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This was removed from the [[Educational ideas]] page because it didn't seem to fit the flow.
:''Some sections were removed from the [[Educational ideas]] page because they didn't fit the flow.''
: ''for more analysis and feedback, see [[:Category:Feedback]] and [[:Category:Opposing views]]''


Some people object to the OLPC plan, giving a wide variety of reasons. This page lists the most articulate objections, and various background and answers. Some of this information is also gathered on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Criticism Wikipedia].
===Teaching Barriers===
: ''We have to be able to solve any real problems and answer any real objections, but a lot of the objections come out of ignorance, and a lot more seem to come from people who want the idea to fail. I don't understand that. --[[User:Mokurai|Mokurai]] 00:47, 11 January 2007 (EST)''


Find other problems discussed in [[Teaching, Institutional and Professional Barriers]].
== Teaching, Social, and Religious Barriers ==


===[[Teaching Barriers]]===
====The Flaw with Teacher-Student Learning====
The flaw with the Teacher-Student Schools/Cells of Educating/Advising is the Teachers/ Instructors, if you remove the Teachers, then after an initial startup time you have a Cell of Learners who Learn, Advise, Relearn and Improve for each other. Some of Year two Instruct Year one etc etc... when and if they require it! If the Learners can use the Educational tool or in the case laptops (After some help from IT volunteers which need to be supplied on a volunteer basis by large corporations for say 6 months at a time, 1 volunteer per company with over 500 people should cover it!), then in future after a short time the requirement for even the IT volunteers will go away) then you only need a small group of more proficient Learners to support Cell in terms of the IT problems. From where I see this project it is a chance to restart the model of Educating young learners and bring it more up to the twenty 1st century.


Moved to separate page.
I have another Idea for the IT volunteers program because as Companies are naturally resistant to provide free workers for a volunteer program, someone from OLPC sets up a program to work with University IT departments, and instead of IT students going on a Year out in a Company during their Degree (Bsc) they take a six month mission to help provide IT Support and Advise for Developing nations and are placed in one of the Schools/Cells.


===Social and Religious Barriers===
If one or some of the students are slower then they work with younger learners who they can work with, you dissolve the hirachy in the system, Year one/ Year two, Student/Teacher and the labeling age14, Age15, Age16, / Maths/ Physics / Computing, Pass/ Fail, Qualification of Pass or fail and create a learning environment which is as natural as it can be.
One social barrier might be that governments would only make such laptops available to public school students and not those students that attend school which are religious. It might be wise to allow alternative means for religious schools to be able to provide laptops for the students they serve. This would be more difficult, because it would possibly have to be done on a district by district, or even school by school basis.


As much as a teacher wants to teach, they can only teach what they know. The, for lack a better term, "flaw" in the educational process of third world countries is the knowledge available to the teacher. This is either by their own unfortunate lack of knowledge or by their inability to obtain new information for teaching. Since the emphasis of the project (I think) is toward the children more so then the actual teachers, I would think that some standard of training is necessary for the teachers that are involved with use of these laptops. I would think too, that this training would mainly be in the technological side of how to operate the laptops so that there would be nothing stopping the flow of information from the internet to the student.


== [[Teaching, Institutional and Professional Barriers]] ==
Perhaps these laptops and the aid of volunteer workers that are familiar with the technology could be used in conjunction with another specific website to give this training to the teachers. Initial help could be given in person so that the individual could continue to teach themselves the particulars of using a website devoted to teaching them how to teach students on these laptops. This is the first step in helping people help themselves. This is essentially enabling the teachers the ability to teach on the new medium.

Long section moved to its own page.

==[[Evaluating Laptop Programs]]==

Long section moved to its own page.

== Critical remarks and essays ==
Herein find the views of those opposed to the project for various reasons, and those who, while they may agree with the project goals, disagree with the means the project proposes to achieve those goals.

* [http://www.olpcnews.com/ <i>One Laptop Per Child News</i>]
"Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte... <i>OLPC News</i> is published by... Wayan Vota ([http://www.geekcorps.org/people/ Director of Geekcorps]) who... celebrates the ability of One Laptop Per Child to bring technology to the forefront of economic development, and can't wait to have a OLPC XO himself, but [who] fears the lack of a defined implementation strategy and realistic cost estimates will create great waste and disillusionment with technology."

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Criticism Criticism as summarized by the <i>Wikipedia</i> article on OLPC]

* [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1698603,curpg-1.cms Critical views of OLPC by a Human Resources Development minister in India]

* Alternative educational (and even <i>non-educational</i>) uses for money spent for the OLPC project are examined in a primer on [[Comparative_education]].

