South Carolina To Give 1 Laptop Per School Child

ruphus13 sends in an OStatic article outlining the plans of the state of South Carolina, inspired by the One Laptop Per Child project, to provide laptops to local elementary school children. "The South Carolina Department of Education and the non-profit Palmetto Project have teamed up to get a laptop in the hands of every elementary school student in South Carolina... The OLPC/SC hopes to distribute as many as 50,000 laptops this spring to eligible students. The effort is underwritten and managed by the Palmetto Project, whose mission is to 'put new and creative ideas to work in South Carolina.' While low-performing school districts with limited resources are a special focus for the OLPC/SC, the group is adamant on one point: There are no free laptops. In order to receive a laptop, children need to give a small monetary donation — the project coordinators say a dollar or two is sufficient."It's not obvious from browsing around the OLPC/SC site what software the XO laptops will be running; but by following links one gets the impression that they will be powered by Linux, not XP.

Comments

Please

[Anonymous Coward]

Please give one to Miss South Carolina too.

Is this such a good idea?

[Sockatume]

They're giving laptops to "low-performing school districts with limited resources", but surely to actually use those laptops in lessons, the schools will have to spend even more of their limited resources setting up an infrastructure and new teaching plans?

Re:Is this such a good idea?

[eldavojohn]

They're giving laptops to "low-performing school districts with limited resources", but surely to actually use those laptops in lessons, the schools will have to spend even more of their limited resources setting up an infrastructure and new teaching plans?

What's interesting about this is this part from the article:

The child must sign a document promising simply to try to "do something great" for their state, families -- and themselves -- with the laptop.

It doesn't sound like they're putting these laptops in the hands of the children for the purpose of teachers utilizing them as teaching tools. And of course, with such a bold new technology, I would expect the teachers not to use them at all at first. Then learn to use them as an augmenting learning tool. And maybe the final stage five years from now is to have the textbook on the laptop and all that jazz.

I know a school teacher in the Bronx and from what she tells me it sounds like all other attempts to improve the learning process have failed or actually deterred from it. She sounds like she'd be willing to try anything.

Keep in mind that these laptops are probably going to cost the same as a couple of new textbooks. Who cares if it fails? It'd be great if a few kids did do something great for their state and family with these laptops.

Sweet

[brunes69]

Sounds like there will be a lot of cheap XOs on sale on eBay pretty soon - can't wait.

The elephant in the room...

[MikeRT]

Most of the teachers suck at what they do, and in poor places like South Carolina there are many parents who discourage their kids from being successful. Case in point, when we lived there, my mom tutored a kid at my school. You know what happened when he got an A on a test? His piece of shit excuse for human trash mother said to him "you actin' white now?" Technology is no solution for bad schools and students with parents who pull them down because they have ego or race problems (both apply in the case of the black mother who ridiculed the kid my white mother was trying to help succeed).

There is so little incentive now to get an education AND for schools to compete to hire people who have an education in something more than "education." Throwing around millions of dollars to buy laptops for kids who can barely read is more likely to have the state subsidizing the gaming, movie and porn industries than actually teaching these kids anything.

And here's the thing. People will crawl out of the woodwork in most cases to attack comments like mine about how I'm unfairly judging the public schools or am a closet racist for saying such harsh things about that black bitch who tore her poor son down everytime he succeeded. It's easier to make excuses for why the public schools are failing and why parents, especially poor parents, are often roadblocks to their kids' success than to start making hamburger out of the sacred cows and fixing the problem by introducing more competition and making an education more critical to just being able to get by in America.

From money to computers

[slapout]

Looks like we've gone from throwing money at the problem to throwing computers at the problem.