OLPC: a "Computer Error"?

"There appear to be cheaper, more effective ways to improve education 

in developing nations than the glitzy One Laptop per Child program…"

From

By Timothy Ogden (editor-in-chief of Philanthropy Action), August 20, 2009

Computer Error?
... In the last year, though, the news on OLPC has sharply soured. Technical difficulties slowed the development of the second generation of the laptop. The second year of the “Give One, Get One” promotion — which offered the people a chance to pay $399 for two laptops, one that they would keep, with the other sent to a developing nation — dramatically underperformed. Then in early January, the nonprofit OLPC announced that 50 percent of staff were being laid off and a major restructuring was under way. To even its most ardent supporters, the project seems nearly dead in the water.

And that may be great news for children in the developing world.

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To close the digital divide systematically, see:

• 20 yrs IT reality check
  
• Beyond chalk and talk
• ICT-IT harmonised

Connection and distraction

An interesting discussion going on at American universities since Professor David Cole banned laptops for taking notes because students were distracted by many other things.

From:



Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls
Tuesday, March 9, 2010, By Daniel de Vise, Washington Post Staff Writer

A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming -- all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student's attention.

Cole surveyed one of his Georgetown classes anonymously after six weeks of laptop-free lectures. Four-fifths said they were more engaged in class discussion. Ninety-five percent admitted that they had used their laptops for "purposes other than taking notes."

"The breaking point for me was when I asked a student to comment on an issue, and he said, 'Wait a minute, I want to open my computer,' " said David Goldfrank, a Georgetown history professor. "And I told him, 'I don't want to know what's in your computer. I want to know what's in your head.' "

read the full story here