Skeptics Question OLPC's Focus With $75 Tablet 159
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."
Needed: DIY education software (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Why laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Seriously... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Needed: DIY education software (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen brother. Most of the world is controlled by tin pot dictators and strong arm thugs, no intervention from the US necessary.
OLPC was always a liberal wet dream; if we all wish real hard, maybe we can stop the rain! Why would anyone think you could create hardware and software better and cheaper than what the rest of the world could do? Sorry, but no matter how noble your intentions you still can't pull a rabbit out of a hat just because you want to.
This is more proof, as if it was needed, that the OLPC project was the quintessence of wishful thinking. Stop wasting money on a failed concept; just buy the little bastards a netbook and call it a day.
typical techie outcome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why laptops? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Needed: DIY education software (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm sorry too, but the US was largely responsible for the destruction of Afghanistan many years before 9/11.
You know, by funding groups within it that were anti-communist, making it a target for the Soviet Union, then backing the Afghan mujahideen when the Soviets invaded. Then after claiming an ideological victory forgetting that the place existed; leaving Afghanistan a war torn hole ripe for strife. Easy pickings for the likes of the Taliban.
Re:Needed: DIY education software (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots of places that are broken down that the US hasn't even touched.
And has there actually ever been a need to touch any of them? Other than for oil, of course. My country gets along just fine without being in war all the time, as do most other european countries too (apart from UK, but thats where US comes too...)
Re:Needed: DIY education software (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:ZOMG (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:typical techie outcome (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's the typical outcome of a project whose goals are political and philosophical, being executed by someone with little or no real world experience. The outcome is even more certain when you consider the real goal (outflanking wintel in the developing world and spreading the Holy Gospel of F/OSS) had to be carried out covertly under the guise of the 'cover story' - educating the world's poor.
Re:Needed: DIY education software (Score:1, Insightful)
You're calling military types independent and rebellious? Not typically.
There's always at least a few in every regiment. Plenty of people go into the military thinking they'll "be all they can be" only to find that what they signed on for is not what they got. They get disillusioned with the fairy tales about their military, and then often proceed thusly in regard to their government as well.
If your country is particularly corrupt or full of shit (like the USSR was), then there are going to be loads of these guys, and your ruling class get a chance to lose their phoney baloney jobs to a military coup at any time they're caught napping. NO-DOZ pills all around, boys!
(This isn't even talking about the dangerous sociopaths who are always drawn to military service - they're a threat within ANY military.)
Any country with a standing army must be aware of the threat posed thereby. Anything else is foolishness.
It's worse than that... (Score:3, Insightful)
As stated elsewhere, I've been to Afghanistan - in fact, this time last year I was there, in Kandahar.
Afghan society has been smashed FLAT. It started with the Soviets, got worse during the warlord era, still worse during the Taliban era, and is now slowly starting to recover.
All the mechanisms of government - gone. No government services. No social programs of any kind. The concept of a policeman being someone you go to when you need help, instead of being a stoned agent of extortion - completely alien.
And it's been like that since 1979 or so.
Average life expectancy is 35 years. **35**.
So you're dealing with a couple of generations of Afghans for whom this way of life is completely normal. That all the wretched poverty and all the rest is how life is lived and how life has ALWAYS been lived.
The whole culture has PTSD.
Not that there weren't individual Afghans who wouldn't leap at something like OLPC. Some of them, for exactly the right reasons. Some of them because they could sell it and buy opium or hash. And the former would run a very real risk of being assaulted (or doused with acid, as happened at a girl's school when I was there) because some dirtbag thought education was unIslamic.
Solving the problem of a failed state like Afghanistan is an enormous, enormous problem with no easy or quick solution. And while I applaud the intent behind OLPC, I think it places far too much faith in both the transformative power of technology and the innate goodness of people. Afghanistan doesn't need OLPC. It needs trained Afghan teachers, regular funding for those teachers, a supply of paper and pencils, and a security situation stable enough so that kids can go to school without fear of being blown up, shot, or sprayed with acid.
DG
Re:typical techie outcome (Score:3, Insightful)
to implement a business plan
BTW, They are a nonprofit organization.
A business plan is not necessarily about profit. It's about spelling out what you intend to accomplish, then how you intend to get the resources to accomplish it. With business objectives clearly spelled out, it's much easier to be able to prioritize all the possible things that can happen and decide which ones are good to do and which ones are not feasible. Without clear business objectives it's easy to get bogged down with feature-creep or in details that don't help you actually accomplish the things you want to.
For example, it's one thing to design, develop, and actually commercialize a $100 laptop. But is there a plan to figure out how to get the governments of poor countries to pay for them? What is the plan for working with countries where the government is ambivalent or even hostile to the concept?
Or how much more time and effort should be expended to get the price down to $75 compared to just using those resources to make more at the current price? And is price even the "problem"? Will a $25 lower price lead to more distribution? Or which is more important: using only FLOSS or possibly getting corporate sponsorship that might fund wider distribution?
Is the "plan" that the $100/laptop revenue will fund everything involved in the project? Or is some amount of money from donations required to keep the operation going?
Part of a good business plan is to set out the various objectives and prioritize them - then explain how you're going to get the resources to do those things. Doing so won't guarantee success, but it does serve as an easy way to cut away the kruft that can build up in complex project like this.
Scam (Score:3, Insightful)
tl;dr : this made some people rich.
Re:typical techie outcome (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously they have a plan. They have an NPO plan, not a business plan. People will misunderstand you if you are an NPO with a "business plan."
Techies sucking at business plans is an old cliche which parent sited and got modded "insightful" for, to which I was taking issue. Not only is OLPC not a business, it is run by an industry icon that has a lot of pull in academia and with governments. Aligning OLPC with every other business and pretending to know what they do and don't have sight of is hardly insightful.