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OLPC To Be Distributed To US Students
eldavojohn writes "The One Laptop Per Child Project plans to launch OLPC America in 2008 , to distribute the low-cost laptop computers originally intended for developing nations to needy students here in the United States. Nicholas Negroponte is quoted as saying, 'We are doing something patriotic, if you will, after all we are and there are poor children in America. The second thing we're doing is building a critical mass. The numbers are going to go up, people will make more software, it will steer a larger development community.'"
Hammertime!
A patriotic thing would be to offer OLPC in US before elsewhere in the world. I am not saying it would be the most practical thing to do, but turning home only after selling everywhere else and some may say after failing to realize the volume is certainly not patriotic.
I appreciate and understand the OLPC project.
But Nicholas Niggerponte cannot simply pretend to be patriotic while at the same time championing the ideals of OLPC as they stand today.
OLPC is for all nations, and as such nationalism has no place in its promotion.
...for buying one for my 2nd grader last November with the Give One Get One program. I am beginning to think OLPC stands for One Laptop Per Consumer.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Why don't you go back to Stormfront, you jackass?
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
Hurray for OLPC team!
Maybe we might begin to develop a generation of students who haven't been mesmerized by the MICROSOFT logo. Tweaking around with the OS for fun will sprout a new generation of "garage" hackers. I'll never forget my first erector set. Now it will be virtual. Go kiddies GO !
Motivation? What could be the motivation here? I just don't get it.
Computers for kids. This is so obvious I'm having trouble seeing what the OLPC griefer's problem is. Somebody please explain this to me.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm glad that the US will get OLPC's attention. There are plenty of under served communities that could benefit from a cheap laptop for every student.
It is high time that the inefficient paper-based education system be overthrown by digital technologies. Open Source style text-"books" on an Open Source platform could revolutionize education for all the places that can't afford to educate their kids.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
It actually is a good strategy, US State/municipal/national governments are notorious for wasting money. There is a chance they will actually be able to push their laptops over commercial products which give a better cost/value ratio. They could never sell it to a commercial enterprise because they actually have to answer to investors/shareholders who dont like to see money being wasted unnecessarily. As long as he hires some good lobbyists he has a shot.
Wouldn't it have made sense for him to have started in America, seeing as the education system is similar to that in quality of the systems in the developing nations? :p
That's one fact I did not know about America and specifically the USA. I thought America was a place where everybody was rich. Its government was always funding a significant portion of my country's budget and building schools and hospitals.
That's what I believed till I came here. I saw what capitalism can be. The rich get richer and the poor have almost no chance of escaping poverty's grip! All in America.
I also saw something: America is rich in what I call material prosperity...that is, infrastructure and all supporting services; but beyond that, people (most of them) are really hurting and living from hand to mouth. Sadly, our politicians are doing us no good at all. Corruption is rife in America and incompetence is reaching terrible levels.
The other sad fact is that the situation will get worse before it gets better.
...is with the messed up tag: "onelaptopperblackchild"? Am I the only one who thinks that's slightly wrong?
The big question: why wasn't this the original game plan?
The big answer: the OLPC won't stand up to serious, educated scrutiny. They planned all along only to hoodwink some insecure, gullible, incompetent 3rd world bureaucrats.
Not because Negroponte and his crew don't believe in the OLPC, but because they know it's based on radical ideas which have already been examined, tested, and rejected in the West. Selling to the third world was their end-run around a consensus of informed judgement they happen to disagree with.
This is why the OLPC people are dangerous: they're confident enough to be willing to be underhanded.
Anyway, it won't fly in the USA, and when 3rd worlders see that the Americans are rejecting it, they won't want it either.
Unless the OLPC is widely avbl. in the US; kids elsewhere will learn proper computing while kids in the US will be brought up on an unhealthy diet of Allow / Cancels; viruses, trojans, activation keys and insecure PCs. MS will be forced to release a slimmed down and truly secure OS for the OLPC; else they risk being exposed for churning out second-rate code.
Like the OLPC and the EEE PC; more such mini-PCs will signal the demise of Vista and the downfall of MS as we know it today. Let there be more OLPCs I say.... it should even be made avbl. to corporate users, IMO.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I kinda got the impression from my reading about the OLPC project and it's drivers that it was a multinational project. So this news is a bit of a surprise to me.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Someone will have to explain how artificially limiting your market to those least able to pay makes ANY sense whatsoever.
Sell them in the US for $250, and let that drive your product for the first year. Asus shipped hundreds of thousands of the eee pc last quarter, so the market is there. Buy one get one was just a little more altruism than the market could bear.
OLPC is a terrific idea, but the implementation is an unmitigated mess.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
Yeah, good luck with that plan. A country will a reasonable electricity grid and an abundance of cheap second hand computers doesn't need the OLPC. Besides which, the entrenched schooling systems of the first world prevent the kind of encouragement that is needed to make constructivist learning happen. Americans already have widespread access to the Internet and educational software, and they're still dumb as lamp posts.
But hey, if it gets the numbers up so there's some chance of fulfilling the third world plan, go for it.
Tax the rich.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You're the load that your mother should have swallowed.