== Alternative systems ==
Some concerns and criticisms are raised by the developers of alternative tools for similar targets -- laptops for children, or tools for education, or infrastructure for reducing poverty.

* Intel's ''[http://www.intel.com/intel/worldahead/classmatepc/ Classmate PC]'' is sometimes held out as an alternative to the OLPC system. Articles mentioning the Classmate PC include the following:
*: [http://news.com.com/2102-1005_3-6084250.html?tag=st.util.print ''CNet'' 2006 July 15]
*: [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/30/8391805/index.htm ''Fortune'' 2006 October 24] (This article says in part: ''Any project this grand is sure to have its detractors. The most vociferous is Intel...'')
*: [http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=3792629 ''IHT''(AP) 2006 December 5] (Note on the issue of shipping costs raised in this article: Annenberg Media's 2002 Workshop number 8 for US grade 7-12 geography teachers, described [http://www.learner.org/resources/series161.html here,] includes a video which makes the following claim: ''In just the last 15 years, the cost of shipping a VCR across the Pacific was reduced 95% from $30 to about $1.50.'')

Q. Why would Intel's Classmate PC be an [[#Opposing Views|opposing view]]? Lots of ink/bits could be wasted arguing about it, but as [[Nicholas Negroponte]] said: ''"It's an education project, not a laptop project."'' So if it gets the job done reasonably well (all OLPC, Intel, governments, schools and kids are going to have to make concessions), I would support it just the same. My 'fears' about Intel's project are relative to its committement level and that competition could turn into attrition... Currently, I like OLPC's spirit much better... ;) --[[User:Xavi|Xavi]] 07:50, 13 December 2006 (EST)
:A. The hopelessly naive Minister of Education says the following to the Intel marketing representative:<br>
::<i>We don't have enough money to buy into both the OLPC project and another project which uses Intel's Classmate PC reference design. How should we use our money?</i><br>
:What do you think the Minister is told? Intel could conceivably offer the continuing OLPC project a suitable microprocessor or other ICs in the future; but for now they are offering an entirely different system for school use. - [[User:Docdtv|Docdtv]] 04:50, 14 December 2006 (EST)

The lion now lies down with the lamb:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6897950.stm Intel has just joined the OLPC Board]!
- [[User:Docdtv|Docdtv]] 17:56, 13 July 2007 (EDT)

And then [[Intel]] quit again. 2008-1-4

== Naysayers ==

===Competitors===

It is no surprise when competitors diss a product.

* Microsoft Chairman [[Bill Gates]], who is now having Microsoft put [[Windows XP on the XO]].
* Intel Chairman [[Craig Barrett]] (and a few other Intel representatives), whose Classmate PC competes with the OLPC XO.

* Competing computer designer [http://www.fonly.typepad.com/fonlyblog/2005/11/problems_with_t.html Lee Felsenstein]; [http://fonly.typepad.com/fonlyblog/2006/12/the_bad_news.html And Now the Bad News]

* [http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39288450,00.htm Stephen Dukker], CEO of NComputing, formerly CEO of eMachines.

===Others===

Some of the active critics (some constructive) or opponents of the project:

* Computer Columnist [[John Dvorak]]

* Wall Street Journal [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586754115002717.html?mod=googlenews_wsj A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions]: How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants, By STEVE STECKLOW and JAMES BANDLER. November 24, 2007

* Marthe (sorry, I didn't mean to erase this) and Mohammed Diop of Mali: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Effective_use_of_money suspicion of project motives]

* John Wood, founder of Room to Read, claims that his project [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child#Effective_use_of_money costs less and delivers more]. The claim is that for $4 per child, schools get some number of printed books. This contrasts with $189 per child for XOs (less than the cost of printed textbooks that Room to Read will not supply) and all the riches of the Internet in addition to software for collaborative discovery.

* Wayan Vota, founder of [http://www.olpcnews.com/ OLPC News] Not affiliated with OLPC. Wayan Vota is a supporter of the laptop concept and a severe critic of the program's implementation and of Nicholas Negroponte in particular.

* Theo de Raadt, OpenBSD. [http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=116007094304009&w=2 Letter to OLPC] complaining about the [[Marvell microkernel]] (supplied to OLPC through Marvell, but not owned by them, so they can't relicense it). "I am extremely dissapointed (sic) you have chosen to work against the very obvious goals of "open", and I hope that in time you are made to feel ashamed of the choice you have made." In fact, replacement of this microkernel with Free Software has [http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/46 long been planned], and some people are working on it.

* Richard M. Stallman initially said that he wouldn't support the XO publicly until we got that pesky [[Marvell microkernel]] replaced, but is quite [http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/286/ mild and temperate on the issue] compared with TdR. Since then, Stallman has [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/can-we-rescue-olpc-from-windows switched to an XO] as his principal work computer, because it is far more Free than the alternatives.

