The OLPC's interface is simply way too complicated. I just read through the human interface guidelines for the project; and by god, I got lost after only a few paragraphs. How are kids supposed to learn all this? Read on for my thoughts.
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Member since:2005-08-11
Because whatever OS they move onto after that will use the "normal" pardigm, Gnome, KDE, Windows, OS X, whatever, and they'll fall behind other people in trying to do thier tasks/jobs/assignments until they catch up. Instead of shackling them to a UI that is flawed, you are creating a class of people who don't understand the current and highly relevant UI. It seems like it is designed to hold the target audience back, not help them move ahead
Member since:2006-08-31
Again, what presumes that Gnome, KDE, Windows, and OS X are God's Gift to Earth and that they are the only "right" way to go? You seem to presume a linear progression that always ends up at Windows/etc as the only possible endpoint. As for "help them move ahead" is pretty much bigotry, presuming that what you've got offers so much more value to everybody that anything that's _not_ like what you've got is useless. There are other ways of doing things. And it's not outlandish to presume that because 10 million kids might grow up using something _other_ than Windows, that they also might spend their adult lives using something _other_ than Windows.
Furthermore, the task here is not to teach them Windows or teach them a "normal"/"western"-derived computing paradigm. It's not to prepare children to grow up and work in a call center (which many times use just web apps anyway). It's to _teach_ them, period. But not about WIMP, that's shortsighted. To teach literacy, mathematics, culture, language, communication, etc.
Member since:2005-07-11
Which is more important:
- knowing what a Start button is, what a taskbar is, what that annoying little popup bubble means, knowing that WIN+E brings up Explorer, WIN+R brings up Run, etc
- knowing how to explore an interface to see how it works, knowing what an application is and the various ways to start them, knowing how to find information (help system, manuals, etc)
IOW, which is more important: learning a specific application, or learning how to learn?
The problem with a lot of things "educational" is that they teach specific applications, specific interfaces, specific OSes as "that is what the world uses". Instead, they should be teaching concepts that can be applied to multiple situations (ie: how to properly format a document, not where the bold button is on the MS Word toolbar). We are supposed to be preparing our kids to think for themselves, to learn for themselves, to be imaginative. We are not supposed to be turning them into drones that can't do anything without a script.
Kids can do / learn a lot more than we give them credit for. Let's not artificially hobble them more than we already do.
Member since:
2006-04-26
Here here! Why does this seem to be lost on so many posters? Clearly they are designing something that not only has technical limitations, but they are designing it for children who may have never even used a computer before. Why shackle them to a UI that even experts agree is flawed? Let them use the device for what it's intended, not to further propagate some company's monopoly or some poster's idea of what the best desktop UI is.