Organizational constructionism: a writable version of the OLPC deployment guide

As far as we understand it, constructionism is not something that you believe in, it is something that you do.

At the student's level, constructionism is illustrated by what he does with his computer: writing, sharing, thinking. And back again.

At the teacher's level, constructionism describes the way he creates a rich environment for learning: by providing students with new tools, by letting them find their way through their own mistakes, by indirectly supporting the transformation of information into knowledge.

As an OLPC grassroots, what do we do?

We explore the XO and Sugar. We translate software and pedagogical material. We test activities and we try to improve them. When we have this opportunity, we try to understand what it takes to "deploy" XOs. We gather experience and we document it. Moreover: we dare to do mistakes because we do our best. And because our goal is clear: it is not to directly fix education, it is to create a rich environment for other deployments.

As an example of such a "rich environment", OLPC France is glad to share with you its own version of the OLPC deployment guide: the English version can be found here, and the French one here.

As a PDF, the original deployment guide is static: you can only read it. As a wiki page, this guide can potentially evolve, however the wiki version is not easy to read, and very few people will dare to update it. Our thinking has been this: let's release a version that people can easily read and comment. Let's pave the way for an updated version, one that will take feedback into account.

Let's call this "organizational constructionism". Help us - please read this version and comment freely on it. Tell us what is wrong, what is too general. Share your experience. Make it necessary to have a new version later on. A version that will reflect the experience of OLPC as a community, not as an organization that has the final word on how things should be. Participate!

Thanks to Sean Daly for his careful proofreading.

<a href="http://olpc-france.org/deployment-guide/">Lire le guide de déploiement.</a>

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