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OLPC Project Rollout Begins In Uruguay
Acer500 writes "The One Laptop Per Child project became a reality Thursday in Uruguay, as the 160 children of school number 24 in the humble town of Cardal received their XO computers. The learning tools came directly from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez. It has become a matter of national pride that Uruguay is the first country to realize the project's goal. The target is that by 2009, every school-age child in Uruguay will have one, and an initial 15 million dollars have already been allocated to the project.
From the newspaper articles: 'The happiness of having a PC in their hands, some of them for the first time, had the kids in ecstasy, which didn't wait to turn on their computers, introduce their personal information (required the first time they're turned on), choose the screen colors, and start experimenting with them. What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.'" More information below.
According to the unofficial blog of the Uruguayan project, named proyecto Ceibal, the infrastructure for wireless is not yet in place but will be provided in the next few days by the national telco ANTEL. No photos of the event have been posted online, but you can see an institutional video on Youtube. One interesting point is that it has not yet been decided that the XO will be the laptop of choice for the entire project. Two other companies want to be considered: Intel, with their Classmate PC, and Israeli-manufactured ITP-C. In a press conference, Intel manager for the southern cone Esteban Galluzzi went as far as to compare the XO to a Pentium II, and stressed that the Classmate is able to run Windows XP. As advisor and local guru Juan Grompone stated, 'who will ultimately benefit from this is education?' This will be an interesting test to see if the OLPC project meets its intended goals of 'learning learning'. Let's hope this project is the means that will foster among some of the children the desire to learn and to tinker."
Lets see. OLPC is a little less than $200 per laptop, or the Classmate PC at about $400 per laptop. Multiply it by 2 million children... more than a 400 million dollar savings! I wonder which way the more cash strapped countries are going to go?
I would love to get my hands on some of these to see how well they work as a learning tool. The price point puts them in line with many other learning tools on the market for children. The open source platform makes them much more expandable. And, as they become more widely used, the software available for them will become much more diverse and powerful. I wonder if the Intel proposed alternative includes an Operating System in the price.
InnerWebFreud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
So how many of these new adventurers at the thin end of the open source wedge have contributed source code?
Come on, children! THOSE LAPTOPS WERE FREE FOR A REASON! ~cracks whip~
"They shouldn't spend *any* money on education until all poverty is solved"
Not so fast, let's see how this works out first, OK?
Education is the greatest basis for fighting poverty in a 3rd world country. Think better educated people -> more efficient entrepreneurs / companies -> more money in the local economy -> more taxes -> better healthcare and services etc. Uruguay could possibly have just made the first step to become the next India (IT-wise)!
BUT the greatest thing is that with more literate & educated people, the less likely they will endure another dictator. And that should happen *everywhere* else, not just in Uruguay! Without education, you could wait forever for all poverty to be solved.
Isn't the idea that instead of constantly giving them fish, we *teach* them to fish?
From a practical standpoint: The OS was designed with ease of use in mind. From the demos I've seen, it does exactly what it's supposed to. Windows and all the other major operating systems are intended for general use, with loads of hardware and software to support, and as such have a huge array of things the OLPC devices will rarely need.
From an idealistic standpoint: I think it's great to provide the kids with a neutral OSS system tailored to the laptop, where they can decide for themselves later on which OS they will use. The point of the project is to provide EVERY child with a laptop. Hooking every child to a certain, commercial OS from the youngest years onward is not something a government should be doing. The kids will learn Windows, OSX and whatnot soon enough, as you did too. Not necessary at this stage, which is about giving children access to technology, not preparing them for cubicles.