Well I guess I've been doing my own personal informal OLPC project for a while without really thinking about it. Namely, buying iBooks cheap off of eBay and giving them to my nieces, nephews, family, friends, etc, as well as donating my old machines to various places. Haven't we reached the point where there are more than enough computers out there that are more than adequate for basic computing tasks? Can't we donate those old computers to schools rather than wasting resources building shiny new computers to run bloated new software that doesn't run any faster than the old software ran on the old hardware? Granted the new stuff theoretically gives you more bang for the buck, but do most people really need that extra bang? Sure computers break down and there will always be a need for new ones to replace them, but haven't we pretty much reached the saturation point? I can get a $50 laptop off of eBay that will browse the net, check e-mail, i.e. everything an average user would need.
are they gonna get sexual education?
The Raven
One of the most important things for anything that can be used as a textbook or a learning aid in a classroom environment is standardization, at least among the students of a single class. A kid should be able to show his friend something which the friend should immediately be able to do. If we just donate old computers (a worthy effort in its own right), you just don't get that effect. Also, the OLPC has been more or less designed with education and kids as a primary purpose. This makes it far more useful than just throwing your used computers at children.
Someone hasn't been paying attention
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
If the project had offered these laptops for sale to the general public from day 1, they would have sold quite a few (look at how the EEE did at twice the price). This would have helped get towards the production economies of scale they wanted and they'd be able to sell these things to their target market.
Now I think it's too little, too late.
501 Not Implemented
...said about my first computer. Complaining that I only seemed to play games on it. Which was true at first. Too bad she never lived to see where it would eventually take me professionally.
Patriot - A fan of expanding government power and spending while not wanting to pay higher taxes.
Well, now I feel like an idiot... ...for buying one for my 2nd grader last November with the Give One Get One program.
So wait-- you spend $400 for one computer given to a kid in Afghanistan and one for your 2nd grader- who up until this announcement would have had almost no chance of finding anyone in his school to communicate/collaborate/share with (a major feature of the Sugar UI).
Now that some OTHER American kids will also have the opportunity to use an XO... how do you lose out exactly? How does your kid?
I don't get it. What are you complaining about?
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Patriotism is dangerous, we all know it by now. Doing something "in the name of patriotism" is even more dangerous.
there's some talk of doing this in Birmingham, AL.
...
http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1194945540247570.xml&coll=2
Students will get laptops with plan Tuesday, November 13, 2007 BARNETT WRIGHT News staff writer Every student in grades one through eight in the Birmingham city school system will receive a laptop computer under a tentative agreement Mayor-elect Larry Langford has reached with a foundation that provides computers in developing countries, an adviser to Langford said Monday. "Over 15,000 children will be receiving their own personal laptops," said John Katopodis, a longtime Langford friend who is negotiating with the One Laptop Per Child foundation on Langford's behalf. "We feel that technology, and the ability to use technology effectively, is an important learning tool," Katopodis said. "We believe providing these children with the tools to catch up will give them a head start in life because technology is such an integral part of learning." Katopodis said some details remain to be worked out. A spokeswoman for the Boston-based foundation said talks are being held this week about implementing the program. Under the tentative agreement, the city would buy the laptops at a discount through the foundation and provide them to the city schools. They would not be the students' personal property.
The problem with constructivism is that it's based on looking at how very clever, curious, talented children learn, and then assuming other children can learn in the same way.
The constructivist approach to learning doesn't work well for teaching the fundamental skills: basic literacy, spelling, and arithmetic. These are most of what actually sticks with people into their adult lives from school.
Now, smart kids with educated parents learn these things quickly at home. A lot of academics started out like this. They went to grade school and resented being trained along with all of the dull-minded average kids who actually needed the lessons. They grow up thinking everybody else's time was wasted, they think about how they themselves learned without being taught, and then they become constructivists.
The ideas of constructivism are not all bad. Constructivism describes how children learn easy or interesting things by playing. However, it is a dangerous philosophy of education in that it neglects the need for disciplined classrooms in achieving societal goals like universal literacy.
I don't live in the US, but my possibly skewed understanding is that the administrations of quite a few school districts have signed agreements with companies (like Microsoft) which state that they're not allowed to do things such as purchase other Operating Systems and competing applications in their schools, unless they forfeit the right to massive discounts and the like from those companies.
Can someone a bit closer to the issue maybe comment on whether this will have much of an effect on getting OLPC laptops distributed around schools in the USA? Or is this part of the reason why Microsoft seems so keen to get Windows working on that hardware?
no no no, it costs $100 of USD... for the date it was conceived. The value of the dollar has plummeted since then.
For context, click Parent.
We had our first meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area OLPC user group. Not sure if we even have a name. At any rate, a bunch of us got together at the Linux lab in the San Francisco State University to just goof around with these machines. It is really funny to hear them hiss at each other as they try to figure out how close the nearest XOs are. Yep, they talk to each other. They emit a brief hissing sound when you ask them to calculate the distance between XOs. They listen for the hissing sound (or so I was told, dunno, didn't check into it) and then they calculate how long it took for the sound to reach each other, and then they all report back to each other, and they determine how far apart their fellow XOs are. Hilarious.
