...oops. Login required. If you don't want to login to the NY Times site, go here for a pdf of the article. Also, a link to the video review. Sorry

BTW 11/12 is when you can start buying the computers (again, only for 2 weeks).

I'm buying one.

I think the whole thing will go down in history as being one of the most stupid wastes of money ever. So many of the schools in their target countries have no power in the classrooms or the kids homes and the school kids struggle just to by the uniforms. Even if this is a mild success and not the waste I predict, there are so many better ways to make an impact on education with that money.

I dont even think there is reason to believe computers in US schools make much of a difference.

After just completing "The White Man's Burden" by William Easterly (and I would highly recommend it to anyone) I would think they will have to go a long way before it even approaches the most stupid waste of money.

I ordered mine... fairly early on the 12th. I hope I'm in the first 20,000 who ordered, because that's how many they have in stock to ship within the month.

There's some very good information here:

http://www.olpcnews.com/

Well I tested the concept with the OVC (Org for Orphans and Vulnberable Children NGOs) Kaduna back in March and every NGO there were extremely supportive of the idea of these. I do have some reservations with them, although they are perhaps not the ones that John mentioned above.

My impression is that the XO Laptop needs tailor-made software, so existing applications are not usable with the machine.

Security will be an issue here, where a $100 laptop is more than three months salary.

Also, when a family has ten children, will they get one each? This seems a bit wasteful (OLPC?). Most families share computers, from what I can gather.

Lastly, there is a lot of work going on with "acclimatising" PCs to be lower power and usable in the warm. such as at www.inveneo.org. There is also a UK laptop in development which does something similar, so I am told (no info yet, though). So my point is that an ordinary PC, with no need for proprietary software, has a lot of advantages. Current prices from Inveneo are affordable too (and not far off than the $400) so if people want to buy some PCs for our rural solar-powered cybercafe, feel free to do so!

I ordered one early on the 13th....we'll see if they managed to sell more than 20,000 during the first 24 hours.

What is it imagined that children will actually do with these laptops? Are they able to connect to the internet?

"The XO laptop’s wireless antennae “ears” are made of rugged, dual-molded nylon plastic. When rotated up, the XO’s antennae are vastly superior to most conventional laptops’ built-in antennae, and help connect children automatically to the mesh network. When down, they keep dirt out of the audio and USB connectors and act as a locking mechanism for the laptop."

from the link above.

Christina, the laptops will connect either with the internet, or with each other... so children will be able to talk and play with others up to about 2km away, powered from solar, or a generator that looks like a yo-yo. If five laptops are all in a line 1km away from each other, the five will form a 'mesh' that lets all of them communicate over longer distances.

The laptops are geared toward learning too. The 'touchpad' at the bottom can be used with a stylus to write words across the entire width of the laptop. Writing can be reviewed by teachers even if paper is scarce.

The microphone in jack also doubles as a place where a child can plug in a temperature sensor (or any other low voltage source of information) and use it to measure values over time.

But most of all, I'm hoping that it helps to bridge the 'digital divide' that currently makes the rich richer, and keeps the ability to compete out of the reach of the poor.

We might even see some new people on Ned!

Most likely, it will become an object that's often stolen or destroyed out of greed or jealousy.

Either way, (no matter who's hands they end up in) it's going to have a catalyzing effect on smart young minds all over the world.

I know that surfing the Web is really slow for you Christina, but I'll link to a piece written by Ethan Zuckerman "One Laptop Per Child: Just what sort of content do you load onto these puppies?" in January. It's a pretty long post so I won't try to summarize all of it.

Something that Zuckerman points out is there is an educational theory behind the concept called Constructivism. The gist of the idea is education as a learner directed activity.

So the software running on the computer is called Sugar and the way the interface is constructed is to encourage learner directed learning. I'll snip a bit from an article about the software in InfoWorld:

Starting from the home view where they can specify user preferences like color, a child can then move to the friends view to see which of their friends are on the network and what they're doing. They can also chat with them. The neighborhood view shows everyone connected to the mesh network and the activities they're engaged in. At any point, the child can also choose to join in with group activities.

Each laptop can act as a node in a mesh peer-to-peer ad hoc network, so that if one laptop is directly accessing the Internet, when other machines in the network power on, they can share that single online connection.

