Skeptics Question OLPC's Focus With $75 Tablet

With the recent announcement of OLPC's shift in focus, many are criticizing the nonprofit's attempt to design what could be seen as unrealistic hardware at an impossible price point. "The OLPC project has become an unrealistic hardware 'dream' and lost its focus on education, wrote blogger Wayan Vota on OLPC News, which has followed the OLPC since its inception. The project comes up with unrealistic hardware designs and price points that destroy its purpose even more, he wrote. 'Excuse me if I get mad at the XO-3 hype. I'm angry at the energy devoted to fantasy XO hardware instead of OLPC educational reality. I miss the original OLPC Mission, where children, not computers, controlled our dreams,' Vota wrote."

Comments

Needed: DIY education software

[Animats]

Yes. The OLPC needs to be coupled with software that gives children a basic education with little or no teacher assistance. Then it's worth deploying in places where the educational system has broken down.

Like Afghanistan.

Re:Needed: DIY education software

[Penguinisto]

I can second Gatto's theories, both as someone who has read and bought his book (The Underground History of American Education), and as a former teacher.

I've discovered many times over that once a student is genuinely passionate about a subject (I taught CompSci), the absolute best thing you can do (besides encouraging them) is to give them a few guidelines, help them when they get stuck somewhere, supply them with all the reference material they can stand, and then watch them go at it... I've seen kids take on Linux with zero previous skills in *nix, and in less than a year gain a better mastery of it than any recent CS grad. The biggest trick is to give them the tools from which to do the research, and from which to better themselves - in or out of a classroom. Then you give them the knowledge, but only when they need and desire it.

/P

Why laptops?

[acidradio]

It is nice that they want to make laptops for these kids but I think they are overdoing it. It seems like the proponents are more enthralled with the sizzle rather than the steak. Why can't we just put in reasonable computer labs with Internet connections?

I studied in Mexico for a while and it is quite common for many people, especially kids, to go to the neighborhood Internet cafe and pay a small fee to use their computers. There were always lots of kids there and they didn't mind that it was a "community" computer. While it would be nice to give everyone laptops, the whole idea of providing computing to masses of schoolchildren in the developing world needs to at least start with computer labs in the schools.

Fundamentally I see problems with giving kids in the developing world laptops:
1.) These are poor countries and the devices may be lost/stolen/sold to pay for essentials of life
2.) Not likely to have Internet access at home, may not even have reliable electricity
3.) Access to teachers in school (and tech support...).

I think they just wanted to make glitz and glamor out of this. The idea of a computer lab is not very sexy when compared to giving kids expensive pieces of hardware which will magically transform their lives.

Re:Why laptops?

[Darkness404]

Why can't we just put in reasonable computer labs with Internet connections?

Location. If someone has to walk 3 miles to go to the nearest place with a computer lab, they aren't going to go that often. If they have a laptop close by, they are more apt to use it.

3.) Access to teachers in school (and tech support...).

Actually, I think that may be more of a negative than a positive for most kids. Most teachers are rather controlling with computers, most kids with their own computer could go more in depth with it. I don't know about anyone else, but generally on school computers I at least tried to do nothing more than what the teacher said, after all no use getting in trouble. But on my home PC I experimented with things, bootloaders, operating systems, drivers, system files, and really, it was because of this that I got interested in computers. If my only experience with computers was at school, I would have probably turned out to be one of those people who know nothing more than Windows, Word and Excel, who thinks to use HTML you must be some 1337 coder and PowerPoint usage makes you some computer wizard.

Really, the OLPC program was a success, not only in transforming the lives of thousands of kids in third world countries, but by making computers more affordable for the first world as well with the advent of the netbook.

typical techie outcome

[timmarhy]

This is what happens when you have techies trying to implement a business plan. they fail to understand the key drivers and get lost in the technical considerations. producing a $100 laptop in itself it's actually a meaningful goal, attempting to educate the poor is the goal, thats what they lost sigh of.