India Rejects One Laptop per Child Program 374
ex-geek writes "Seems like Negroponte's One Laptop per Child program has been
rejected by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of India. Among the objections are concerns about the effect of extensive laptop use on children's health. Better uses for the monies, which would be required to roll out the OLPC project, are also named. Most insightful however is the observation that not one industrial country has so far implemented a similar program for its children, which casts doubt as to what the pedagogical use for notebooks in class really is."
Passing the buck (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Funny)
Though before that gains any momentum they'll probably need to complete their "one functioning missile" campaign.
One missile per child? (Score:2, Funny)
The markting is bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people question anything that is so cheap that it is nearly free, they ask why if laptops are so cheap that only the third world can have them? Since when did we design laptops or anything
Re:Passing the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the concern about health effects may seem silly, but there have been plenty of cases where things that were relatively harmless for adults turn out to have adverse effects on still-developing children. Given this, and given that these children would presumably be using these laptops for many hours a day, asking for studies on this does not seem unreasonable.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
Good teaching implies using the computer as a tool rather than as a quick fix, some subjects are meant to be difficult some lessons need to be learnt.
Its exactly the same with calculators, know how to use one but only after you have tried engaging your brain first.
I feel this way after visiting a few secondary schools for my son recently, there are some which place the computer on a pedistal as the fix all, and then there are others (notably the 'poorer' schools) which have teachers being more involved and interactive.
*This is not a microsoft dig, it could equally be open office impress or any other program.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need more than one computer per classroom - for the teacher to use to do her own job.
-uso.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
I had use of a computer for technology related lessons but had no need for one during most of the other times.
I still have all my reference books and lesson notes available to me from all my lessons, however the only computer data I have access to from before 1998 is locked away on an Amiga harddrive (I haven't even tried to open it recently) - if this was my schoolwork I would be gutted now because I would have lost so much important data.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:5, Insightful)
No kidding. I've watched school districts in the US spend insane amounts of money on computer technology on the basis of blind faith that computers will automagically improve the quality and effectiveness of education. Even if most such programs were not sabotaged from the start by failing to allocate funds to actually train teachers to use them, there is seldom if ever any effort to measure results.
(To be fair, while I was working for a school district, I saw some really creative uses of computers, but these were a) the exception, and b) still not very good uses of money compared to other things that it could have been spent on.)
The other problem that is not often considered at the outset is the maintenance cost. A school district full of computers needs a full-time support staff, which takes away money that could have gone to hiring new teachers and reducing class sizes, and it also requires regular replacement. One-third of the IT budget for the district I worked in was devoted to replacing obsolete machines.
Surprisingly, the best use I saw for computers was reducing the amount of time it took teachers and staff to take attendance and collate grades. That actually did some good because teachers had more time to teach.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. (Score:2)
Ah yes, I've seen this a lot. Rejecting computers as being helpful to students, while embracing them as helpful to teachers. And to think this was written by someone who uses a computer to access the Internet. I wonder how much money they contributed to studies to determine if their time was being put to good use.
Re:What's good for the goose is good for the gande (Score:3, Insightful)
My daughter is 9 and I really don't see much point in her getting, or using, a computer for schoolwork any time soon. She uses mine as a game machine and to send photos to her friends (who she sees at school every day anyway). They have a computer
Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:4, Insightful)
FTA: "Both physical and psychological effects of children's intensive exposure to the computer implicit in OLPC are worrisome, to say the least.
The psychological aspect seems to be more important and worrisome, IMHO. The things developing children interact with are known to cause a long-standing effect on their psychological development - particularly creativity, analytical skills and imagination. Most people (and geeks) including me can relate to how Legos had a +ve impact on their mental development as kids and how the newer "specialized lego sets" hamper this development by being too restrictive. The same can be said for many other articles/games that kids are exposed to in their developing ears.
