do have a new book called When the Best is Free: An Educator's Perspective on Open Source. Which I was told is not only the best book on the topic it is the only book on the topic (laughing) ah and which also means it is the worst book on the topic, but in any event yeah, and, and the reaction to Open Source is finally making sense to Americans and, and that is really terrific. We do a lot of work in Brazil, umm, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand you know the usual cast of characters."

"Well Open Source is obviously a key part of the One Laptop Initiative,"

"right, yes"

"so lets turn back to that. Obviously a lot of people are really inspired by the keynote this morning. We were good enough to have Nicholas on the show briefly, umm, and talk about it so tell us from you perspective, umm you know what's at the heart of this project? Why, why are we doing this?"

"At the heart is, Linux is the operating system which is Open Source. The software that I'm contributing which is all the music and audio software is also Open Source I made it Open Source LGPL about 5 or 6 years ago so it fitted right in. Uh, but I been making a lot of extensions to that which also have become part of the Open Source community software and it's just the way to go. So if I need experience on root here um to the stage where one of the hardware developers or hardware providers on the lap top itself had a lot of devices who make the little prediction that does the audio, gave us a driver that they regarded as an in-house proprietary driver because it was based on Linux theoretically it shouldn't have been proprietary, but they gave us only the binaries to start with and you know we said its got bugs in it they said give us the sources and they did and we found the bugs and I said now that's the beauty of Open Source. You don't have to worry about it yourself, the world will take care of it and you just put it out there and that is what happens."

"So Open Source is clearly key to keeping the cost down for the One Laptop Per Child initiative. But this is a big initiative I mean we are talking a hundred billion dollars potentially for every child in the world to have, um a lap top. Is this going to make a difference?"

"Well, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder is what I always say (other person laughing) and the issue here, this is an amazingly exciting project. However, I will quote the great American philosopher David Thornburgh who 10 years ago said you could put a state of the art piece of technology on the desk of every single student, every single teacher, even god forbid every administrator, in every place in the world and if that is all you do the only thing that is going to change is the power bill is going to get a hell of a lot bigger, because the most powerful technology in the classroom was, is and remains a classroom teacher. But not just any classroom teacher, a classroom teacher with a love of learning and an appreciation of the esthetic, the esoteric, the ethical, the moral and who understands Gardner and who understands Bloome.

The issue we have here is that if we buy these technologies we place these technologies with people and if we assume by osmotic adoption that something significant is going to happen the problem is, is to much of the time we take the technology and we fold the technologies so that it ends up reinforcing our old assumptions and mindsets about education. For the real issue here this is spectacular model and we know that if kids are going to explore this there are going to be some very interesting things happen. But I am concerned about the staff development issues, the training issues that absolutely have to go with this if we are going to make this and truly transform learning not just simply use a new tool in an old way."

"Is there, is there an in between stage though where first you get it to the kids and then, then you can bring the teachers along or does that have to be both at the same time?"

"That's the, that's the theoretical aspect here is that as we remember from VCR's, kids always learn how to use the home VCR faster than the parents. And in this case if you put a lap top in the hands of every child, not just talking about distributed you know so that shared one in-between five or ten or something like that, but every child has a lap top that becomes their precious little thing that they'll look after, they'll go home and they'll sort of peruse it and become very familiar with what it is which is really a tool for learning."

"ummhnn"

"and once they get to this stage realizing this is a tool for learning they'll become really quite, ummm, devoted."

"I don't, yeah, I don't disagree with that perceptive, but we're doing a project right now in the state if Pila in the city of Belaine right on the Amazon, and an all Linux based project and what we have found is that even when the children have, have the technologies that if unless you have done something to help the teachers get out of the children's way to let them use them in creative constructive ways the machines get co-opted and, and, and you could have a forcible teacher who comes in and says well instead of working with Logo you should be learning how to create power point presentations, or spreadsheets or things like that so the points that Nicholas made this morning,"

"Things that they can control?"

"thing that they can control. And, and, and so to me the movement, certainly Seymour's movement has always been about the shift of control and how to get, uhh, how, how to get students empowered to really develop their own thinking and moving towards open ended projects and inquiry and all of these sorts of things and you know he certainly took a pioneering roll on that in the 70's and going in the synagogue and going into these other countries and doing absolutely marvelous things, but to just have the technology do that I think you really need the human beings who are going to support that cause other wise these tools will get co-opted. They absolutely will and, and that's something its, it's a concern. So I don't think it's either or I think its both and."

"Bingo."

