Confessions of a Fundamentalist
Walter Bender, Founder of Sugar Labs
For the past 30 months, I have been part of an effort to bring about a global transformation of education through the provision of connected "ultra-low-cost" laptop computers—"one laptop per child"; computers that will provide an agency through which to positively impact learning, and consequently, everything that learning impacts, in particular, economic development. The project has been about giving children who don't have the opportunity for learning that opportunity: it's about access; it's about equity; and it's about giving the next generation of children in the developing world a bright and open future. It is predicated on the fact that children lack opportunity, not capability.
It has been asserted that I am a free and open-source (FOSS) fundamentalist and that the use of open-source software has become one of the project's ends instead of its means, to its detriment. I confess that I am a fundamentalist—about learning. That is not to say I am not passionate about FOSS, but as the means, not the end, towards a "constructionist" learning model.
In this talk, I will come clean about my fundamentalist tendencies and argue why I believe we should not be agnostic about learning or the tools we develop to support it. I will also outline some research challenges that we face in light of this opportunity for change.
About Walter
Walter Bender is the founder of Sugar Labs, a non-profit foundation that serves as a support base for the community of educators and software developers who are extending the Sugar user interface. Sugar is designed to enhance the primary educational experience by emphasizing collaboration and expression. Prior to that, Bender was president for software and content of the One Laptop per Child
association, where he developed and deployed technologies that are revolutionizing how the world's children engage in learning. Before taking a leave of absence from MIT, Bender was executive director of the MIT Media Laboratory. He was holder of the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Chair.
Bender is currently on sabbatical from MIT, where he is a senior research scientist and founding director of the Electronic Publishing group. Bender directed the Gray Matters special interest group, which focuses on technology's impact on the aging population. In 1992, Bender founded the News in the Future consortium and has been a member of the Lab's Simplicity, Things That Think, and Digital Life consortia. He became Media Laboratory director in 2000. He received his BA from Harvard University in 1977. Bender joined the Architecture Machine Group at MIT in 1978. He received his MS at MIT in 1980.
A founding member of the Media Laboratory, throughout his career Bender has engaged in the study of new information technologies, particularly those that affect people directly. Much of the research addresses the idea of building upon the interactive styles associated with existing media and extending them into domains where a computer is incorporated into the interaction. He has participated in much of the pioneering research in the field of electronic publishing and personalized interactive multimedia. He has worked closely with pioneers in the field of technology and learning such as Seymour Papert, Marvin Minsky, and Alan Kay for more thirty years.