I would venture to say that extended interaction with a particular GUI/software/interface could have a negative impact on development of these mental faculties. I'm not saying that it will, but it is quite likely that it will hamper/restrict the child to think only along a certain way, and it is quite reasonable to prevent a large-scale project such as this before adequate medical studies have been done.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember going over this in psych 101 and even the author of our textbook, Peter Gray [wikipedia.org] seemed skeptical. What is the criteria by which we measure the things children interact with? Does a toddler who only has cardboard boxes to play with grow up stupider than one who has plastic puzzles in primary colors? IIRC, Gray wondered if an inner city child who had no toys, but interacted with extended family in the house and watched cars go by each day was in any less stimulating an environment than a kid who had nintendo or plastic blocks. Is there any objective measurement? The child who interacts with adults is arguably in a more stimluating environment. Understanding, predicting, and manipulating adult minds arguably takes more mental faculties than doing the same with blocks.
When I was a boy, I remember a stick being variously a rifle, a magical staff, a metal sword, a light saber, a spear, even a spaceship. Are my analytical skills impoverished because I ran around in the woods and played with sticks instead of playing the living room with shiny, plastic transformers? I remember being bored to tears by He-Man and G.I. Joe figures that required no imagination -- everything they did was pre-determined. I prefered playing with leaves in puddles or making figures out of mud or clay.
I did *want* those toys that other kids had -- but when I got them, I certainly couldn't play with them. They were much to boring. They just sat on the shelf as models. That's really what they are.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:4, Insightful)
The action figure's realm of expression is smaller than a stick's. The robot could be an evil villian in his hideout, or he could be a good guy on his way to saving the galaxy. However, one thing he will *not* be doing is breakdancing, because *his legs just don't move like that*. He can only do a stilted walk. However, because the stick has no features that are going to contradict the impositions of your imagination, you are going to have an easier time playing a variety of scenarios with the stick than with the robot action figure.
It's like the difference between writting fan fiction and creating your own universe. There is simply a greater realm of possibility when you have blank pages. You don't have to follow the rules and
And like I said earlier, I *did* have mass-manufactured toys. At the time I wanted them very badly, but upon reflection I can see that I had much more fun with things like sticks and boxes than I ever did with any action figure. I like action figures and still have some to this day, but they certainly aren't a fountain of imaginative play.
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have a look at a cardboard refridgerator box, you will notice that there is nothing about it that indicates that it is a refridgerator box. It is a box, but it is a *refridgerator* box in name only, not in function. At one time, it may have had a refridgerator in it, or it may have even had a washing machine in it. Maybe it never contained any appliance at all (despite whatever it was originally manufactured fo
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Particularly the psychological effects... (Score:2)
But how do you teach those students to read and use the thing? If they don't have the infrastructure available for education they aren't going to have the infrastructure for training and distribution. If it isn't an infrastructure problem keeping the kid from school I doubt you'll have any luck with them using this device for educational purposes.
a little off topic, perhaps... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been wondering how easy it is for a young child to keep the laptop batteries charged. This would seem to be at least an order of magnitude more demanding than a Lifeline radio.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:2)
One thing that seems pretty clear is that how useful computers are is directly correlated with how much ongoing training the teachers and administrators receive both on using the computers and on integrating them into the curriculum. Getting the administrators
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, almost everything that is harmful to children is also harmful to adults, though perhaps greater quantities are needed to inflict the same damage to the latter, sometimes.
Thus, you choose your words 'relatively harmful' very well.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:2, Insightful)
Exposing children to toxic chemicals and complicated heavy machinery in sneaker factories and similar industrial environments is regrettably one of the ugly necessities of partaking in the spirit of new enterprise that allows us to join the global community. I believe the expression is that "it is required to break many eggs before one enjoys the omelet."
However, instructin
Re:Passing the buck (Score:5, Interesting)
But good job on leaping straight to the "brown people must have primitive superstitions" stereotype.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:2)
And you've done an equally good job on the "utter inability to detect sarcasm from context" thing. Not as bad as that Homology [slashdot.org] dingleberry though.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Passing the buck (Score:4, Funny)
Seems like you have a good, decent and very solid Kansas education.