"You have got to have; you have got to have both of these things. Obviously you could have all the staff development in the world if you don't have the pull thru of the technology to make a difference in the lives of kids nothing is going to happen. By the same token ah, as, as Eon quoted, sure you know if, if you just give people the technology and, and hope that something is going to happen by osmosis Eon's right, it, it won't."

"So how are we going to do that on a global scale? A hundred billion dollars just for the lap tops? Is it five hundred billion for the, for the training I mean we have it hard enough training people in this country let alone trying to do it internationally. How would we do that?"

"Well, you know lets take a look at a hundred billion dollars. A hundred billion dollars is what? One third of the money we have spent in Iraq so far."

"Sure, it's a couple of F-14's right."

"Yeah, so, so I mean, it's not that on the scheme of things globally it's not that much money. Ah, and, and so it's a question of where are priorities are as, as a planet. Ah, because this is a global movement and, and I think it has to be viewed as a global movement. My favorite, one of my favorite versions of Linux is called, is called Ubuntu and, ah, because it's really crisp and clean and sells beautifully is a great desk top and what not, developed in Africa and supported in the Isle of Man, which I had to go to Google to find out where the heck the Isle of Man was. Off the coast of England, little tidy place has a football team and a software company, and uh anyway, uh, and it's own language Manx, I never knew that. But ah, Ubuntu is a bantu word and it means I am who I am because of who we all are together, and that is such a powerful concept, because it is about a sense of community and building learning communities is around technology is very, very powerful. And the problem we've got right now in the United States, let alone the rest of the world, is we have a 4 to1 student computer ratio, which is, isn't even close to a revolution. We're not even at 50% penetration in the US and we think we're hot stuff."

"mmhh"

"And on a global basis it's much worse than that. So anybody who has an Infusion model that says we're going to be bringing this to every child on planet earth, and every teacher on planet earth is to be applauded and supported because even if the project doesn't achieve its goals it will put the fear of God into the Dell's and the, and the Compaq's and everybody else, and Intel and get them going. The Intel Edwise machine for example, is a little more powerful, a little more expensive. But a very interesting architecture developed in India, no, no there's another machine that was developed in India. Where ever it was developed, but it's an interesting machine, interesting idea. The fact that MIT has made there hardware Open Source in the sense of giving people the plans for these machines as I understand it, that is unheard of for MIT, I believe."

"For anyone."

"To give away intellectual property like that, ah breakthroughs and display design that Nicholas was talking about this morning, terrific. Two watts is power consumption because that is something human beings can generate, very important. Um I think that uh I think that the use of um of um ah, grids and, and the whole way that the wireless network operates is brilliant absolutely inspired. So the underlying models of this machine independent of the details of whether its got enough force power to excite us, the ideas behind it are just outrageously good."

"Here's what I hear, I hear good idea, technology will be there, take care of itself, but there is still this gap. Are you guys addressing this gap around the human capacity issue?"

"Well, the word he was using was societies, building societies and one of the recent software that we are developing there, Incidentally I should say that we started out with Ubuntu, Linux we have now shifted to Red Hat, because at the beginning Red Hat really wasn't ready for us,"

"OK"

"they now are and so that is why we have moved over to that. But one of the development pieces of software that you can actually see running over there at our booth is um, called sugar. It's sort of a sharing piece of software that enables kids on different machines to actually share things with one another. It's really meant for developing community and this sort of thing your talking about, as opposed to just you know focused in on one piece of hardware."

"Right."

"The point I think I want to make because I don't want us to get into the situation where it sounds like we are beating you up for what you have done. I applaud you. The energy, the vision, that you to undertake this task this is a magnificent task. The concern I always have, I sound like a broken record when I do it is that one of the problems we have right now, I do this little exercise in audiences where I have them all stand up, close their eyes, circle on the spot and I ask them to point North and everybody is pointing in every which direction,"

"see there is a great metaphor for education today because we are all, we all have the best of intentions, but we're pulling in different directions. Then I take a compass out and I say alright there's North. I have them point north, close their eyes, locate on the spot, all point north, they all point north, they're all aligned. And one of the things we have to do is we have to make absolutely certain that our technology intentions are aligned with our learning intentions. And what I truly want to, Sorry I truly want to happen is I want to ask the question at the end of the day. If we provide these kids with this kind of access, open access to these things and amazing tools, what are they going to be able to do differently? And I am saying I want, I truly want us to all align so we're all pulling like dogs in the same direction on the dog sled. I want that to happen."

