Computers Are Very Helpful If You Know How To Use Them

This week I have at least some responsibilities to three different jobs. First, there is my teaching job at my current school, where we are working through final faculty meetings. Then, there is my new school for the fall, who have asked me to come in tomorrow and get my bearings, pick up my books for next year, and start thinking about a curriculum development project for next year. The big one, though, is my role as Assistant Director for the summer program at my current school. Staff orientation is Friday afternoon, and the kids arrive on Monday morning, which gives me about 28 more hours to learn everything about a summer camp I've never worked at before. After that, I'm supposed to be one of the two most knowledgeable people about it. So, what did I spend my day doing yesterday: sorting t-shirts.

Let me explain.

On the first day of camp, every student gets a t-shirt with the camp logo on it. In the past, the t-shirts have always been distributed during the kids' first class. This is straightforward enough, except that, unlike other summer programs where all of the kids show up in the morning and stay all day, we have rolling attendance, depending on what classes each child is taking. They may be enrolled in anywhere from one to four classes per week, and are only required to attend the part of the day when their class is in session. This creates many logistical issues, but at 1:00 this afternoon, the one I was worried about was t-shirts.

About 80% of the campers have a class during the first period. I just had to find who the other 20% were and figure out when to get them their shirts. I decided that there must be an easy way to get our database to give me all of the relevant information, so that all I would have to do was make a quick count and start sorting shirts. Two problems: first, we are running the database on aged laptops with a weak wireless connection, a bad combination for the high powered online database we use; and second, I had never even logged into the database before this morning.

It took me about three hours to get a printout of all the class rosters for the first week with the kids' t-shirt sizes and class meeting times. Most of that time was spent learning to navigate the database and get it to produce whatever reports I wanted (and restarting it when it froze, and restarting it again when it froze again). It was good practice at a skill I needed to develop, and not quite as much of a waste of time as it sounds, but it was still three hours.

I know this has been said many times, but computers really are great time savers, once you know how to use them. That learning curve, though, can be rough. I know that the time I spent today will pay off later when I have other, more critical things to do with the database, but I spent most of the afternoon feeling like I was running on a treadmill. I wonder how long it would have taken me, without the help of the database, to do all the work I tried to get the computer to do. I bet today I could have done it faster. Hopefully, next time the computer will win.

Wyoming Catholic College School for Ostriches

Yesterday I talked about One Laptop Per Child's effort to get technology to as many children around the world as possible. On the opposite end of the technology spectrum is this NPR story about Wyoming Catholic College. A brand new college, whose inaugural freshman class is just finishing their first year, Wyoming Catholic College does not allow cell phones or television, and the students there have limited Internet access. The school offers a classics oriented curriculum, including an immersion program in Latin.

Anyone who has been following this blog will know that I am all for a solid foundation in the classics. I also believe strongly that immersion is the best (maybe even the only) way to really learn a language. But seriously folks, Latin immersion?

Learning philosophy, especially logic, is good. Learning rhetoric is good. Reading Plato and Aristotle is good. Do those things really have to come in opposition to cell phones and TV? College is already a strange bubble that often keeps us separated from the real world, a bubble that many of us are reluctant to leave when the time comes. Making that bubble all the more insular seems escapist at best.

The young woman being interviewed for the report doesn't do much to sell me on the benefits of the program. She claims she wants to be an emergency room nurse when she grows up. How many nursing schools are going to be excited about a student who has spent more time on Plato than on biology, and more time discussing 2000-year-old political theory than keeping up with the latest technological developments? My guess in not many.

On the other hand, the fact that she and her friends are able to make plans together without the use of a cellphone seems like it will come in handy when Armageddon comes.

Are you looking for an escape from the technological rat race?

One Laptop Per Child Goes Over to the Dark Side

The New York Times reported on Friday that Microsoft and the One Laptop Per Child program have negotiated an agreement to make Windows available on OLPC computers. If you are not familiar with the One Laptop Per Child program, I highly recommend checking them out. It is a great example of ingenuity and problem solving for a great cause.

Their goal, as the name suggests, is to make technology available to children all over the world, regardless of the financial and infrastructure capabilities of their community. Needless to say, there are a lot of obstacles to this goal, and the solutions that OLPC came up with are really fantastic. I'll list just a few of them here, but you should check out the website to see all the cool things they came up with.

Problem:
Computers are expensive, making it hard for governments and NGOs to buy enough laptops.
Solution:
Produce a laptop that can be purchased and delivered for around $200.

Problem:
Laptops break and need replacing on a regular basis.
Solution:
Build a laptop with thicker more durable casing and a simpler more reliable internal structure so that they last and last.

Problem:
Many communities around the world do not have reliable electricity.
Solution:
Build laptops with solar panels and hand cranks that don't need to be plugged into a traditional power source.

Problem:
Many communities do not have Internet capabilities.
Solution:
Build laptops that easily and wirelessly network with each other, to create an automatic local network every time multiple laptops are in use within range or each other.

Problem:
Computer software is expensive.
Solution:
Create user friendly open-source software that comes included on each laptop.

Ironically, this last solution is where the program has hit its major hurdle. The laptops were designed to run Linux and their own open-source software. Many of the governments who were interested in buying the cheap computers were turned off by the lack of Windows. They wanted the students learning on the computers to get experience with the world's most used operating system.

As a solution to this problem, the agreement with Microsoft is a good thing for OLPC. At an added cost of about $3 per computer, the laptops will now be much more attractive to many organizations and governments. The agreement has not been without a cost, though. OLPC's president in charge of software development resigned over the agreement. For him, and for many others inside and outside the organization, the open-source software was part of the mission, providing the users with the opportunity to learn to program, and to shape the computers to their own needs.

As the ambivalent capitalist that I am (not to mention lifelong Mac guy), I can't help but be a little sad about the agreement. I'm all for anything that will bring these technologies to as many children around the world as possible, and in that sense the Microsoft agreement is a good thing, but it just feels like OLPC had to sell off a little piece of its soul in the bargain.