"Growing Without School" archives

http://www.holtgws.com/gwsarchives.html

John Holt founded, edited, and published the first eight years of Growing Without Schooling magazine, but it is through the effort and commitment of its subsequent editors—Donna Richoux, Susannah Sheffer, and Meredith Collins—that GWS grew and thrived for sixteen years after Holt's death. Though I was president and publisher during that time, it was Donna, Susannah, and Meredith who shaped each issue, corresponded and worked with all the writers to GWS, and made sure the content not only stayed true to Holt's vision of what GWS should be, but also expanded this vision and complemented it with books, research, and interviews with many thinkers and doers both in and out of school. GWS couldn't exist without all the readers who shared their stories; but behind this, it couldn't exist without the work and dedication of its editors.

—Pat Farenga, Publisher

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Educating Paleo

Quite a few autonomous home educators/unschoolers I know have been eating paleo diets for a while. They say paleo isn't just a diet but a lifestyle, so this article ties in nicely with that idea.

Autonomous ed. from the sky?

Read article HERE

Negroponte: We'll Throw OLPCs Out of Helicopters to Teach Kids to Read

Nicholas Negroponte plans to airdrop OLPC tablets to remote villages to teach the children within them to read, he told the audience at the Open Mobile Summit on Wednesday.
The tablets won't be accompanied by any adults or teaching resources; Negroponte said that he was convinced that they were designed for children, and that he wanted to see if the tablets could be used to teach them to read without additional instruction.
"We will literally take tablets and drop them out of helicopters," and return a year later to see if the effort was a success, Negroponte said. A new tablet design can withstand a 30-foot drop, and even be left out in the rain.
"When I say no people, I mean absolutely no people," he added, when asked if he was serious. "When I say I drop out of the helicopters, I mean it... it's like a Coke bottle falling out of the sky," he said, apparently referring to the 1982 movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy. In that movie, however, a bushman is convinced that the Coke bottle's embodiment of the concept of property is evil, and leaves his village to dispose of it.
In 2005, Negroponte, a professor at MIT, founded the One Laptop per Child Program, which attempted to develop a low-cost laptop to distribute in the developing world. While the target price was originally $100, the final cost ended up above that. Still, Negroponte has been given credit for helping push the low-cost netbook into the mainstream.
Negroponte did say, however, that he felt the announcements of low-cost $50 tablets in India were mainly "hot air," because the low price was subsidized by the federal government.
In 2009, OLPC laid plans to develop a tablet. The third generation of that tablet, the OLPC XO-3, is due next year, Negroponte said, complete with a cover with an integrated solar panel inside that could charge the tablet in rural villages without electricity. To date, Negroponte's foundation has delivered about 3 million laptops across 45 countries, he said.
According to Negroponte, the OLPC nonprofit has spun off and set its own agenda, leaving Negroponte's group to pursue its own direction. Negroponte said that he is basing his current work on that of Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University. Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" project placed an unattended connected computer in a rural area, and kids communally taught themselves how to use it. The same should hold true with the new tablets, he said.
The new tablets will be preloaded with 100 books, and will be able to connect to the Internet wirelessly. Previous tablets have used a peer-to-peer mesh connection to help establish connectivity.
"Adults may be able to steal it, but they won't be able to use it ... maybe an older brother will get a hold of it, use it for pornography - that's life," Negroponte said.
For more from Mark, follow him on Twitter @MarkHachman.

"PayPal founder pays entrepreneurs to skip college"

"School is prison" -Interview with Dr Peter Gray

Lord Lucas, LAs and the Law via the Home Education Forums