Steve Freeman

Euan Semple has quoted my comment about the state of ICT education in British Schools (and elsewhere, I expect). In a more imaginative world, our education authorities would have picked up something like MIT’s Athena project, centrally administered to make it more reliable, avoiding the traps of ageing local hardware and inadequate support. The contrast of our education system with the greater ambitions of the One Laptop Per Child are striking.

In the meantime, I watch my 8-year old using our laptop and he has no problems navigating the standard packages. What he does need guidance on, is understanding the rewards that can come with deeper engagement with these amazing and frustrating machines. Right now, I’m trying Scratch, also from MIT, on him to see if it takes.

Oh, and there is one useful skill that should be compulsory, which is touch typing.

Update: It turns out that Google want to address this issue too.