"Yeah, well we're basically aligned behind two or three styles and people like, um Seymour Papert, and their sort of leading the way and were sort of following along and developing software that adheres to their principles, so ah it's not as if we're all running in different directions we are actually,"

"no, no not again and I say I applaud, this is an amazing undertaking."

"Well, people like um, Alan Kay also, Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, who have been for many, many years innovators in this whole area of software for learning and so forth."

"I was, uh, I debated, uh Seymour in ah Washington awhile ago and I talked about the fact that it's all well and good for us to talk about, one day and some day that this is what we are going to do, but if we don't deal with today, if we don't deal with those issues we will very, very quickly lose our credibility. And so again I'm, I want it to be more than just Johnny Appleseed here are the computers. I mean Johnny Appleseed is a great metaphor, but it truly at the end of the day what I want to be able to see is that they have been able to use this technology to transform the learning experience. To be able to take these kids to places, too simply they can't go."

EON:
"One of the things you are missing there is the fact that we are going out on an extremely broad base. We are approaching the world. We are not just targeting one country, or one state or something like that, because that's where we started when we first of all did this project in the state of Maine. But now we are just broadcasting and getting the word and the opportunities out to all of the countries in the world for you know progressing a very, very broad front is what were, what I think."

"I think one of the frustrations, Eon, is that, uh, if you, if you take a look at the Logo movement, which I was of course, part of you know, years ago that really bought into Seymour Paperts concept that the way to learn about thinking is teaching a machine to do something and in the process of teaching a machine something you had to know it well enough to be able to teach the machine to do it. And so learning how to program was really essential, and Logo started to, uh, get accepted in US schools. Other countries really went whole hog for it. US lagged a lot and it, it came up and then it sort of died down and there is still an underground of it, um and there is wonderful work going on. For example, Uri Wilensky's group on NetLogo out of Northwestern University and people like that. I personally happen to like NetLogo a lot better than StarLogo, which is an MIT project, sorry no offense, ah, but, at least Uri is from MIT, but,"

"That's OK, I was going to say,"

"it doesn't matter it is all in the family, but umm, programming languages like that can play a really powerful role if we can get the educators to realize, as Nicolas mentioned today, its learning about learning, not learning about stuff."

"mmhh"

"And there is some learning about stuff that kids need to have, I mean there are some things kids just simply need to know and the hundred dollar lap top is simply going to be able to allow them to address that. But at the same time it is going to have built into it ah, programming languages like Logo and my guess, I happen to not be a Sweet fan because I was at Xerox Parc for 10 years, I know Alan Kay very well, and I didn't like small talk any better than, then I like it now,"

"mmhh"

"that's just me. I was a Lisp, a Lisp guy and a Logo guy so that's it. Religious war fare folks don't worry about it. Well different classes of nerds have inherited different parts. Uh, my understanding is that now kids will have a choice. They can become maximally incoherent in two languages uh, um so that's good. But the fact that it's built into the machine and you can't get the machine without it is probably going to encourage some people to play with it, because at very least they are going to say, Oh, this is neat what's this? And kids are wonderful, what's this thing they're going to see it, they're going to click on it their going to say how do I make this do stuff. And Seymour said that, um when I had breakfast with him a couple months ago, he said that to him the important thing about the MIT hundred dollar lap top was that it needed to be self-documenting. That um, that you turned it on and it could suggest to you things you might want to play with and do. I don't know how much of this is actually,"

"It's the diamond age, interactive book you remember the uh, diamond,"

"Absolutely, Yeah right,"

"OK"

"Sure and which of course was, see the Dynabook was so incredibly popular because we didn't have a clue on ever built it. In fact I had written a paper in the 70's that said that a flat panel color display of that size that is behind you right now was mathematically impossible to construct. Ah, it's not my proudest moment of publishing papers but I,"

"But you admitted it and that's good"

"that's right."

"Transparency"

"Yes, I was there for the world to say it couldn't be done and I hope that what it did was encourage people to prove me wrong and you know in retrospect, but um, the Dynabook concept was interesting in that way. And, and uh, of course Alan Kay had come up with that idea while he was still in Utah, but he brought it with him when he came to, to us at Xerox Parc and we worked together on that project. That's why I invented the touch tablet that is used on the Palm and all the other hand held devices. That invention was created by me to facilitate the building of that type of device. So I care deeply about all this."

"Well, you bring up these other devices, I think that is part of the discussion I want us to think about, and when we've got not only the one hundred dollar lap top initiative, but we always have Intel's initiative,"

"Yeah the Edwise,"

"Just in general,"

"Yeah."