Re:Passing the buck (Score:2, Funny)
that would explain some of the outsourced code I've seen on thedailtwtf.com
Re:Passing the buck (Score:3, Funny)
I guess you didn't know that male pattern baldness, and impotence didn't exist before wireless telegraphy came along, didn't you?
It's just too obvious. The "Negroponte" Laptop? (Score:2)
I think it's a good idea, but just, don't I think even people in India know the name Negroponte. So I'm not surprised they rejected the one laptop per child program. It just seems political even if it isnt.
So why not just give Ibooks? (Score:2)
If you were living in the third world, would you want one of these special laptops or an Ibook? I think if we just offered Ibooks in the first place it would be accepted. It's that we are offering these new unusual laptops that most likely scares people away from using them.
I think computers are very useful, I think the idea is very good, I just wish we would have given out ibooks in the first place instead of computers peopl
Re:So why not just give Ibooks? (Score:2)
Sure, maybe Apple could figure out how to make a $100 limited iBook, but they're a private company rather than a nonprofit, so how would that help their shareholders? Or someone could donate 10x as much money to get real iBooks out there - but then people would say it's a waste of money if you could get 10x as many of these special computers for
How about (Score:4, Insightful)
Reduce the population first (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How about (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's deeper than that. By giving free shelter or food, you destroy the shelter and food providing industries in the countries. The textile industries in many "third world" countries have been wiped out by cheap or free second hand clothing from the west.
If you get people educated and doing something then the contribute valuably and generate a real economy. Have a look at some of the work of the charity Intermediat
Re:How about (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, education is not a panacea. You can over-educate a population past its economic opportunities and create a variety of problems, from the widescale loss of the best-and-brightest to other countries, to a population of resentful, overeducated people who are only able to find jobs in the lower ranks of the agricultural and industrial sectors (this is much of what happened in parts of Latin America - the Sendero Luminoso of Peru was largely officered by a generation of well-educated poor youth who found no job opportunities awaiting for them after their much-vaunted education was finished.)
England did not have the most widely educated population back when it was the richest, most powerful nation in the world. I think you might find the correlation between education and prosperity, historically, to have a number of suprises.
Re:How about (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How about (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.jubileeusa.org/jubilee.cgi?path=/learn
Re:How about (Score:2)
Secondly, I'll give you 1 guess concerning how countries get out of debt....
....
....
They educate their citizens to generate capital!
Re:How about (Score:2)
Okay, I flat out refuse to listen to any website that tells me to do something because the bible says so, but another thing that whole debt thing misses is that if people started announcing they wouldn't pay back their debts, then we would see global economic collapse.
However, the money is the smallest part of the cost. The real issue is that giving people food only helps them in the short run. While that is valuable and sometimes necessary, it is more necessary to address long-term problems. What happe
Re:How about (Score:5, Interesting)
Do some reading on how the flood of donated clothes from the western world destroyed the textile industry in many areas of Africa. Handouts are a terrible long term solution.
Re:How about (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on how its done. Aid agencies such as oxfam have recognised this for a while - and rather than importing food to troubled areas, try to either give locals money to buy food or buy from local farmers.
Government agencies don't particularly like that however, as they'd rather spend their aid budget within their own country, helping their own farmers (its amazing how much of the average first world nation's "aid" budget will be spent within that country).
Re:How about (Score:2)
You have no idea that an outsourced Indian 'Mike' you talk on the phone is from a royal caste, literally. Only the cream of the cream of the elite get to qualify for the outsourced jobs. There is no hope for the rest!
No laptops, no business. 60% of grownups in India cannot read
In a country whose No. 1 public health goal is halfing public defecation by 2012 (a real problem since over 20% of the population are infected by hookworms: http://www.publichealth.pitt.edu/super [pitt.edu]
Re:How about (Score:2)
Exaggeration. According to the CIA World Factbook, [cia.gov] about 60 percent of adults in India can read. The figure weighs disproportionately in favor of men -- 70 percent are literate. In women the figure is less than 50 percent, but still not as low as the 40 percent you suggest.