They also have built in video, which two of the resident children were really enjoying by making monkey faces, much to the embarrassment of their parents. Insanity, you know, is inherited from your children. heh. One kid composed music on his XO. He is 5. As in less than 6 years old. You can add eyes to the screen, and the screen will talk to you to tell you how many eyes it has. Very entertaining for a 3 year-old. Did I mention that these computers are called One Laptop Per *Child*? They really figured out how to make these computers entertaining *for kids*. This is really a kid-centric device.
The amazing thing is that it brings out the kid in adults.
Amazingly, my mother actually enjoyed sex with my father. Yours had to settle for the village dyke and some in-heat pigs.
I think you are seeing conspiracies where there are none. The closest thing might be that the district would get a discount if they purchased enough at the same time. (any company in any industry will give you a discount if you purchase 10,000 copies of something as opposed to 200)
Also, Microsoft doesnt generally sell operating systems directly to the schools. They sell them to companies like Dell who then sell their computers to the schools. And it is quite common to see schools that have computers from both dell and other brands.
Patriotism? This makes my gut wrench. If this is patriotism, then what has Negroponte being doing to those third-world countries? I'm not an American. Does this mean if I advocate OLPC I am supporting America? The Article doesn't say what the costing will be. Will Americans get a 'discount' over third-world countries?
How sad. I thought this was an International effort. They might as well wrap the thing in the stars and stripes.
the aim of OLPC was to develop a $100 laptop for kids in poor nations to ensure they don't miss out on the benefits of computing, and to make sure developing countries don't fall further and further behind modern nations
And so they're including the USA in the list of underdeveloped, poor nations. Exactly where is the news here? With the state of the US educational system, and the state of the US dollar, this all makes perfect sense.
But, hey, you knew that, because you are educated.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I don't get the insightfulness of this comment. Most of those guys don't realize they're jackasses, so it's insightful to them.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Cmdr Taco will choose to block IPs rather than let this astroturfing problem ruin the economic viability of slashdot.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Who modded these comments down? There's five down mods at this point on undeserving comments (1 flamebait/4 troll)
I believe it was one person who did this judging by the fact that they were all modded at once and there were only five mods. I think this guy is the type who assumes anyone who mentions race is looking to start something, and therefore modded down the visable comments (no ACs were modded). If you're still reading this, let me tell you something. Fact: racism exists, even in today's modern world. Pretending it doesn't exist, assuming anyone who discusses it (or sexism, classism, ect.) is just trolling, and basically sticking your head in the sand isn't going to help. The tag was inappropriate, and someone called it out, leading to a discussion concerning race. It is by discussing problems, not denying their existance, that they are solved.
Other mods, please mod them back up.
Dear Molly,
... they are extremely well designed and thought-out.
... we are all better off with more education tools in the hands of all students. No child left behind is more likely to succeed with OLPC then with test-teaching.
.... There is not one of the wannabe POTUS I can trust to work for a better stronger US, eliminate Citizen/personal income tax ... replaced by a fair-flat business sales tax at each point of sale in the USA ... the customer buyer still pays/buys, but no more annual tax filling for the private citizens, and the tax rate floats annually to balance the budget; So, everyone rich and poor pay their fair share. Skipping a middle man point of sale ... tax evasion crime, unless the appropriate greater-tax portion is paid at point of sale. No wannabe POTUS talks about the Corporate (oil, tobacco, ADM ...) welfare, DMCA/RIAA... IPR laws, legacy or innovative economic models ... I expect the wannabe POTUS will prove to be great friends of the Corporate States America just like Nazi-Lover Bush.
... I would vote again ... for the patriotic honorable loser.
You may be a bit_itch, but you ain't never been goth anything.
You said it best; "Look at me, I'm an attention whore!" yes, you are indeed a dogma/money slut.
Do you work for Int$l, M$, and/or are you just another of the mighty clueless?
I have two OLPC, they work great across my *.11n. They ain't my box-beast, but for school kids
The cost faux-truth you spun like a corporate politician/tele-clergy.
The OLPC project originally aimed for a price of 100 United States dollars. The USD exchange rate is down globally. A $200 laptop, considering school book prices/revisionist content spin being feed to school children, poor quality education
Kids can teach each other more in a shorter amount of time then most adults or any politician can perceive as possible for kids learning collaboratively in a community of their peers.
http://laptop.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$100_laptop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XO-1_(laptop)
Our Failure, as a nation, is not an option for US children!
How many wannabe POTUS have committed to impeach Bush for crimes and treason, or moved to prosecute scavenger-bank mortgage loan-shark CEOs and personnel, attempted to evict religion from politics/government, demand fair and honest election machines/receipts
Just one wannabe POTUS really for US and The USA Constitution (in the batch)
!HAVEFUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
There are plenty of poor kids outside Alabama too. Could be seen by some as giving sub-par systems to poor kids but as they actually are very high-tech, just maybe not your fiery game machine, this could even be seen as an advantage. Smart kids in the U.S. could have input into a national/global education system based on free software and free courseware. I can't see it going anywhere but up.
A fascinating book by Phillip Oppenheimer called "Flickering MIND: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom" addresses just this problem.