"People are trying to put a lap top in every child's,"

"Right"

"um, hands, but clearly we've got consumers that are choosing these devices."

"Right."

"Um, and so how does that play into the mix here? Are we putting so much into this effort of lap tops and really missing the boat?"

"Well let me give a quick response to that, and I know Eon will probably have something to jump in on. I think one-to-one is a myth, I don't think one-to-one is a goal. I think one-to-one is sort of a weigh station on the way toward something else. I think technology needs to be ubiquitous. I don't one-to-one and in my office,"

"five-to-one."

"Exactly, five technologies for one person,"

"Yeah."

"and the critical issue is that those become useful to the extent that they interoperate. That I can seamlessly go from this device to that device and so on. Now the media lab has historically done research in that area. Didn't the media lab people do those silly little building blocks that have the characters that go back and forth you can buy them now, the sharper image?"

"Don't say it to loud they are exhibiting them down there (laughing)."

"OK, but the idea that, that devices ought to be able to talk to each other. Ah, my son's doing some work on that at ASU right now, ah that's critical and we haven't done that. The fact is that to get your phone list from that phone to that I Pod is a pain in the ass."

"Absolutely"

"Can we say that?"

"Yes."

"Yes, OK, alright"

"No FCC on the internet yet, right?"

"OK, but, but I mean you know this if you have ever tried it right?"

"Right"

"I mean that's it's painful and it shouldn't be painful."

"Right."

"Now Bluetooth at least gives a protocol,"

"To talk."

"to talk, but you still haven't developed Esperanto yet and that's, and that's the missing piece."

"What do you think?"

"Well the universal translator, well again I going to come at it from a different angle. I worked as an ____ consultant for Singapore. Why didn't somebody to be the top economic nation in the entire world always get the top scores on the tems? They are on-to-one there. They are truly one-to-one and basically the question you have to ask is, what's changed?"

"So, Right"

"I had a conversation with their minister of education two weeks ago he said top academic kids in the entire world that can't think their way out of a wet paper bag if their life depended upon it. And he says, we're a nation with no natural resources, not even fresh water and we can't just have people who regurgitate the old we have to have people who create the new. And so, you put the technology in there by itself and I say, so what? Alright the real issue here is that it's about how you use that technology and it's about the whole notion, like David says that we want this stuff to be ubiquitous, we want it to be transparent. We don't want a micro chip that is in our clothes that when you put it in the dryer it says be gentle. You know that type of thing. But the whole point is the lap top is absolutely, though, the hundred dollar lap top is absolutely a piece of that. Alright."

"It's also how you think about the technology."

"That's correct"

"Last time I was in Singapore, which was about a month ago I detected a real change from my previous visit of maybe a year and a half before that, that they are now running scared just as they are in Taiwan about the industry that has supported their economies, for the last umm, 20 years, the economic miracle of those places, ah, where now they are being undercut, they can't just send out copies anymore they are being undercut by things mainland China. In fact in Taiwan some of the enterprising people are going over and actually manufacturing in mainland China. And the people in these countries, Singapore, or, or Taiwan have to learn to create, have to learn to invent they have to move higher up in the food chain in order to come up with products and new ways of thinking. So it has to do with how you think about technology. How you use the technology to sort of invent and create the ah, the economic community."

"My concern, I think, is and it's a concern in Singapore, it's a concern here that under no child left untested, I'm sorry, sorry, No Child Left Behind, No Superintendent left standing, that what we end up doing is we end up graduating highly educated useless people. People have really good school skills, really good test writing skills, but they aren't ready for the world that is out there. And this is exactly what's happening in Singapore despite the fact that they have got these strong academics, these kids leave the system that's held them up for 12 or 16 years and they fall flat on their face. So, so again I think the real issues are not hardware issues, the real issues are headwear issues."

"Yeah, unhun."

"The real issues hear are about mindset issues. About how we take that technology and we leverage it, because the technology as David said this isn't about teaching PowerPoint. This is about helping kids to be better communicators. It is not about teaching Microsoft word it is about helping kids to be better writers. And learning about the technology is nothing but an incidental, but essential by product of that process. Cause the real issue in education is thinking and the hundred dollar lap top, the palm pilots the I pods and things like that they are simply the vehicles that will allow us to go there."

"Absolutely, now you have all brought up international examples, and so one of the things I am thinking about, do we have just over hype here? In Singapore, in Isle of Man, everywhere else are they just waiting for this one hundred dollar lap top? Are they just can't get enough of it, and were just over thinking it here?"