Re:How about (Score:2)
The link refers to people over 15 that can read a little.
This 'factbook' masks the real problem, which is that 30%+ of the population is under 15 (according to your very link), most of whom are illeterate (and die off before they ever learn).
Re:How about (Score:2)
Ahh, I'm glad you cleared that up I guess the "effect of extensive laptop use on children's health" is just a secondary concern (I'm not actually aiming my sarcasm at you here; I'm just curious how the Indian government could care about E.M. radiation when there are much larger concerns).
Providing children with reading lessons...
I bet you'll ne
Not mutually exclusive (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the big failings of aid and development programs in the past has been a lack of appropriateness; clueless big projects which do little or nothing to help.
It is possible that the One-Laptop-Per-Child project is one of these clueless projects. It could, however, end up as a sort of force multiplier, a source of intelligence (in the "information" sense of the word) and a form of feedback that would let aid organizations know what is really needed and where.
true...sort of (Score:2)
It's not mutual exclusive, that is true. Yet, seen the limited amount of money being spend (it's not as if the budget for foreign aid has no limits, after all), there is *something* to it: you really can't do everything. At least, not becoming meaningless: say, hypothetically,j you have a budget of 10 dollar, then you can spend it on 2 or perhaps thre
Re:How about (Score:2)
Re:Going to Africa next week. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose for the following the survival rate for children is 20% (i.e. horrific).
YOUR IDEAL SCENARIO: you can somehow convince enough people in various charitable organizations to feed the entire child population until they grow up to become unproductive, uneducated (but perhaps self-sustaining) people with mediocre quality of life. Then, when the next generation of children comes along, you're going to have to try to convince the same people (or perhaps different people) again to "think of the children" by giving money. Except this time there will be more children because the previous generation all survived. And somewhere along the lines, people will stop giving money and 80% of the population will die, except that the population by then will be enormous, and that same 80% death rate will represent 100 times the number of people.
NEGROPONTE's LESS-THAN-IDEAL YET REALISTIC SCENARIO: that same money that was going to be used to feed the children is used to educated the children (buy the laptops which in turn give them access to knowledge). 80% of the population dies out. The remaining 20% become well-educated productive members of a society which is now suddenly educated. Business are attracted, people generate income by becoming employees, people use that money to start businesses or their own, and the next generation receives the benefits of their education. This process of course happens much more slowly than one would assume from that description, but it happens nevertheless. 80% of this generations children died (which is truly tragic), but in the long run, the region is better off.
Of course, I think that Negroponte would suggest that people keep the basics-based charity flowing to those kinds of places during the OLPC phase so that we can avoid the pointless loss of life. Regardless, the OLPC money would mean that there wouldn't have to be charity money flowing into those places in a generation or two; My point is that the basics without the education is almost completely pointless in the long run.
MS counter move (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't care about India but would love to see Bangladesh adopt the OLPC program. They have thanks to Yusun and his Microloan program almost eradicated poverty so they seem to be a more innovative people. Remember 10- 15 years ago you almost always heardf about the plight of Bangladesh? Heard anything lately? I rest my case
Re:MS counter move (Score:2)
I don't know what world you are living in, my friend, but Bangladesh still has ~35% of the population below the poverty line [geoplace.com]. I'm not dissing Bangladesh, which is a lovely country, but your statement which is quite ignorant.
Re:MS counter move (Score:2)
Now, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I do want to point out the fallacy of referring to a "poverty line". Here in California, I've spent more time living below the Federal poverty line than I have spent living above it, yet I have usually had a car, always had a place to live, alwa
Re:MS counter move (Score:3, Informative)
Some Good Points (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe the pledge to buy two laptops to donate to get one free really isn't such a bad thing after all. Governments have a difficult time tturning away things that are free.
