One Laptop Per Child

[vison]

Yes, thanks, Mahima. I feel a little more optimistic, reading that.

But.

Not all poor children live in India, where societal structures have not been destroyed by disease and war.

*sigh*

Well, what will be will be.

[Frelga]

Well, yes, vison. Children in Darfur need first for people to stop shooting and give them food. But these laptops aren't going to Darfur, as the website explains. They are going to India, Brasil, Thailand - places where good education can really make a difference to a child's future.

[Inanna]

Really glad to hear that!!!

Am glad my perspective helped... I do think we are just steps away, in India, to more equitable distribution of wealth - hopefully, this is another step in that direction.

[JewelSong]

VERY positive article following up on 50 children who got their laptops 6 months ago.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... n_village/

I personally think this is a fantastic project - and a way to give children in very poor and remote areas invaluable access to information...and to the wider world.

[Primula Baggins]

Jewel, I came in here to post that same article! Thanks.

I agree: it sounds promising. And the article is well-timed, since the two-laptops-for-$399 deal is still available through Monday.

[Frelga]

Can't recall if I posted this link, but here's XO's Twitter page, with many links.

On a related note.

Children in Darfur need first for people to stop shooting and give them food.

I was, of course, correct. However, Darfur Schools Project pays salaries of teachers and administrators and provides essential supplies to schools taught by refugee teachers. Why worry about education when children are displaced, hungry, in danger of their lives? Because without education, their children will not have any better chance than that.

[Primula Baggins]

That's just it. Education isn't a frill.

[Inanna]

And education is not simply a tool for employment - its a mindset, its an opening of the worlds, it could be understanding.

[vison]

Education isn't roaming about the internet, either.

I will admit that the program isn't as silly as I thought it was, but free laptops aren't education. They're free laptops. And IF a kid has some guide to make it useful, it might be useful.

If not?

[Primula Baggins]

Fortunately, they do.

[Athrabeth]

I regard the internet as an adult toy. I wouldn't be without it, myself!!! But my grandchildren are not allowed to play on my computer. They use computers at school, both their schools are pretty well equipped with computers. But beyond doing the AR tests, Oz doesn't do any school related stuff in the computer lab, they play games at lunchtime. And Tay, so far, has only used the computer to type out the odd essay.

I would really like to hear from some elementary school teachers and see what they have to say.

I'm late to the discussion (as usual ), but I'm an elementary school teacher with something to say.

This past term, the major project for my Grade Five students was to research one geographical feature of a given continent (they drew their respective continents out of a hat to begin with), and create an informative and eye-catching poster about it. Twenty-eight students, twenty-eight completely individualized projects, from The Great Salt Lake to Mt. Etna to Ayer's Rock to the Gobi Desert. Virtually all their sources were found on the internet, and those pages were printed out, the relevant information highlighted, and organizational notes made. The kids then composed three or four detailed paragraphs about certain aspects of their topic, all in our computer lab. The accompanying pictures, maps, charts, and diagrams for their posters were pretty much all found through Google Images. Many kids used stunning satellite images from Google Earth. Did you know that you can actually see the Salt Pans of the Kalahari Desert from space?

There is simply no way that that kind of individualized project could be undertaken if we were to rely on the more traditional print sources found in our school and/or community libraries. Are there little poops that try to sneak into some game site while they're supposed to be working on their project? Yep. But they're usually the same kids who tend to etch their initials into their desks or create weapons of mass destruction out of paper clips and elastic bands during my riveting lessons. The necessity of vigilant guidance doesn't change for me, whether in the classroom, in the computer lab, in the gym, or out on a field study. For the vast majority of the kids in my class, the opportunity to make their own choices and follow their own interests while still following the set criteria of an assignment allows them to become engaged and immersed in learning in a way that reading through a stuffy encyclopedia article that's fifteen years out of date could never achieve.

My students compose virtually all of their longer written assignments directly "on the keyboard", using organizational notes that they have hand-written first. Most of the kids in my class can access our Linux system from home as well, using VNC, so they can work on a report or essay without actually being in our lab.

When I get back from Mexico, we're going to begin a geometry unit in math. Our starting point? Some amazing internet sites showing close-up photography of snowflakes. From past experience, the excited "buzz" that's generated by these viewings far surpasses any textbook introduction.

Books are indeed essential in both classrooms and school libraries, and in this district, we continue (miraculously) to build strong collections of excellent literature for all ages. But there is no way that we can hope to have the kind of up-to-date informational text that is so critical in curriculum areas like Science and Social Studies. As for handwriting compositions, I truly believe that keyboarding skills are far more relevant and useful once kids can print/write legibly. There are many, many kids who can produce compositions of far higher quality and detail using word processing than handwriting. And it makes my job as an "editor" far easier and more productive as well.