"Well, I think you know, it's the rest of the world clearly has ahumm, has a challenge in getting technology. In some cases, in some cases it's just because the economies of the nations are bad, in other cases, like Brazil its not that people don't have the money its that there are terrorists that make it really prohibited to import technologies from other countries. So that is something Brazil could fix just by you know changing their, changing their uh terrorists. Um, but yeah there is a demand, there is a need I think that is global. I wanted to touch on, I've already reinforced something that Eon just said though because it actually does tie into this. The big fear that I've got right now is that this country is losing its creativity.

And there is a wonderful book by Richard Florida called The Flight of the Creative Class and he talks about how we have policies in the United States of isolationism that are actually going to hurt us because, uh, we're not bringing creative people and ideas in for the rest of the world, and a lot of creative people here are leaving. And I am going to give a, I'm speaking at a workforce development conference in West Virginia next week and one of the stories I am going to tell there is, is kind of an interesting one. Motorola's galactic headquarters is in Schaumburg, Illinois about 20 minutes from our US home. And the closest good restaurant to Motorola's headquarters is the Brazilian Churrascaria, Brazilian Steakhouse,"

"Ahh yes Eon loves those places."

"I remember, I remember."

"And I thought that was curious. So we were down home, in our home in Masifi Brazil in the north east of Brazil and I went over to cesar which is the setter for advanced systems science, its kinds of like our equivalent of the media lab ah, which is just a few miles from our home and I was talking to the executive director and I found out that all the software for the razor cell phones is designed in that lab. Now its not that its being written there by a bunch of five dollar a day coders, because there are no five dollar a day coders in Brazil, It's designed there by people who are making wages and it is costing Motorola a fortune to have the software for the razor designed in Brazil.

The reason they are having it designed in Brazil is because of the creativity of the Brazilian software engineers. And this lab is an interdisciplinary lab, it has a fine arts group, it's got everything else, its got like you guys you know, and its, it's a magnet and its just amazing to me that obviously Motorola would rather design the razor software in the United States they can't find the people with the requisite skills to do it. So this country, the United States, has got a huge challenge and part of this is being exacerbated by The No Child Left Behind perception that we need to teach to test, that it's about a body of regurgitatable knowledge and as, as Eon says you know the binge and purge model,"

"Information Bulimia."

"information bulimia and when you put a machine in a child's hand that is designed from a different perspective, because you see I don't see this as a technology movement, this on lap top per child. I don't see limits as a technology movement; I see them as social movements. These are movements that are making a statement about how human beings should be humane, and creative, and joyful. You know when did joy leave education? It used to, No I'm talking about at conferences like this I remember years ago and remember that it was so much fun. You know people were laughing all the time and teachers were giving other teacher software they wrote themselves and all this kind of great stuff, it was joyful times. And now it's all shrink wrapped and you've got the boost Barbie's, you know brains by, I'm sorry but you know body by Nautilus, brains by Mattel. I just, you know come on you know lets just have some fun. Well, you take, you take Linux on a little box and you put in some creative stuff and you put that in the hands of kids and teachers and you sit down in a corner and the next thing you know its Tuesday because you got lost in something because you were having so much fun with it. And anything that brings that joy back is going to be good for this country. I agree with Daniel Pink."

"OK, alright Daniel."

"The MFA is going to be the new MBA, I have no question of that. My son is a professor of electrical engineering and fine arts. You're going to see more of those types of professorships, you're going to see more interdisciplinary stuff, not less as time goes on."

"Right."

"So his future is secure. He's already is able to support me in the manor to which I have become accustomed."

"(laughing) Good."

"And to which is important as a father you know to have that happen. And we need a nation full of people and quite frankly we need a planet full of them, because when we get all the children on this planet who can celebrate knowledge, celebrate culture, not as a melting pot of a soup that is homogenized, but more like a salad bowl where you get the delight of different flavors that come in, what in Brazil we call tropicallia. It's, it's exciting, its vibrant, its alive and it is not a culture that supports the concept of conflict. Ah I'm talking armed conflict. Because when you truly understand other people in the world and you realize this is a planet how can you fight?"

"Ah, well the creativity we found in media lab where we do, we do actually have a big mix, I'm professor of music and media at some times,"

"Yeah, see there we go."