Nigeria orders first million OLPC laptops (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Some Good Points (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. India has nuclear power -- and, of course, nuclear weapons -- plus indigenous satellite launch capabilities, the largest film industry anywhere (a.k.a. Bollywood), the fourth largest economy on Earth measured in purchasing power, the second largest global population and, to top it all off, India is the home to one of the world's oldest pre-industrial civilizations and is the origin of not one but *two* of the world's major religions, Hinduism and Buddism. Somehow, I don't think the Indian government is going to be keen to accept a program that seems adapted to third-world nations, not regional superpowers struggling for first-world status and recognition. Hell -- just based on how much software development is going on in the country, the $100 laptop ought to be a sure-fire winner, so it's hard to justify India's turning down the program for reasons other than politics and national pride.
Might prove for some commerciall success though (Score:2)
btw
Re:Might prove for some commerciall success though (Score:2)
I've done the exact opposite: put in a slower, older GFX card, slower RAM and downclocked the CPU. I don't really notice the loss, even with games, and it's saving on the electricity bill.
Health reasons? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Health reasons? (Score:2)
Re:Health reasons? (Score:2)
No, he's afraid that most children who'll get one will die of starvation/exhaustion from trying to rotate (or is it pull now?) the generator handle.
Nigeria accepts OLPC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nigeria accepts OLPC (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nigeria accepts OLPC (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nigeria accepts OLPC (Score:3, Funny)
Two words (Score:5, Funny)
Sex Ed.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two words (Score:3, Interesting)
Ssshhh... don't let on about birth control education, or the Catholic Church will condemn the program.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
Which may be one of the reasons countries reject these laptops. Regressive idealogies, particularly the ones that think women are only good for babies tend to reject that kind of knowledge. I know a girl who used to teach that stuff to women in the villages at the southern end of the philippines and the men there were not happy to have her around (she's a "radical feminist" by
Beyond reproductive health and self-dominion, there are lots of areas of knowledge that many societies would rather not give their children (or adults) access to. Like a pastie-covered boobie at a sporting event.
Industrial Countries have Textbooks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Industrial Countries have Textbooks (Score:2)
The use of an OLPC would not only allow for up to date textbooks but would allow more enlightened states to avoid present least common denominator content.
Re:Industrial Countries have Textbooks (Score:2)
Sounds like a good argument in favor of distance learning -- or self-directed study based on electronic lesson plans, maybe.
Perceived Threat (Score:2)
Sort of like 'outsourcing' but backwards. Cant have that, might upset the balance of money flow.
Kids? who cares about the kids, unless we can sell them for a profit.
Several experiments in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
I think anyone who says "feed them first, then give them a computer" misses the point that if all you do is ever feed people and then move on, that's as far as they get. I get the impression that while most people living in poverty will happily accept a meal, they will likewise fight hard and loudly to better their condition even at the risk of someone going without a meal in the process. You don't have to be a rich Western geek to understand that filling your belly today doesn't guarantee a full belly tomorrow, and food aid is notorious for drying up once a current crisis is abated.
These poor people need a leg-up, and they need it now. The emerging information market will forget they even exist if they don't learn how to interact with it on its own terms. Out of sight is out of mind, and out of mind is quickly dead and forgotten.
Re:Several experiments in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Over the years, a few US states and many individual school districts have experimented with one-student-one-computer, to general positive results
Care to link to these positive results? I've only seen studies that show how overall useless, if not negative, computers are in the classroom, especially when you give them to students. They get broken easily, they're generally used in non-educational ways, and they're a big distraction. I doubt you can find some clear, unambiguous gains for students with laptops.
Re:Several experiments in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
The Alaska Association of School Boards is implementing a 1-1 laptop program [alaskaice.org], based on a similar successful program in Maine [convergemag.com] (which I believe has just gotten its funding renewed). From the executive summary of Maine's two-year retrospective report:
The report notes that there likely needs to be much more professional development and integration of technology into curricula, but it seems that even in its nascent stages the 1-1 program has helped keep students interested in and proactive about their learning, and improved the quality of their work.