There is a comfortable illusion, never challenged, that kids LEARN from computers - No data anywhere support this! IN fact, by any measurable standard like SAT scores, graduation rates, school GPA, etc., the opposite has happened.
Studies have shown that anyone given a computer who could not afford one spent their time surfing, playing games, ordering junk online, reading about BIgfoot, flying saucers, movie trivia, and just PLAYING. Pretty much the stuff we do on slashdot, but NOT learning anything useful. Using a computer gives people the FEELING that they are getting something done or learning something, acting modern and sophisticated and on the ball. Great discoveries, scientific breakthroughs, alternative energies, pretty much anything that launched the modern age happened without computers or the internet. Those things happened in chemistry labs, biomedical labs, under microscopes, particle labs, mechanical shops, garages, etc. It is as much a mistake to think kids learn, or learn anything very useful, playing online (which is usually what they do). No, kids don't learn much from computers, just how to use computers.
And no one should say there are plenty of free online tutorials in math, chemistry, bio, physics, etc. There are indeed. And there are plenty of people who can use and learn from those places. BUT everyone should understand that kids don't spend much time in those places. Networked games, chat rooms, instant messages, and entertainment sites - THAT is where they spend their time. Computers will never replace good teachers or even match their possibilities.
This in turn implies that the society is not making the best economic use of its citizens, for in many cases their potential is not being fulfilled and their contributions are not being rewarded (or encouraged).
Here is some free advice for the OLPC people. Let people outside the US and Canada buy the dammed thing. I have been wanting a product like this for a long time. Since I live in Australia I am unable to get one (through any conventional means). Sell them without the warm and fuzzy feeling method of buy one get one free. This will increase the demand and lower the price point down to the orginal $100 assuming enough people look at buying one.
This relates to the OLPC debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMqJvhmD5Yg
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
SO you posted the link to your funny little video, complete with disparaging innuendo towards white people. That's funny, hm? It's always OK to make fun of white people, isn't it? Fun to call them cracker and honkie? Fun to suggest that blacks have larger penises (even though studies (and Xaviera Hollander) say it isn't true?)
But it's totally not OK to turn that table around, is it? Not OK to laugh at blacks for their fat lips and nappy hair? Sickle-cell anemia? I don't know which pimp is my daddy? Watermelon and fried chicken anyone? Aren't those things funny too?
Still laughing? Starting to see the double standard?
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Know why? Because to a disturbing degree, the US has a third-world education system. Sure, our universities may be some of the best in the world, but the public school system is shithouse.
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
It's immediately evident when social programs are suggested; the US people have one of the worst cases of ME ME ME ME ME syndrome imaginable. I've noticed whenever solutions involving having the taxpayers pay for services are suggested, people start screaming, especially if they don't have to use the services directly. What happened to helping your fellow man, anyway?
The American society tells people to care only for themselves and ignore the rest of the world, leading to some of the most obvious symptoms of cultural bigotry imaginable. And this is how the media of the USA manages to get away with covering up huge sections of what's really going on in the world, as well. Generally, the total result of this whole situation is arrogance, and it is the arrogance of the US people (especially the politicians and ambassadors) that make the rest of the world's countries angry at the US...
Usually insightful comments include something like reason, logic, and argumentation. Said comment included none of the aforementioned.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Finally, disadvantaged students will have something to prop up their wobbly desks.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, the federal government has relatively little involvement in such decisions, which are handled at the state and local level. With the change in strategy, the OLPC effort can address individual states and cities. Of course, there are underprivileged students in every state, but here, too, the OLPC sales effort must deal with the same kinds of issues that they found in Thailand, Nigeria, and elsewhere. If you were the Superintendent of Schools for Detroit's school district or the State Secretary of Education in Mississippi, would you spend the taxpayers' money on XO laptops, on teachers to help schools comply with the No Child Left Behind mandate, or on something else?
I bought an XO laptop during the Give One, Get One promotion, and admire all of the effort that went into its design. It's fun to use, even if it is a bit underpowered and the keyboard is tough for continuous typing. I wish the OLPC team the best of success with their program, but it's also likely to be a tough sale here in the US, patriotism notwithstanding.
If laptops were so vital to a child's education, then why wouldn't the Federal Government in the US suppply computers to their own schools instead of relying on a charity?
It seems rather bizarre and ironic to me that laptops designed to be used in unfriendly, poverty-sticken environments is being marketed at one of the richest countries in the world.
- apply for welfare?
If not, then sounds like you're the real 'lazy ******.' And I ain't black, you seeSo Uncle Sam won't help poor ******-hatin' me. Race doesn't matter. Are you American?
Then apply for welfare. And don't take it out on blacks?
I mean, since you said yourself it's the government that hates you. Stick your black head out and I'll blow it! Interesting that someone as bigoted as you would admit to being homosexual.
I don't know what you've been told, but oral sex on another man, even once, means you might be gay. The ******'s had there's such a long, long time Again, the apostrophe made it possessive. And "there's" should be "theirs".
Seriously, if you're going to troll or flame, do it properly.
Unless you're 12, in which case I apologize.
I hope this has been informative for you.
i'll be looking forward to finding cheap, barely used OLPC units in my local pawnshop very soon!