"that one half of the people that who have come to media lab as students and faculty alike they are actually in their fine arts. So what we are finding it is the people who have this natural desire to express themselves. It's the creativity, the expression these are the people who are going to burst their way through whatever technology barriers, these are the people that sort of innovate. Now another important thing about innovation, we found in media lab that innovation occurs when there is a clash of cultures, when there is a clash in ways of thinking, when there is a clash of ways of doing things,"

"Sure there is."

"and as a result we bring in students from all over the world, bring in faculty from all over the world and it's the interaction between those people,"

"But don't you see the cultures being hatched in the sense that, that someone says Oh, wow that's different I'm going to take a piece of that cultural idea and incorporated into mine. So, Yeah, that's where it comes from. It's not about homogenization."

"Well speaking of interaction lets let our audience potentially interact with us. We do have some folks watching here live in San Diego. Is there anybody who wants to step up, be brave enough, to the microphone and ask a question from our panel here?"

"Oh here comes a trouble maker."

Audience member:
"I'm actually, I'm an ETC when I'm at work, but I was a music teacher and now I'm a doctoral student in technology,

panelist says: "there you go"

Audience member continues:
"so I fit the mold, and I wanted to um, to sort of reinforce what Eon mentioned earlier which was this notion of um without the support what will happen with these devices, but I'm also the optimist, because I think maybe what we haven't talked about yet is the fact that a lot of the richest learning occurs outside of the formal school setting."

Panelist says: "absolutely"

Audience member continues:
"and I think if these devices are just loaded with some of the tools thats gonna assist kids in connecting with each other globally or even regionally or locally, that's going to be a tremendous boost. So I don't know a lot about the kinds of software that is being envisioned to ship with these units, but I think if its around some of those social or collaborative things its going to cause people to connect and interconnect and talk about their lives and their practice and their passions, I think that's going to take care of a lot of the pieces, so it may not, I mean I would love to say its going to change the whole instructional model across the world, that would be outstanding, but I think as that becomes a really slow movement, I think the kids are going to jump ahead of us in many ways much like they have done with online gaming and other things to get some of the skills that are missing."

Panelist says:
"We live in a media culture that builds things up in order to tear things down. And my, my greatest fear is, I, I believe, I truly believe in gladwell and the notion of the tipping point and what we have to do is we have to start building, and building, and building and suddenly things will explode. The problem is, is that we live in an ain't it awful world and what I don't want is I don't want the media to make to jump to a conclusion just like they do after a team loses one game that all is lost. I absolutely want to make sure that this thing sustains itself. Not just today, not just tomorrow, but this carries on and in doing so truly maybe we can transform the world one person at a time."
Audience member:
"Can I toss one question in, can I toss one question in without monopolizing so the question I think that is just running through my head now is how can we get sort of the same scale of conversation and movement going on about what really rich learning looks like when it is being facilitated by teachers? I mean that would be another that would be something that would really be exciting if we could get that

Panelists say:
"This is been something that we have been trying to do for thirty five years."
"The great American philosopher Neil Postman said, Children enter school as a question mark and exit as a period. The primary kids love school and high schoolers love lunch. Primary teachers teach children, secondary teachers teach subjects. Alright, what happens, what truly happens to these kids I believe the tipping point for these kids is about grade three where learning goes from being this incredible multimedia experience to becoming increasingly drudgery. And I happen to think, I just spoke in front of the Texas legislature and I said to these people from the education committee, what's the opposite of pro, con. What's the opposite of progress, congress. Exactly OK and the issue is that many of these people who are making decisions that effect the lives of kids, they're, they're senior year was grade seven there toughest two years were grade one. OK and the problem is, is these people are making decisions and they haven't been in a classroom for thirty years. Alright and I said to these guys, they were guys, it was a male orident.

I said none of you should ever be able to make a decision that affects the lives of children or teachers until you have been chained preferably to a middle school classroom, in the middle of May when the air conditioning has gone down and that smell, you know what we are talking about, little hormones that lay. Cause that's that's the issue, that critical issue right now that, that we have these incredible tools and as Yogi Bear says it's deja vu all over again and what's changed? I think we do a great job in American schools today of preparing kids for 1950 and I may be being optimistic there OK and my fear is again that we are going to take this magnificent tool and instead of letting the tool shape the children, but basically, I'm sorry, instead of letting the children shape the tool, the tool is going to shape the children and basically its going to be same old same old all over again."

"Well our philosophy that of media lab is that of tools to think with and that's the thing that we feel we are injecting into these societies is something to think with."

"And I think that that also evokes some fear into some people. I think some of the reaction, some of the negative reaction that I've read to the oil PC ah project is, is that Oh my God if this happens educations going to change. Well we can't let that happen."

