Slashdot Mirror
Working Model of MIT $100 Laptop a Hit
capt turnpike writes "The One Laptop per Child association and its chairman, MIT Media Labs's Nicholas Negroponte, unvelied a working model of their $100 laptop at the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) show, and the little laptop that might was a hit. It's got a version of Fedora Linux, is rugged, and each unit will work as part of a wireless mesh automatically. From the article: "However, as Negroponte put it in his address, One Laptop per Child isn't all about the laptops. The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn." eWEEK.com also has photos."
Oh that's right. $800 back in 1997. By Moore's law, that should be about $25 now. So with a color screen, USB, and wireless, $100 isn't bad. Lost the touchscreen though. :-(
It's the way we've set up the system. You go to school so someone can tell you the facts, and present practical math and science concepts in the driest, most abstract way possible.
Every time I talk to a kid and they say something like "Algebra sucks. I'll never use this again in my life" I want to jump out of my skin. And hell, I didn't know it myself, because I was taught the same way. I just ended up in a lot of fields, not even complex fields, where you had to have a grasp on practical math.
If you teach the answers then people are always going to be looking for someone to tell them the answers. If you teach people how to find the answers themselves using manuals, newsgroups, and, if all else fails, their damn brain, then you'll end up with well educated people.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Ugly or not, if you offered me a laptop with a keyboard, touch pad and hi-res screen for $300 with some useful productivity apps, I'd buy one like a shot. Whether it looked like a demented speak & spell or not. I hate lugging around expensive, fragile, battery sapping laptops just to get internet access when I'm away for a bit. I hate the small unusable screens on a Pocket PC. These things are meant to be kidproof so you toss them in a backpack without much concern, or whip them out on a train or airline clip tray for practically instant-on computing. It's no wonder Bill Gates is afraid of these things. Who the hell would buy his Origami concept costing twice as much when this thing fits the bill so well? That's assuming a commercial version does appear.