Re: [MLUG] Anyone planning on getting a OLPC laptop?

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007, Jonathan King wrote:

> Also, having seen a bit more how computers are actually used in US 
> schools compared to how they could be used, I am a bit surprised that 
> there is no move on to make these available to kids in this country. 
> There are schools, jurisdictions, and even whole states that have 
> decided to go the laptop route, and these are less than half of the cost 
> of what most of those people are using. Within a couple of years, we 
> could probably also have a decent set of electronic texts cobbled 
> together, and the whole cost structure of teaching could change 
> everywhere.

One reason that a lot of things totally suck in this world is that 
powerful people like it just the way it is.  What does the multi-billion 
dollar text book lobby have to say about your plan?  I'll guess that they 
don't like it and they have a few million ready to promote some sort of 
lie about the program.

Putting laptops into the hands of many poor people is a very radical, 
disruptive thing to do.  I wouldn't be surprised if in some parts of the 
world, once enough kids have these machines, that soldiers go door-to-door 
collecting them and killing people who won't quickly give them up.  We 
shall see.


> My concern with OLTP in other countries remains that I am just not sure 
> how many of these will really end up staying with kids as opposed to 
> being appropriated by adults. It's also not clear to me that the adults 
> would not find them at least as useful, so maybe that's not a bad thing. 
> The whole plan is extremely idealistic and somewhat doctrinaire, and 
> that also worries me a bit.

We shall see.  In the end, maybe the problems of the world really will be 
solved by computers.  I'm not sure yet, but it seems possible.  If we 
could have truly free global communications, that would be a huge help.

Mike

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