"Right, yeah."

"and so I'm sure you've gotten some, you've seen some of this push back now they'll hide it in other ways by saying Oh the machine is under powered. I happened by the way I would love to see, thirty dollars more you could have a little bit more umph to it OK, we'll talk, we'll talk, we'll talk later. But lets say, lets just talk about the NUY's three hundred dollar thing. If you had a three hundred dollar machine and loaded it up with the same philosophy because, because technically it's software, but in reality what they are putting on preloading on that machine is a philosophy about how children learn and it isn't a philosophy that came out of last weeks issue of Newsweek, it's a philosophy that came out of several lifetimes of thinking about this. And, and including Seymour Papert's work with John Peajeay and all of this stuff, this stuff has been tested on a global basis already and has been shown to work, and now there's this Infusion potential that's there."

"Yeah, well the potential of making people think differently is even visible with such things as the Intel four hundred dollar knockoff."

"Yeah, Yeah"

"It's a knockoff even in color of the blue machine you saw on the screen this morning."

"Right"

"It looks just like it, but it cost four hundred dollars, um you know so already, you can see already four hundred dollar lap top is forcing industry,"

"Yes."

"to think differently. Because you have to admit that the software system that gets bloated and very slow and even Linux I must say, the current Linux that we're running on them systems over there is itself getting a bit bloated. So the small hardware is going to force the Linux people to come down."

"So is that the right direction here? To force the industry. Well, can we trust industry to help us figure this out in education just like you said we can't trust the politicians to help us out."

"Let me, I, I'll I used to have a client that I no longer have in the hardware business, ah, and the reason I no longer have them will become apparent in a second ah and when the hundred dollar lap top came out I went to the client and I said ah what do you think of this machine? And it was immediate dismissal, it's a toy it can't be built you can't build a flat panel display for that price. We know because if it could be built for that price we'd be buying them, etc., etc, And I said let me tell you how this display works and I talked about the reflective mode verses the transmissive mode and how you get color for free just by putting that, that grid in the back, ah to which there official response was holy shit. Ah, because they hadn't thought of it see that was the point and I said look, I said you know, I don't kill the messenger I'm just telling you that this thing is going to happen and they said no one wants that. What they want is the, this big mega machine and they want all this and that and I said no, they want something that's reliable that works you turn it on it's there and I said you're not going to get that with anything that runs software and comes out of Redman, Washington.

You know that's, that's a given. Beyond that the, the challenge with industry who by the way is now suddenly more than happy to fall all over themselves to do four hundred, you watch TV you see the ads Dell four hundred and fifty dollars quantity one. Well if I can do four hundred fifty dollars quantity one, quantity one million should be a lot less and if you knock off the fifty bucks that they have to send as a, a tribute to Redman Washington, and stick Linux on there instead it is four hundred dollars. So they've already met the price point, but they're not going to preload it with the kind of software that MIT is doing because they're going to say our market doesn't want that. And of course if you, see the focus groups are obvious the worst things to have because what people will say they want is what they are already doing."

"Sure."

"and you know if you keep going where your going your going to keep getting what you got and so its, its time for something new. Now the positive opportunity here in the United States is that in 2007 NCLB is going to be rewritten. If things go as I plan in November (chuckling) um that could be a good thing. And already MIT's project has made enough noise that I think there will be a seat at the table to talk about what education might look like here. Because I tell ya if this country starts to see what other countries are doing and to take it seriously they realize you know we got tennis shoe marks up our back and I'm sorry you know a wall with Mexico is not the solution to anything. Uh."

"Speaking of walls we've got an invisible wall here. Are there any other questions from the audience, anything, anything burning? Yeah. Come on up, step up."

Audience member asks question:
"Hi, my name's Lindy McQuen and I'm here from Australia. I had the fortunate position of winning the outstanding leader of the year here at NECC."

Applauding.."Congratulations"

Audience member continues with her question:
"ah, I want to throw a question to you about working with teachers, because I've moved my cross hairs off the teacher in trying to work with teachers in professional development and I've moved it unto the university staff, because I figure that anyone who can only run power point, word and the library software can't possibly prepare a teacher for the kind of world that this machine is going to open up. And I'm really excited about the machine it's going to be cheap enough for every kid to have one. So if eighteen hours a day they can do fabulous great things together and that will make them tolerate school a lot more."

Panelists reply:
"Sure, Yeah, exactly they'll take it home."