I find it interesting that some years back when Newt Gingrich advocated giving laptops to poor children, he was ridiculed by many.
The cynic in me suspects that some of those who ridiculed the idea at the time now think the OLPC is a fandamtastic idea. I guess who the messenger is determines how good the idea is.
Personally, I think the OLPC is a good idea, but that they ought to openly sell them in wealthy countries and use the profit to subsidize other less well off places. Hey, I'd like to have one to mess around with.
And, of course, the buy one-give one promotion was at a time when I didn't have the extra cash. It's ended now that I could do it.
The use of the term was an example of subtle sarcasm.
You are pretty stupid for replying to song lyrics.
all the nations you mentioned as having better mobility are white nations. where is the bulk of our poverty in America? it is with the blacks and hispanics.
First off it's not their responsibility, but being an overarching mechanism means they can be used to set policy so expect some serious cozying up by Intel and Microsoft if they ever make noises that way.
Secondly, I think we need to get away from the fact that OLPC is "just for poor countries" - IMHO Negroponte is not doing himself (and OLPC) favours with that by not addressing that perception error. It makes it look like a throwaway ("here, you're poor, have one") and fails to flag what a fantastic tool it is overall. Don't forget that kids in 'richer' countries like them too, and I can't see the educational value lower itself in that case.
As a matter of fact, if they sold in Europe I would have already bought one for my 9 year old.
Insert
Let me be quite clear. Race is not a credible explanation for the lack of income mobility in the United States .
First, my comment is about income mobility, not poverty. According to the study, "When the data are not controlled for income, blacks and whites have similar changes of having adult incomes higher than their parents." In other words, though middle class blacks are less likely than whites to achieve higher incomes than their parents, they do not skew the numbers overall because there are more poor blacks and they are likely to achieve higher incomes.
Second, France is nearly 10% Muslim. Over 18% of Canadians are foreign born, and the vast majority of immigrants come from places other than Europe. The comparable number for the U.S. is 11%. In 2001, 13.4% of Canadians identified themselves as visible minorities. That is obviously much less than the U.S., which is about 13% black and 12% Hispanic. Nevertheless, Canada has relatively high income mobility even when compared to many countries with less diverse populations. Finally, the United States has a relatively high immigration rate when compared to European countries; this should result in higher income mobility as the children of immigrants from developing countries gain an education and climb the ladder.
Third, the United States suffers from a great deal income inequality when compared to the other countries I listed - not just at the low end, but also at the high end. This is a far more likely explanation for the lack of mobility. The greater the variation in parental income, the greater the effect that is likely to have on children (e.g. because of private schooling, social connections, etc.). Many of the causes of this are well-known, and would be likely to reduce income mobility. But I don't want to appear to attack the U.S. here - the situation truly is unfortunate. I only want to point out that the original claim that the U.S. is particularly open to mobility is mistaken.
It depends on what you put on that computer .
Childeren are always curious . If you put mainly educational software on it , and make that attractive ( for instance in the form of a game , they will learn from it ).
You underestimate a child's desire to learn new stuff.
Put edubuntu on a computer , as the only OS , and let your childeren play with that. Most games on it are educational , so they will play that . It's not because the market creates a hype around games that teach only violence , that childeren would suddenly only be interested in that.
But i agree that they can not replace teachers . But it can help in places where there are no teachers.
In the end , it all comes down to good parenting : parents should keep an eye an what their chileren are doing with the computer , and assist and provide information.
Slipping shoelaces ?
above poster thinks you're as stupid as he is.
looks like the GP struck a nerve.
One Laptop Per Coon?
"For one thing, we are doing something patriotic, if you will, after all we are and there are poor children in America."
That's the worst sentence I've seen since last week. Read it several times if necessary.
i had similar 'good' education from start to the end as you describe, you had at mexica.
geography, maths, knew the capital of bangladesh, ancient history, some literature, this and that. all my peers (all of the generation) has been taught them.
what happened to that knowledge ?
everyone forgot all of them. for, they were UNNECESSARY.
noone needs to know capital of bangladesh, or pacific ocean's area. you dont need them in your future life.
this is proven by the fact that many inventors and forefathers of modern science were people that didnt know these. as stupid the human civilization today about these standards, they would take those people as 'ignorant' if they had been born today. yet, they were not, and their names and deeds are taught in textbooks now.
what you need in life is to be taught HOW TO learn. s/he who knows it, can learn anything that s/he needs.
Read radical news here
Occasionally I am forced to agree with Dr. Johnson. If no other argument works, then turn to that...
As a self-proclaimed community of nerds (who probably spend more time sitting in front of the screen than anywhere else), I think it's natural for us to view the computer as a valid tool for education--and it certainly can be, especially as mentioned above.
If the spotty career of TV in the US is any indication, though, I'd hedge your bets. When TV came out, there was a lot of talk about how "this will help your kids learn through the magic of electronics." The reality, however, has seen a gradual dumbing-down of society and an over-reliance on superficial, visual messages. It's a foregone conclusion among many health professionals that too much TV is a bad thing, and, contrary to the early promises, are expressing grave concern over how it affects mental development
What you can learn by watching TV is, to a large extent, how to watch TV. Video is a poor way to learn how to ski, skydive, sculpt, or sing. The nature of its presentation does not encourage thoughtful dialogue, discourse, or analysis.
