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News On Laptops For Education

Posted by kdawson on from the battle-of-the-cheap-and-rugged dept.

AdamWill notes a Mandriva press release with the news that the government of Nigeria has selected Intel-powered classmate PCs running Mandriva Linux for educational use in a nationwide pilot. About 17,000 machines will be involved at first. We can only wonder at the maneuvering and negotiations that went on with the OLPC project. The latter had its first announced order for 100,000 XO machines, from Uruguay, with a potential for 400,000 over time. The bigger news out of OLPC is that Microsoft is porting XP to the platform, and chairman Nicholas Negroponte says that's fine with him: "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."

3 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Free and Open Environment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From the OLPC Wiki (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Core_principles/lang-en) -- "Give me a free and open environment and I will learn and teach with joy."

    Sounds good, but wait ...

    "It would be hard for OLPC to say it was 'open' and then be closed to Microsoft. Open means open."

    So you're open to the idea of making the OLPC closed? Well done! I'm not sure what the heck OLPC is about anymore. At first it seemed great, then the price went up, they chose a non-open manufacturer for their network chip, and now Windows? Give me a break. I bet they'll use "the children" as an excuse for their actions this time aswell.

  2. Classmate PC by Woek · · Score: 3, Interesting
    When I looked into the Classmate PC I read on Intel's site:

    Developed to address gaps in education found by Intel's extensive ethnographic research,...

    Riiiight... It has nothing to do with the positive response on the OLPC project.
  3. Re:I have a bad feeling about this by kingduct · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In a serious sense, even were the OLPC (or the Intel machine in this arcile) what was needed to improve education in the third world, the reality is that I highly doubt the distribution will ever be fair.

    Having lived in a poor country myself for a number of years, I suspect that some member of the ruling oligarchy (which controls a party as well as controlling much of business) in most countries will end up becoming the "importer" and in order to "recover costs" and "include taxes" and "shipping and handling", will find that the poorest people should buy one for 600 dollars, which will still be much less than other cheap laptops there are.

    People will be offered microcredits to buy them for their children (maybe they will be required to do so), and will do so, because they think this cute little machine will advance them into the future. Of course, the wealthy friends of the oligarchs will get them for free. In the meantime, the end result will be a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

    Now, some of you will say, "No! There are protections to do that. These things are set up to avoid that." However, "transparency" is just a word that the systematically corrupt trot out -- when third world leaders/governments/systems claim to be transparent, you know that they just stole money. I know this is a pessimistic post, but it is based on a lot of experience. I hope that places like Uruguay are slightly better on this issue -- certainly better than most of Latin America, but I have little doubt that that is what will happen in Nigeria.

    The money made will truly end up in some bank account. The Americans who will benefit are the stakeholders in the factories designing and producing these things, and poor Nigerians will still be poor, and no better educated.