"I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm a New Zealander you may have

Audience member says:
"I noticed"

Panelist:
"and ah I've done a lot of work in Australia recently and you know working with the education people and the universities in particular. At the time we were trying to start a media lab in Australia and running into exactly the wall you are talking about. The push for education there is in disarray and there teaching very hard and fixed things and not sort of creative ideas, not instilling creative ideas and I wasn't able to move them off the dime on that one."

Audience member replies:
"I think what you need around the one lap top is the salvation army of education who are the people who work with the people as those devices arrive and bring the ideas to them. Because what I have found in working with teachers is they are actually wonderful, creative, terrific people and all you've got to do is give them a little bit of time and some great resources and they will do astounding things with them. It's just their not prepared for that by their faculty or in their graduate programs or in the professional development that they are offered it's very um, targeted to maintaining the steps of one."

Panelist replies:
"Yes, well you see part of the problem in Australia is people like Randy Nelson who is minister of education what, a year or so ago is now minister of defense or something like that and um, OK these people are making some of the decisions you are talking about. Deciding that the universities have to be at their own level and all the other things. I mean their policy there making isn't sort of put into the hands of the people who have the real experience, that's the problem."

Audience member again:
"The concept of Electra about constructivism is that issue.

Panelist:
"Yes, that's right, Yeah the little bit of paradox right."

"Well, what is the best ah instructional video series that I think university professors aught to watch is a television show called hardware wars and I don't know if you've ever seen it, but they take teams of ordinary people to a junkyard and a yeah junkyard wars I think it is and the instruction is that they have to build for example a trouble shay that will throw a refrigerator. OK out of whatever they find in the junkyard. And during the process for any of you who have watched this know what I am talking about. They go around and they interview the teams about the decision making process and their materials testing and everything else and what you see is the most delightful thinking going on and problem solving plus you get to see people build machines that on occasion will throw a refrigerator or do something else bizarre. Ah, and there's a magazine devoted to this sort of thing called Make that's published four times a year. Gary Stager at the Thornburg Center put me onto it and it has instructions on how to build things with absolutely no redeeming value at all in society except that there fun."

"Like the Mentos, Diet Coke."

"The Mentos Diet Coke, yes ah, and one of my favorites was two issues ago they had an article on building bottle rockets, water rockets with soft drink bottles and one of their readers thought that if you strapped enough of these together you could actually launch a person. And so in the following issue they had the only article I've ever seen that starts with a disclaimer that you should not try this. Ah, because this guy strapped together, I don't know at least fifty or sixty of these things and a shoulder harness for himself and uh at an altitude of about a hundred feet it occurred to him that it would be good if his parachute opened and he mentioned that it was really painful to have his chin down like this as he was launched. The guy was a bloody idiot, but, but it was fun to read because here was somebody who was learning. He will never forget the experience."

"That's for sure."

"Ah, and he, he understands Newton's Laws better than most, now and is to be applauded for that. And I think that we would be better off if schools were more like, if textbooks were more like Make magazine and schools were held in junkyards. Ah so you know because that's were people could really build stuff and do stuff. You know we are, we are human beings, but we are also human doings and we've got to do more stuff."

"It's interesting because I shared an office at MIT with Marvin Minsky on occasion and I asked him once, actually I asked his mother you know what did she do to make Marvin's creative and uh, Marvin responded himself she used to let me go down to the junkyard when he was young and he would come back with these pieces and sort of make things and eventually he made a you know confocal microscope and some things of that sort, but it was from that kind of a beginning."

"Sure."

"So, what I'm hearing is a tremendous amount of hope for this initiative as a stepping stone to greater initiatives clearly we have a big system to change, lots of things to work on, but it's good to know that we've got thoughtful people thinking about these things and I want to thank each of you for joining us here today on the NECC Live show. Any closing statements, Um, Yeah."

"Two things, first of all Walt Kelly, cartoon strip called Pogo we are confronted by insurmountable opportunity, that's exactly where we are right now OK. Second point I want to thank you, I want to thank you, I want to thank you on behalf of humanity for what you are doing. It is an amazing, amazing task and I want to thank this man over here because he is the reason I'm in this business today. If it wasn't for you I'd be in a same plate position. You are the man in this. Thank you very much Nicholas."

"Oh thank you. Thank you deeply."

"Back to your point earlier, back to your point earlier I think we have just bought back the joy and the love back to NECC all in one simple web cast so thank you guys for joining us we're going to wrap it up from here in San Diego, I'm Chris Walsh from Weston. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you soon."