When we give poor children a laptop, what are we asking them to learn? What are we asking them NOT to learn?
Brought to you by Carl's Jr.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Who will tell the Republicans?
Technically, murder-suicide does not violate the golden rule.
Check the median household income for one thing.
I just DESTROYED you. Could the moderators mod this idiotic garbage down?
I think kids need some highly structured learning time and also need some loosely structured learning time. An internet connected computer is ideal for students to moodle around a topic during loosely structured learning time. Having the computer doesn't replace a competent teacher it necessitates it; anyone can resent a highly structured rigid lesson plan to a class, but teaching with students on computers and connected to the internet requires the teach to be an agile thinker.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This would also make for a greener solution, and a small move away from our disposable mentality.
Also, the kids could take a firm part in the refurbishment and reuse of these old computers, which would also teach them some technical skills.
But ultimately, I smell a problem in the works here. So far, the push to place computers into schools have been met with mixed results, and usually the students are far more knowledgeable about the computers and their use than the teachers are. In other cases, control over the use of the computers by the schools can be rather draconian, hampering the free exploration of all the possibilities for fear of being suspended -- or worse.
In short, OLPC is not the panacea "everyone" hopes it will be. There are far deeper problems with US schools that will not be solved with sticking a computer on every kids' lap. For instance, it seems that many teachers in public schools are firmly against students using Wikipedia a source of information because "anybody can modify it". While this is true, the quality of the information on Wikipedia is not bad, and in most cases much better than the information you find in your average text book that public schools typically use. Besides, I always wondered why they couldn't just go there themselves and fix any information they found lacking. Obviously, they are not getting it. The problem stems from a deeper mindset that "authority is never wrong", and that's the whole thing that the Internet challenges.
I also question the value of giving a kid a laptop when perhaps her needs might be better served by giving her food and addressing health needs instead? The so-called "digital divide" is specious at best; there is a greater economic and health disparity issue that take priority, and I would say in large part it's more a problem of politics than of economics, anyway.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
is more closely aligned with the shit running out of his mouth than that typically found on slashdot.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In the US, these recycled computers would either be bare or come with windows 9x/nt/xp in varying ammounts. Most would not be able to use a different version of the OS because of horsepower and the drivers may not be available for the OS because of obscalecence.
So you now have some MS computers or you need a "standard" FOSS O/S for the classroom. Well, the FOSS one may fall afoul of your schools' license with MS for the other computers and they will DEFINITELY clash with the mixed WinOS given on the computers. So you may have to rip out all the computers currently there to avoid this or reject any computer that cannot mnage the authorised OS from MS.
The cost of this, even if the laptop was free, can quickly get to the same area as the XO laptop.
Ordinary laptops should be given to charities AS A CHARITY and not to schools. A charity can donate it to a single household without one and the problems don't exist. A charity can use it themselves and the problems are limited. A charity can create a "hobo internet cafe" where people can come as they would with a library and use the internet to find a job or where to buy cheap food and the problems are limited. Schools have too many constraints on what they can do legally and from internal training.
That is so true. And that may be exactly why so many Americans are violently opposed to good education for the poor. When the U.S. had slavery, it was illegal in most slave states to teach a black to read and write? The same attitude seems to have carried over to the 21st century.
Like the ones that can't even be sold on ebay but have specs far greater than these? That's America for you!
While I'm not a fan of Intel's potential tricks in this case.....
What is the line drawn between the poor and not_poor? I am all for giving OLPC leeway when its for people that can't buy an expensive system, that leeway ends when they are cutting into other businesses.
Selling cheap laptop for the bottom 2% income is great and all, but is Negroponte's line at 50% income?
I call premature bullshit.
Although I don't see any evidence stating that laptops can't be valuable instructional tools in the classroom, I have also seen very little evidence that they *can*, based upon 1:1 laptop initiatives that have been attempted in the past (in both affluent, and poor areas)
For starters, the absolute biggest hurdle to jump over is the teachers. Many are reluctant to teach with laptops, many are unable to, and many have enough experience to (correctly) make the call that handing a laptop to every child isn't the sort of educational reform needed in the US at the moment.
If teachers aren't able to use the laptops, they sure as hell won't be effectively used in a classroom setting. Even if the teachers are willing participants, the cost of training them to use the laptops is almost as great as the cost of the machines themselves.
Educational software (especially FREE educational software) isn't at a stage where it can be easily and reliably integrated into a lesson without the considerable overhead of getting students to learn how to use the software, and overcoming any technical glitches that might occur. This added overhead typically counteracts whatever benefit the laptops might have provided in the first place.
I do hope that more good software gets developed (and not just proprietary apps for the OLPC, which, for an "open" project, seems to encourage lock-in rather than cooperation), although I don't see 1:1 initiatives as being particularly viable at the present.
On the other hand, we have seen quite a bit of success in our own district with giving laptops and projectors to individual teachers, providing a bit of training, and then encouraging teachers to go out and think of ways to creatively integrate the technology into their curriculum as a teaching/demonstration aid. We also make an active effort to provide teachers with a good list of online resources to consult for information and material.