One neat thing about technology in schools is that it lets you do completely new kinds of schoolwork. A new kind of project that many of my English-teaching acquaintances are starting to like is the fake-novel-movie-adaptation-trailer, or artsy-literature-inspired-music-video. Going outside the bounds of the traditional two-page book report or reading journal really helps students think differently and more deeply about the subject (especially for students not compatible with the text-based US school system). Film also really lends itself to literary tropes like symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony. This kind of thinking is just not possible (or at least very difficult) without prevalent access to technology. I've heard anecdotally that music students love GarageBand for recording state honor band/choir audition tapes, or just for practicing in general (recording yourself is notoriously one of the best ways to figure out all the myriad ways you suck). And the sheer amount of good information and media available on the internet is rapidly rivaling even the best-equipped public school libraries.
Obviously the $100 laptop isn't going to be a great video editing machine (though, if you can do it on an Amiga [wikipedia.org]...), but even the basic functions of word processing and Internet capability (the Wikipedia, for chrissake! how great would the world be if everyone had the Wikipedia?) have the capability to dramatically improve the baseline quality of education for developing populations.
From my own experience, I have been lucky enough to use computers since I began school in the mid-80s, and I feel that they shaped my development in a very positive way. Computers are fantastic tools for teaching critical thinking, reading comprehension, model-forming and abstraction, mathematical concepts (especially geometry), and with the internet, efficient internalization of data from multiple sources. David Chalmers and Andy Clark have argued [consc.net] that external resources, when properly utilized, can effectively become part of our cognitive process. By teaching children to take advantage of the astounding power and resources that computers make available to them, we do them a far greater service than cramming multiplication tables and D'Nelian handwriting exercises [abcteach.com] down their throats for 180 days a year from the age of 5 to 13.
After all, people should be generalists, [metafilter.com] and computers are the generalist's tool. What would we humans be without tools? Shivering, unathletic apes. $100 is cheap [mytoolstore.com] for a tool that
Re:Several experiments in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former student of a school with a one-student-one-computer program, I'd like to point out that I'm not convinced by the positive results people are reporting. When you spend God-only-knows-how-much-money and muck around with kids' educations with a program like this, admitting you screwed up is just about the dumbest thing a person could possibly do. I can't speak for anyone else, but my high school really screwed up with that idea. That didn't stop the administrators from bragging and bragging and bragging as if these laptops had turned everyone into a genius child. (Rather than just being one more distraction.)
The part of this whole computers-in-the-classroom thing that nobody seems to be getting is that a computer is not a solution. A computer is a tool. I place people who wave the computers in the class banner all the time in the same mental category as people who are convinced that $PROGRAMMING_LANGUAGE is a gift from God and perfect for every situation.
If we want to fix up our schools, we should start by reviewing our crufty old educational plan that hasn't been revised for decades and basically ignores all major research on how people learn. Once we have a new plan, we can go about figuring out how to implement it. I'm sure that computers will be the best way to implement some details of the plan, but they should be used only for those things, and if it turns out that there's a better way to do something else (lectures, for example, are almost guaranteed to suck if PowerPoint is involved), then they should be avoided.
But stuff like the OLPC program seem to work from the assumption that computers are this magic bullet that will instantly improve education - through some hand-wavy magic computron field, maybe?
I agree, these people need a leg-up. I just worry that exporting this educational cargo cult we've been constructing for the past few years to countries that already have even more problems with education than us has more to do with tripping them into the mud than giving them a leg up.