I know this post was a little off-topic, but I really wanted to chime in as a teacher of over thirty years who considers computer technology to be one of the best things that's happened in education, and believes that access to that technology can, and most likely will, improve the lives of children growing up in the developing world.

[Primula Baggins]

Technology removes barriers. When my middle son was finally permitted to use a computer on the state writing assessment tests, he went from 3's and 4's (not quite to barely passing) to straight 6's (truly outstanding, better than "excellent").

It's certainly revolutionized the way I work: I have a whole shelf of expensive reference books that I now rarely haul down and open, because I can pop into Google and get the information in a fraction of the time, and for a freelancer, time is money.

The point of education should be to learn—to find and correlate information, to discover new things. There's no reason to insist that this must also include tedium for tedium's sake—writing by hand, or looking up information in encyclopedias that, in most schools, are a decade or more out of date.

Textbooks themselves are hideously wasteful: so expensive to produce and print that they cost more than schools can afford until the need is desperate, and by the time they make their way through production, they're often at least partly outdated. The time is coming when a "textbook" will be a subscription to a website that is constantly updated, and kids will be able to lug a four-pound laptop around instead of 40 or 50 pounds of books.

The problem that's holding this day back, as far as I can see, is that publishers are desperately trying to figure out a model that lets them charge the same $80 or $120 per student for something that has no physical existence. Some of these third-world countries may be able to leapfrog this twentieth-century limitation as well.

[axordil]

The problem that's holding this day back, as far as I can see, is that publishers are desperately trying to figure out a model that lets them charge the same $80 or $120 per student for something that has no physical existence.

Obviously what we need is a non-print publisher, someone not physically or emotionally invested in producing objects--the textbook equivalent of an Amazon.com--to move in and sell the stuff for what it's actually worth if you don't have to print it. That would light a fire under the aforementioned feet-draggers.

[Primula Baggins]

You also need a textbook selection and buying system that isn't largely run by Luddites, which in the United States we probably won't have until the current committees die off.

You need textbook authors who are willing to commit to a system of constant updates, meaning some regular writers will drop out of the system—they're academics who want to spend six months or a year writing, then get back to their real jobs and collect royalties with no need for further thought or effort.

And you need publishers who are willing to go over to a model where a "textbook" has a permanent staff, not just a temporary and partly freelance production team that does the job and moves on to another one.

I've done a little work like this, on converting a set of medical reference books for ERs from hard copy to a website. But it's not happening on any kind of large scale yet.

[axordil]

Yeah, the whole model is pretty much predicated on spitting out a thing at the end, as opposed to the content that thing carries. Thus my belief someone would be better off coming in from outside.

Someone like Google, or Adobe, or someone else with a toe in content already.

[Alatar]

Interesting...

Citing disagreements with the organisation, Intel said it has abandoned the One Laptop Per Child program, dealing a big blow to the ambitious project seeking to bring millions of low cost laptops to children in developing countries.

The fallout ends a long simmering spat that began even before the chipmaker joined the OLPC board in July, agreeing to contribute money and technical expertise.

It also comes only a few days before the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where a prototype of an OLPC designed laptop using an Intel chip was slated to debut.

Intel decided to quit the nonprofit project and the OLPC board because the two reached a "philosophical impasse", Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said today.

Intel will continue with its own inexpensive laptop design called the Classmate, which it is marketing in some of the same emerging markets OLPC has targeted.

Both sides shared the objective of providing children around the world with the use of new technology, "but OLPC had asked Intel to end our support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC, and to focus on the OLPC platform exclusively", Mulloy said.

"At the end of the day, we decided we couldn't accommodate that request."

The One Laptop program was founded in 2005 by Nicholas Negroponte, former Media Lab director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original concept was to offer a $US100 laptop" (about $114) but the green and white low-power "XO" computer now costs $US188 ($214). It runs on a Linux operating system and a chip made by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Negroponte told The Associated Press last year that until OLPC had a machine using an Intel chip, he could understand why Intel would not want to push an AMD machine to customers.

Mulloy said the use of AMD chips in the OLPC machines had nothing to do with Intel's decision to withdraw.

Intel believed all along that there is a need for multiple alternatives to meet the needs of children in poor countries, he said.

"It's unfortunate this happened, but at some point, you have to make a tough decision," he said.