The activity view allows a child to focus on a specific activity using the laptop's full-screen mode. There's also a journal view that can be thought of as another activity, where a child can see what he or she has created on the desktop, save and add to that content, and share it with friends.

Around any of the views is a frame equivalent to the menu bar on more traditional computer user interfaces. The child can click on people, places and things around the right, left and top sides of the frame, while the bottom side is reserved for accessing activities. There's also a context-sensitive search bar on the top of the frame so that the child can easily locate things on the desktop.

One of the selling points is the ability to provide textbok materials in an electronic form instead of printed. Clearly this content will be created in the countries which will be using the machines. Essentially on laptop will act as a server for the content, then the whole class can access the material over the mesh network.

But the hope is that kids will be able to take them home, and therefore discover for themselves what to do with these puppies.

I've ordered one. Sounds as if there's not that much risk of selling out as they have extended sale to year end.

whether it turns out carzy or good there are some features that interest me

the wiki of application users is one of the most extraordinary wiki communities I know of - course always interested in your nominations

the idea of what is shared by a whole region of peers is something that interests me a lot; there are quite a few missing curricula at every age group -if one doesnt play with this to see what's possible, will we ever get new learning curricula out there in time to be sustainable

then again I also publish micro guides http://www.valuetrue.com/home/ga llery.cfm?startrow=3 on the edge of education entrepreneurship so I need to test the product

"Now extended thru December 31st"

Hmmm, wish they'd included a reason for that. Boy, I really, really hope that they did not have a challenge selling just 20,000 over the first two weeks...given the big media push behind the whole thing.

thought this might be of interest

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/techn ology/7115348.stm

Thanks Evvy! Great report.

Yes, I thought it was very interesting. Especially the part about the internet not being available anymore once the initial funding ran out.

I am glad to hear that they are using the computers to enhance their everyday school experience like taking notes, and using the encyclopedia software. That can help but I am still not sure if the expense will really be worth it in the long run. What I fear is that in a year from now these computers will be gone, or broken or simply not used anymore because of lack of training. Its a great idea but I am just not sure it is practical for the rural areas of Africa. I will keep watching the program though and hope to see some great results.

I see great potential with the OX computer. My reasons for optimism has to do with ideas about learning. But I've been around education long enough to have a bit of realism about the difficulties of getting from good ideas to good practices. There are so many good ideas in the OX computer that I feel cautiously optimistic that good educational practices will be derived from it. But predicting the course of things is always chancy.

Juliana at Afromusing has a very interesting post I am in your OLPC, reverse engineering your Keyboardz with some great links. It looks as though the OX crew may have violated patents in the keyboard design.

Afromusing mentions that the idea of cultural sensitivity in technology was first written about by Koranteng Ofusu-Amaah. She properly links to the book, "The Best Technology Writing 2006" at Amazon where the essay can be found. Here's the link to the post at Koranteng's Toli--it's not about one laptop per child. But I want to post the link because Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah is a brilliant writer. His occasional posts are very worthwhile looking for.

And I cannot recommend highly enough just reading some of his posts. On the right sidebar is a link to The Things Fall Apart Series. Reading the whole series is an investment in time similar to a small book. But for those interested in finding some perspective about Africa, I can think of none better.

I stand by my view that it will be a complete bust and another example of westerners with little experience in the developing world thinking "I know just what they need".

>>I stand by my view that it will be a complete bust and another example of westerners with little experience in the developing world thinking "I know just what they need".<<

We'll see John...

OLPC orders surge as Peru requests 260,000 XOs

Posted Dec 2nd 2007 7:50PM by Conrad Quilty-Harper

All steam ahead for the OLPC Foundation, which recently received an order from Peru for 260,000 of the little XO laptops. Also news is that Mexican billionaire and Negroponte's chum Carlos Slim has purchased 50,000 for his country. That's against a background of $2 million sales a day on the Give One, Get One program. Clearly, the OLPC Foundation is the most successful program out there for getting laptops into the hands of schoolchildren.

2 million a day in sales...wow!

We'll see what good sales numbers mean with regards to meaningful results over time.

>>Earlier this year, some of the pupils were found to be accessing pornography through the laptops.<<

One of the quotes from the article that says to me, kids are doing what kids do when having access to open technology and information.

