This is a project I’ve had in mind for some time. From where do you draw your favorite problems? For a bit of inspiration, here is an excellent and insightful essay on why math education is so much stronger in Russia (for instance) than in the US and Brazil (for instance), focusing on the appreciation for and use of word problems.
Word Problems in Russia and America by Andrei Toom (↬ Jacob Rus)
"I teach school -- and I win awards doing it. These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you will:"
So begins one of the great essays on the modern school system.
Via Doc Searls.
Marvell and OLPC just announced a partnership to design a line of tablets, including the current Marvell Moby and the OLPC XO-3 reference designs. This is good news for OLPC’s 3-year hardware plans, and make it more likely that we will be able to hit our target $75 pricepoint for a rugged, low-power tablet in 2012.
There are also a lot of interesting cheap computers out there today – some now available for $100 – flimsy at the moment, but a good start. We need to start treating personal computing — and connectivity, caching, reliable storage: everything that comes with it — as a commodity and basic resource, not a luxury good. Until we do, we will never build up the relevant infrastructure at scale. [and the 10-100x differences in bandwidth available in different developed countries today — with the US on the low end — are a prime example of what this may look like].
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