- fear of change? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:- fear of change? (Score:2)
Some governments may think this way but you certainly cannot say this of India. India over the last century has moved more aggressively in the area of education than perhaps any developing nation. Moreover it has a very strong educational and literary tradition going back centuries, if not millenia
It's not about laptops, it's about computers (Score:2)
Momma... Momma says laptops are the devil (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Momma... Momma says laptops are the devil (Score:3, Insightful)
PCs in schools are mostly a distraction (Score:2)
One effect is to distract the students with email, instant messaging, games, web surfing, porn, cracking into other computers, anything but pay attention to the material which is, obviously, not conducive to learning. [sciencedaily.com]
India Rejects One Laptop per Child Program (Score:2)
The white man's burden (Score:2)
That's because Negroponte, like the people who adopt from China or Korea, still believes in the White Man's Burden [gmu.edu]. It's racisim and elitism and imperialism, pure and simple. An undiluted form of bi
how hard is it... (Score:2)
lord (Score:5, Insightful)
One computer per classroom (Score:2)
I say this because having access to current information -- especially when presented in contextually-rich ways, such as google earth et al -- is a tremendous teaching tool that a good instructor can use to teach more effectively. On the other hand, putting individual machines in the
Article is from July 3 (Score:2)
Negroponte's condescension (Score:2)
i think what everyone is overlooking some basic fa (Score:2)
2. i highly doubt the laptop supports all of India's 33-odd "recognized languages", disregarding others commonly taught in schools (Arabic, Farsi, etc). The vernacular lobbies would have a field day claiming that the government is deliberately excluding their languages. Which is a v
OLPC is a crazy idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most children that go to the former category of schools come from middle class/upper class families and already have access to computers at home.
Presumably, the OLPC program is for the second type of schools, which mostly children who live close to or below the poverty line attend. Most of these schools will have teachers who have never used computers, and who are likely to resent any drastic technological change such as computers in the classroom.
So, along with an OLPC program, the government would have to run a massive teacher-education program to teach the use of these computers in the classroom -- not to mention overhauling the coursework so that it makes effective use of these machines.
In addition, the government would have to put in place infrastructure to service and repair these laptops at affordable prices throughout India.
All of this to be done in a country of more than a billion people speaking hundreds of known languages and dialects.
When you think of these factors, those laptops are going to cost way more than the 100$ MIT claims.
I could go on and on about the fallacies of this scheme, but clearly, it would be crazy for India to adopt it at this point in time.
The government has wisely rubbished OLPC. India cannot progress from slates and chalks to laptop computers in one stroke. It has to progress at an organic rate and accept technology in education gradually, ensuring the teachers are comfortable with it before it gets to the children.
To everyone making critics out there... (Score:3, Informative)
The project is amazing, it's not just about handling a laptop to a child... They're producing a collaborative environment called Sugar (using GTK, Gecko and Python), to help children share content. Also, they're working on educational content, and educational applications.
The mesh network idea is just incredible, it will make possible to the children create their own content, and share it with their colleages even where there's no access to the internet, since the wireless card keeps on running even when the laptop is on sleep state. It also make it possible to share internet access throght a large area, since every laptop act as a router.
It's really fantastic, and you can see that there is a real commitment behind this. And, since everything is OpenSource, YOU can help them! You can contribute wiht code, or content, or ideas!
Re:It may be a case of self-defeat. (Score:2)
Re:It may be a case of self-defeat. (Score:2)
I'll say the same thing about that lack of "trickle down" effect that I said about Reagan's... "TRICKLE DOWN MY ASS." I didn't even mean to say something that funny the first time... But there's a reason it's called trickle down and not flow down. Also, keep in mind what even your plumber knows... shit ro
Re:A Solution in Search of a Problem (Score:2)
ourselfs? (Score:3, Funny)
David
You need to learn some history (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite colonial occupation that bled our country for hundreds of years
That's what your politicians tell you. Find a non-politician who's 80 years old, who was there, and talk to them. India was better off under "colonial occupation" than it is today. The Brits didn't "bleed" India, on the contrary they unified it, built infrastructure (especially railways) and gave it a legal system.
A country should govern itself, not be governed by foreigners. But you have nothing to be proud of in what your politicians have done in the last 50 years.