parasight.de
You know what? I completely disagree with you. You are assuming that once you learn ONE os at an early age it is set in stone. As if you couldn't learn to use another. Or even two or three. You underestimate kids. People who grew up in the 80s know for a fact that this isn't true. My school's computer lab had 3 NEC with some kind of propietary os that we all learned to make BASIC programs. Then came the Apple IIe's and we had to learn DOS 3.2 and 3.3. My mother bought me my first computer, an Apple //c, and then I had to learn ProDOS. Next there was a Mac plus on which I ran MAC-OS 4 thru 6. Then a Mac quadra 605 (system 7-8). As soon as I started working it was MS-DOS, and all the windows. Three years ago I switched to linux. It wasn't so hard mainly because I was used to switching OS's. In fact the most difficult switch was from mac to windows 3.11. I now find myself costumizing gnome to match a lot of the original mac-os functionality (although not the windows decorations). But you know it isn't that difficult for me to figure out how to make gtk and metacity themes, had it not been for those BASIC programs I made in the NEC's and the apples.
I hate that they teach children today to use powerpoint and word. The argument that it is what they will need when working is absurd. If that where true I would have been terribly hindered by my lack of knowledge of wordstar, lotus and dbase when I got my high-school degree. I learned to use computers. And I can adapt myself to computers. I think this project aims at that type of experience that will make children better computer users and not merely software consumers. By the way this I'm describing happened to me in Colombia. So the preconceived notion some of you have about the third world use some updating.
Nature Magazine has a cautious news story lauding the OLPC while pointing out what nay sayers observe. One concern is that the way they are achieving the price point is to push the marketing, distribution, and maintenence cost onto the buyers (the governements) and that they need to reach scale quickly, which while it probably will happen governments are demurring. If this roll out is a success it may be a big shot in arm convincing the hesitant governments. Perhaps the easiest places to get support will be one-man governments; Would-be "populist" quasi-dictators like Qudaffi is a prime candidate for a large purchase.
There's also an interesting interview with Ron Minnich of LinuxBios, who points out that the OLPC will be a major roll out for OLPC in end user hands (rather than embeds). He says that LinuxBios enables such insanely better power management than traditional bios that it's going to knock everyone's socks off. It will wake instantaneously and conserve power.
Even when operating this thing is miserly: 2 watts.
One of the suggested alternatives in the Nature Article put forward by a prominent nay sayer in India (who will not be going forward with OLPC) are that set-top style web-based apps are a better idea. I Don't actually see how. All the set top boxes currently are more expensive, don't have a screen, the screen will be too far away for it's resolution, and they don't have Key boards. So the OLPC looks pretty good.
The OLPC will automatically detect networks. I wonder if Ron Minnich managed to slide in his other project which is BPROC/Clustermatic which is used at Labs like Los Alamos to create high performance self configuring clusters with minimal cluster operating system overhead. Such a system could provide some incredible computing horsepower despite the low performance of the individual nodes.
Another thing I wonder about is printers. In the developed world anyone who can afford a computer can afford or get access to a printer so paper has never really been factored out of computing. INdeed computers if anything, are an organized way to generate more not less paper docs. In the countries using OLPC, printers won't be available. We may see the rise of paperless computing finally.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.'"
What could possibly go wrong?
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
Hi! I am the mantainer of the blog referred in the article, http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com./ First of all, I'd like to invite you to see some pictures of the launching of the project in my last post (I decided to include some contents in english on the blog).
I have seen many interesting comments here. Many of them are part of a discussion that exceeds uruguayan experience, as they are the technological apsects (using XO, Classmate, ITP-C...? using laptops or desktops...?), educational aspects (which contents to use, if all the children will be interested) and, obviously, economical aspects (is it worth spending so much money?... how much will the project really cost?). I just would like to make some comments:
- Not only the educational aspects of the project have to be analyzed. The project also changes the "digital gap", taking into the information society many children and their families.
- The technologies used are not as important as the agreements we have to do for using these technologies. License costs and their renewals, as well as intelectual properties of the contents generated must get up in the table.
- The real effect of a project like this will not be seen in the next days, months, neither in a few years. Maybe in 10 years we will be able to start doing a comprehensive analysis of results. Now we are making "futurology", so it is normal having different views. What is important in this step is the conviction and honesty of stakeholders to try to make things as good as possible.
Regards, Pablo Flores