Slashdot Mirror
2nd Generation "$100 Laptop" Will Be an E-Book Reader
waderoush writes "At a conference sponsored by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation this morning, OLPC founder unveiled the design for the foundation's second-generation laptop. It's actually not a laptop at all — it's a dual-screen e-book reader (we've got pictures). Negroponte said the foundation hopes that the cost of the new device, which is scheduled for production by 2010, can be kept to $75, in part by using low-cost displays manufactured for portable DVD players."
OLPC's goals have gone from providing a platform that allows full intellectual expression and room from growth and development, to running XP so maybe kids and type a book report or something, to now merely being a way to passively consume printed media?
And last week I thought that this project couldn't get any farther from good.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, "educating kids" is an utter impossibility when OLPC+Windows combination is involved. The term you are looking for is "indoctrination". It is so for many, many reasons mentioned already a million times here, not the least of them the lack of any useful free "educational" software for XP, never you mind the storage for it on the OLPC.
Using "ANY" computer, "education" does not make. If that was the case, a far more cost effective way then the OLPC would be to simply ship used throw-away computers that clog our city dumps here (some of them far more powerful then the OLPC will ever be) to Africa in bulk.
You are confusing granting haphazard access to some fraction of the Western commercial technology, which requires a (very expensive) ecosystem of other commercial technology to be useful and which will never be available at the prices those kids can afford, with "educating" them. This is a purely corporatist view of the world and if it were up to people like you, education in the West would consist of giving kids a brand-name calculator (with no instructions) and calling it a "mathematics and electronics course" and as the parent poster insightfully mentioned, "a cooking course" would consist of a bunch of McDonalds coupons, etc and so on.
And there is of course the wee little bit of the matter of active mis-representations Negroponte has engaged in over the years on behalf of the OLPC project, but I guess that is far too esoteric for you to grasp.
In the light of the actual facts you should take your own advice on this.
Textbooks are clearly a lucrative business, good luck getting enough people to care about the costs to overcome whatever lobby various publishers would put together to keep the status quo.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Hmm. Are you sure you want the government writing the textbooks?
Currently local governments (or at least state governments in some cases) SELECT the textbooks, but there are options. There isn't that much competition, but in this case ANY competition is a good thing. Government written and mandated textbooks sound pretty scary to me...
nope. it will never happen. Professors and their desire to rape the students by publishing slight revisions of their drivel year after year for insane prices are what keeps ebooks from being common.
If I could carry my entire semesters books in one reader I would be in heaven. All college students would love this.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
New hardware is nice and all, but it's really of minor importance compared to the elements of the platform that should be there to help kids learn. I think there's a reason that the press never covers how fantastic and ground breaking the educational aspect is. The technology is interesting, but as far as I can tell, the educational aspect is an afterthought.
The cost is not just in the writing but also in the peer review, editing, and re-checking of facts to ensure accuracy and completeness. That is why really good textbooks are relatively more expensive than their page count, material, and binding might suggest.
Arrrgh! There was some future computing expo featured on /. a few weeks ago that was full of touchscreen keyboards as well. It's a horrible idea. There's no tactile feedback and no give to absorb the impact, so your fingertips will take much more of a beating than using a conventional keyboard. Touchscreen keyboards are fine for, say, typing a few numbers at a checkout, but for anything like serious input they're just an awful idea.
I never really understood why the OLPC project insists on reinventing the wheel. The mesh networking and screen were impressive tech, but why reinvent the computer desktop in the form of Sugar? Now they're going with an untried form factor. Just build a decent, inexpensive, robust laptop and ship the damn thing. I find it more than a little patronising that kids in less developed countries apparently can't be expected to use similar software to kids in the first world. When they grow up chances are they're gonna be using Windows, Gnome or KDE (or Aqua, if they're incredibly rich by local standards). They're all more like each other than they are like Sugar. I say start 'em young.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
OLPC is basically a way to stick big bills to small countries for 'educational laptops'
in TFA OLPC 'complains' about how many countries thought they should have designed the whole thing around cellphone chipsets and displays (and inputs) to get even cheaper costs, and their argument is 'cellphones aren't laptops' typical imperialistic ideals...
all you need is something that can display informational text that should be able to be changed slightly each year, and for each region...
and possibly some way for the end user to take quizzes or tests on the material they read....
India wanted $10 laptops, and they made their own program, and i have no doubt they actually used small cheap processors like the ones in cell phones to make their project. they only got down to $50 last i heard, but still OLPC were $200 devices, and this one 'will be $75 in 2010' India expects their 'device' to be a lot cheaper by 2010. (though there is little known about the project in India, I assume they will try to use as much cheap cell phone tech as possible)
they also find the OLPC program to be suspect, why would you target grade school children in less developed countries to use expensive laptops that could be sold on the open market for three times the price paid by their countries for them as educational tools...
why teach children in poor countries on computers, when it's not even standard in developed nations? I definitely agree with India's problems with the OLPC project, consider the countries that have welcomed the project,
"Rwanda (G1G1 pilot)[42]
Americas
Haiti (G1G1 pilot)
Mexico (50,000 laptops bought by billionaire Carlos Slim)
Peru (270,000 laptops bought, now receiving laptops)[43]
United States of America (15,000 laptops bought by Birmingham, Alabama)[44]
Uruguay (100,000 laptops bought, now receiving laptops)[45]
Asia
Afghanistan (G1G1 pilot)
Cambodia (G1G1 pilot)
Mongolia (G1G1 pilot, now receiving 10,000 laptops"
Nigeria was going to order a million, but then elections were held and they haven't solidified the contract, Nigeria the number one source of Internet crime, was the most interested in OLPC.... bah, there is no reason for less developed nations to buy laptops to train kids, it's all a con to get those countries to go into debt to buy things that won't help their economies, that will do nothing but create a cast of children who want fancy electronic gadgets that they can never afford... unless they're as corrupt as Nigeria and create a class of criminals who focus on stealing as much as possible from developed nations...
if OLPC was serious about creating bare-bone education devices they would have modified cellphone style devices, instead of starting around a general purpose CPU with a complex operating system and complicated displays etc etc...
computers were originally designed around micro controllers for microwave ovens, basic text parsing and display is easy and cheap if you don't encumber the device with a fancy OS...
and for 'interactive textbooks' especially when you're targeting less developed countries, should focus on being as simple (and as cheap) as possible. OLPC isn't about bringing electronic textbooks to everyone, it's about making fancy electronic devices and teaching impressionable children to desire them...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html