Introducing Nell

[cananian]

Between now and January CES, Chris Ball and I will be building Nell for the OLPC XO-3 tablet. Nell is a name, not an acronym, but if you want to pronounce it as "Narrative Environment for Learning Learning," I won't stop you.

Nell's development will be demo-oriented-we're going to try to write the most

Comments

[jofish22]

Wow. Have I not being attention, or is this a huge sea change from the constructivist learning approach what I think of as very OLPC? Very exciting to see.

[ext_37366]

I think the ideal would be something like "constructivist, but with someone around to keep you engaged with interesting questions". :)

[cananian]

It's definitely a departure from the past, but I don't think of it as a departure from constructionism, per se. The learner is still primarily self-directed, and still learning by making things. But we're trying to provide better guidance and incentives. Think of it as a kit of Legos, but we also give you the booklet showing all the cool things you can make, and we give you prizes for making a castle, a boat, a car, etc. No one's forcing you to do anything, but there are plenty of suggestions about things to do and incentives to keep you coming back to try more things. Maybe it's the "lego club" or "lego scouts" rather than just a box o' legos.

Nell for US immigrant children

[ext_1493902]

Is Nell available for use in the US? I have several high school-aged students who are refugee immigrants and other special immigrant foster students with little-to-no foundational literacy or schooling experience. They are learning English. One is self-taught literate in Spanish (not his native tongue). I got shivers when reading the white paper on Nell's successes thus far and would love to pilot a Nell Tablet or just the software on our own school laptops!