Not all of them catch on to it, but the ones who do report fantastic results, and students describe the lessons as being particularly memorable and instructive (which can also be confirmed by test scores). From this point, teachers now have a much better grasp of how technology can be used in the classroom, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. I'd feel much more comfortable giving this sort of teacher a classroom full of computers (should they see the need for it) than one who has virtually no experience with technology-assisted instruction.
The "let them eat cake" ethos of the OLPC founders drives me nuts, as the benefits are unclear, and there are other educational reforms that are far more urgent at the present. Adding more technology to schools *IS* a good thing, but it has to be done gradually and responsibly. Giving every kid a laptop is not only a bad idea economically, but will also have a *negative* educational impact if the educators are not prepared for it.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I know one parent who eventually decided not to put his son in private school at the 4th grade because the school required that the child have a very expensive, specific laptop, that he would then be transporting every day on the school bus system that would require him to travel to a central point for transfer to a bus to the private school. Apart from any issues of public vs. private school, the parent felt that entrusting this laptop to a 4th grader was risky and an expensive risk at that. I think many parents will be much more comfortable with the less expensive, more rugged laptop, and it will serve the child just as well, perhaps better, especially with Open Office available. There is also the real issue that the laptops generally available are expensive, and expensive to keep software up-to-date for many families, and the issues when there is more than one child in the family. OLPC was not DESIGNED for a US market, but only because the technology bigwigs don't look at the whole population, nor at the different requirements for an education environment.
Is interactivity not the major difference? With a computer you can learn how to ski,skydive,sculpt and sing.
Not wanting to get all web 2.0 on your ass, but the fact that the internet is becoming a less passive experience by the day, is one reason I remain optimistic about its educational role.
http://flickr.com/photos/barl0w/1101266148/
It was modded up because it was saying that we don't want racists like the parent of that post around these parts. They're simply not welcome. The mod obviously agreed.
Then again, I'm replying to someone who can't spell "Kaiser" in his own username... No wonder.
Only through ruthless economic analysis and application of the principles of Objectivism can the true value of an object be determined, and your purile, sentimental appeal to childish glee does nothing of the sort.
The supposedly charming anecdote you relate exposes the Socialistic, Collectivist roots of this rotten enterprise. Why should TWO laptops be required for one to determine the distance to another? Any fool can tell you that only the opinion of the superior laptop should be believed, and under the loony altruistic schemes of OLPC, all laptops are forced to be equal.
Negreponte and his ilk must be held accountable for their crimes.
The XO is about 2-3 times cheaper than any competitor, comes with 10 times better battery life (good for environment and practical to use it the whole day on a charge), is sunlight readable (imagine kids being able to learn outside buildings), provides REAL collaborative features as has never been seen before on any other laptop both in terms of using WiFi Mesh networking and the software interface built around COLLABORATION and LEARNING. Attacking OLPC for arguments on its cost and value proposition is completely ridiculous. The Asus Eee costs minimum $400 without Asus making any profit, probably selling it at a loss, actually Asus is selling the Eee for $650 each to schools in the USA, thus over 3 times more expensive then the XO laptop. The Classmate is a joke. It's nothing else than a conventionnal laptop with a crappy DVD player 7" screen. You can get a full sized laptop for about the same price. Just replace the harddrive with a 2GB flash memory and install Linux instead of Windows on any conventionnal laptop and you've got something that is exactly the same as the Intel Classmate PC. There is NOTHING to look for in Intel's laptop, no innovation whatsoever and don't even compare educational features cause on the Intel solutions THERE ARE NONE. Compare the XO project with whatever you want on the market, there is no question the OLPC project is a fantastic opportunity for schools worldwide, and there is absolutely NO better way to spend $188, no matter if you are in the USA (where the school system spends more than 10 thousand dollars per school child a year) or if you are in one of the poorest countries like Ghana where the budget is not even $20 per child per year for education. The XO laptop is built to last at least for 5 years, so in poor countries it will replace whatever crappy books budget there is and in the developped countries like the USA it will be paid for by instauring about 2 day off for extra hollidays in a school year budget.
How is it that so many people are so easily suckered?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Have you heard of the "Hole in the wall" experiment and what it has to say about functional literacy?
What once took advanced degrees and was limited to the realm of engineers quickly becomes childsplay - that is simply a natural progression. The obverse to this is that a child in 2020 will most likely be able to do more with a computer than you can today with all your old-fashioned book-learnin'.
Let me ask this. If the laptop were $100, or as with the spin off $75, what would be the incentive to spend billions of dollars on textbooks? The text book market is in for a good gutting.
I develop these materials, and not only are they not incredibly good, but could benefit form rapid updates and supplementary materials which an internet connection could provide.
Simply because computers are not used well isn't a very good argument. It would be like questioning the need for residential telephone service at the turn of the century. Who would need that?
Preparing teachers for the use of these technologies is something that is sorely lacking!
So you don't know what insightful means, then?
"Poverty" in the US is defined in relative terms rather than absolute terms. It is not possible to eliminate such poverty because you will always have a poorest X% (unless you have a communist economy). The poverty in the US is not comparable to that in the third world, where it is measured in absolute terms. People in "poverty" in the US frequently have cars, refrigeration, air conditioning, and other modern conveniences. (I grew up below the poverty line in the US, and I am speaking from experience.)