I've got their development environment running on my machine, and it's really big and ambitious. The device will get more and more useful over the years as the power of the included components is realized, and the whole package streamlined. (Yes, now it's big and bloated and slow even on my 2.6GHz Duo system)

But it's also powerful, there's unlimited fun-potential for many future hackers who learn to get to its innards.

My biggest disappointment is the cost of the satellite internet connections. The problem comes back to infrastructure, and the laptops might be the motivation for that infrastructure to be built. It might even be an essential tool for those who someday build the infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the laptops might be as much of a distraction as a tool in a disconnected classroom.

Jim - if we put them in US schools, with internet access, and more resources in general - do you think it would improve on existing teaching? Im not sure - my kids go to a good charter school and their computer integration is good, but the quality of what they are learning when they are using the computer is far inferior to what they learn the old fashion way.

Does the developing world really need to spend all that money on tools that are not that high return for us when they don't even have the basics?

I have no doubts they will be able to sell machines, but what if they had taken the billions invested and provided books and better training for teacher - which would be more ROI+?

>>and provided books and better training for teacher - which would be more ROI+?<<

An excellent question.

How would people go about comparing the results over a similar period of time of OLPC and Room to Read? Setting aside the fact Room to Read has been building libraries, schools, and providing scholarships for girls since 2001 and OLPC is really in a startup mode, how can the results of each be measured?

This is a personal note, but I think it demonstrates the doors it opens.

I am in a country where most all of the libraries contain only books in Thai (and that is not to say there are plenteous libraries...I have only seen two libraries that are not University or international school libraries and both of them were membership things.

However, the internet opens vast resources for me. Books, news, international culture, communications... I just got a couple of links from John Powers on phenomenal links to FREE international data sources for research and another link to university course work with texts, problem sets, answers and lecture notes. The other day I found a source of printable text books (either no copyright or CC). Text books are outrageously expensive in developing countries but printing is not nearly so. And on these XO computers, you don't even need to print them.

It is hard to keep kids away from games and there are plenty of games that are available that provide the repetition required to learn in much more interesting ways than doing 100 math problems a night. Learning packaged as games works for children of all ages.

Even if internet access is limited, the teacher can somehow get access to the information, burn it to CD and then upload it to the children's machines.

There are certainly problems (and remember that problems are often culturally relative) to be overcome in giving these children these kinds of tools but there are (and always have been) also problems with teaching children to read. (Witness my reading D.H Lawrence much to the chagrin of my father!)

Familiarity with and knowledge of computers can open new sources of income generation to these children that their parents never dreamed of and that won't necessarily draw them to urban centers and away from their families and cultures.

We need everyone to open their imaginations here.

The issue of the cost of textbooks is an important one. Also as one of the goals of the OX is to increase the number of school-age children attending schools--only about 50% in many developing countries go to school--the problem of costs is compounded. Kenya recently introduced free elementary education. The result has been to really stress the system, for example elementary school teachers with classes of 100 or more children with infrastructure--desks, tools, textbooks-still scale to 30+ classroom size. XO is proposing a life cycle of about five years for the laptops and offering considerable savings over traditional educational materials.

The XO is different from other low cost rivals in construction and software. The issue of stealing is something that was considered in the first place. Partly that's why the color. But also the structure of the software is such that it's not really useful for running traditional applications. I've read somewhere about additional security against theft measures, but not finding them now. But one of the selling points is these XO computers are not as marketable as other low cost offerings are by virtue of their software. They aren't an ordinary laptop.

The XO is designed for elementary school children. One of the main considerations is that they be safe, even when taken apart. Another is that they be durable in hot and dusty environments. There is a hard "desk" part near the keyboard to give children a place to write. One of the advantages of being able to take them home is the computer provides a light source for children to work after sunset.

All of the XO computers are WiFi enabled. Schools will have additional infrastructure to as Linda suggests enable teachers to provide content. The curriculum is purposefully left to the adopting countries. The school servers will also aid in the storage of content. Some schools will have access to the Internet via their server, others will not. But the system is designed so that all of the computers will work as networked devices. So even without the Internet the XO computers will allow, indeed encourage, children to collaborate and communicate with each other.