This thread has opened my eyes about something about slashdot.
Well, since you at least didn't say "OLPN", I'll try to answer sensibly.
Engineering always involves tradeoffs. When you talk about getting education to the people who need it most, if you insist on only the absolute best, it will cost so much it never happens. That closes the poverty loop as effectively as _any_ overt discrimination.
The XO, as it stands, has more value in it than any ordinary PC at twice the price. I can only guess that the angst on display here is a result of a bunch of geeks frustrated that _they_ were overlooked.
If you don't like the approach Negroponte took, invest in commercial uses of the tech. You know where and how if you've been reading here the last week. Sitting here burning in your greed gets you burnt, that's all.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
When there isn't much difference from one person to the next, any kid can easily grow up to have any job. The well-paid people aren't all that different from the low-paid people. Wealth-enhancing abilities like intelligence may be inheritable, but this barely matters because people are pretty much the same.
If people are really different from each other, then those differences will matter. Since people tend to marry others who are similar, and since wealth-enhancing abilities are inheritable, you get persistant classes of people.
Only draconian control over families could change this. We'd have to purposely breed the stupid people with the bright people.
It has always been that you must work your ass off to climb out of poverty. Few poor people bother. They find time-wasting entertainment to consume their time, addictive substances to rot their often feeble minds, stupid toys to waste their money on, etc.
There are places in the world where you can't climb out of poverty. In the past, there were many more.
Black gets unevenly hot in the sun. It's really a stupid color. Pure white makes sense, but...
What we really need is pink. Lots of women adore the little laptop. It fits in a purse. Unfortunately, it's not pink. Seriously. It matters for many women.
Lavender and purple are also nice. One could have several shades of pink.
As far as activity software is concerned, the resolution is always 1200x900. It's always 16-bit color. (5 red, 6 green, 5 blue)
In color mode, the display is purposely blurred to avoid color fringes. One could say that the result is roughly as good as 600x450 to 800x600. You get better effective resolution in a lower-left to upper-right direction than you do in an upper-left to lower-right direction.
In greyscale mode, a weighted average of the color values is done to make grey pixels. The framebuffer is still 16-bit color, but you can't see the color.
we start raising our public education standards to allow students to compete with 3rd-world countries. It's just a shame that it's the public education system itself that still can't compete.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Holy Cow you knocked that one out of the park! That was exactly what this researcher found. Before computers it was TV in the classroom. It was going to REVOLUTIONIZE teaching and learning, MAKING LEARNING FUN, with little geniuses running everywhere. Before that it was other multimedia using filmstrips, films, etc. ALL measurable forms of testing have shown that just the opposite has happened. Modern kids now expect to be entertained nearly all the time.
Sometimes learning is NOT fun. Sometimes, (OK, a LOT of times), it takes a lot of effort, concentration, and discipline. Usually the breakthroughs happen when someone thinks about a single subject/problem for a long time until they find a solution. Most youth don't want to go to that length of effort. Indeed, most of them have turned the channel 30 times, read about the next flying saucer/Elvis is alive/ Bigfoot blurb, or gone to the next screen of warcraft by that time. As grades fall pressure mounts from administrators to dumb down the curriculum even more!!
Oh yes. And, by the way, the amount of school money spent on computers in just the 1990s alone was: ***$78 BILLION*** (3 guesses as to what Bill Gates' cut on that was). The number of additional teachers (to bring the student/teacher ratio down) and new school buildings that could have bought is mind boggling! We are going to be lucky if we don't wake up one day to a scene off of Dawn of the Dead, with our little geniuses who know nothing and have the attention span of a monkey!
So does this mean Negroponte has finally found a country that's willing to stump up the cash for the million units (minimum order size) of laptops their younger kids may want, as opposed to actually need ?
I don't care as much about the meaning of words as I do using them as a memetic vehicle. Ultimately, human language itself is so limiting.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I gave a speech ten years ago, actually at a publisher, where I looked at the economics of the situation, and basically stated that, the publishers were 80% about distribution mechanisms, and perhaps 10% content creation. Some would rather not hear this.
The economics are essentially against the publishers. The last reading program I worked on was a $100M effort. An entire free system could be created for this amount. How it gets accomplished is open to discussion, but I expect that one of my next businesses will be in this area.
The OLPC may not be the best expenditure, but in an economy where so much money is wasted on other things, the amount is negligible at best. So long as it has a browser, a standards compliant browser, all is good regardless of the OS. But, mobiles will be more suited to the task in my opinion (speaking five years out).
BTW, "The Teaching Gap" is a good place to start with respect to teachers. It is not a discounting of teachers as the title may suggest...
The parent is dead on.
If you think that using a Microsoft product is computing you are
one of the poor children in America(ie. USA).
Understanding the power of "software tools" (Kernighan and Plauger)
is like knowing how to catch fish as apposed to only knowing how to eat fish.
The tools and the open standards of the OLPC is a requirement for our future.
Educating our poor should start here first, if we are to be the lead for the rest of the world.