* Bruce Perens, the original author of the Open Source definition used by Debian and tireless activist for Linux, has a [http://technocrat.net/d/2008/1/10/33518 conspiracy theory] about Microsoft and OLPC. Ivan Krstić has written a [http://radian.org/notebook/paradox-of-choice refutation]. Perens agrees that he was wrong. (Personal communication to [[User:Mokurai|Mokurai]])

* Dr. Steve Eskow, who works with NGOs in Ghana, has concluded that OLPC is "snake oil", and has been saying so at length on the BytesForAll mailing list, ignoring all corrections to his misstatements of fact, and denouncing Edward [[User:Mokurai|Mokurai]] Cherlin, his opponent in [http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/12149 these exchanges], as a religious zealot who ignores all evidence.

== Potential problems ==
* laptop cost and other costs
* Teacher training and self-guided learning
* [[Internet]] connections
* [[Recycling]]
* [[Theft]] and [[gray market]]
* [[Corruption|Government corruption]] and [[security]]


===Social and Religious Barriers===
One social barrier might be that governments would only make such laptops available to public school students and not those students that attend school which are religious. It might be wise to allow alternative means for religious schools to be able to provide laptops for the students they serve. This would be more difficult, because it would possibly have to be done on a district by district, or even school by school basis.


[[Category:Feedback]]
[[Category:Pedagogical ideas]]
[[Category:Pedagogical ideas]]
[[Category:Opposing views]]
[[Category:Feedback]]
[[Category:General Public]]
[[Category:Corruption]]
[[Category:Hypothesis]]

Latest revision as of 12:27, 2 January 2014

Some sections were removed from the Educational ideas page because they didn't fit the flow.
for more analysis and feedback, see Category:Feedback and Category:Opposing views

Some people object to the OLPC plan, giving a wide variety of reasons. This page lists the most articulate objections, and various background and answers. Some of this information is also gathered on Wikipedia.

We have to be able to solve any real problems and answer any real objections, but a lot of the objections come out of ignorance, and a lot more seem to come from people who want the idea to fail. I don't understand that. --Mokurai 00:47, 11 January 2007 (EST)

Teaching, Social, and Religious Barriers

Teaching Barriers

Moved to separate page.

Social and Religious Barriers

One social barrier might be that governments would only make such laptops available to public school students and not those students that attend school which are religious. It might be wise to allow alternative means for religious schools to be able to provide laptops for the students they serve. This would be more difficult, because it would possibly have to be done on a district by district, or even school by school basis.


Teaching, Institutional and Professional Barriers

Long section moved to its own page.

Evaluating Laptop Programs

Long section moved to its own page.

Critical remarks and essays

Herein find the views of those opposed to the project for various reasons, and those who, while they may agree with the project goals, disagree with the means the project proposes to achieve those goals.

"Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte... OLPC News is published by... Wayan Vota (Director of Geekcorps) who... celebrates the ability of One Laptop Per Child to bring technology to the forefront of economic development, and can't wait to have a OLPC XO himself, but [who] fears the lack of a defined implementation strategy and realistic cost estimates will create great waste and disillusionment with technology."

  • Alternative educational (and even non-educational) uses for money spent for the OLPC project are examined in a primer on Comparative_education.

Alternative systems

Some concerns and criticisms are raised by the developers of alternative tools for similar targets -- laptops for children, or tools for education, or infrastructure for reducing poverty.

  • Intel's Classmate PC is sometimes held out as an alternative to the OLPC system. Articles mentioning the Classmate PC include the following:
    CNet 2006 July 15
    Fortune 2006 October 24 (This article says in part: Any project this grand is sure to have its detractors. The most vociferous is Intel...)
    IHT(AP) 2006 December 5 (Note on the issue of shipping costs raised in this article: Annenberg Media's 2002 Workshop number 8 for US grade 7-12 geography teachers, described here, includes a video which makes the following claim: In just the last 15 years, the cost of shipping a VCR across the Pacific was reduced 95% from $30 to about $1.50.)

Q. Why would Intel's Classmate PC be an opposing view? Lots of ink/bits could be wasted arguing about it, but as Nicholas Negroponte said: "It's an education project, not a laptop project." So if it gets the job done reasonably well (all OLPC, Intel, governments, schools and kids are going to have to make concessions), I would support it just the same. My 'fears' about Intel's project are relative to its committement level and that competition could turn into attrition... Currently, I like OLPC's spirit much better... ;) --Xavi 07:50, 13 December 2006 (EST)

A. The hopelessly naive Minister of Education says the following to the Intel marketing representative:
We don't have enough money to buy into both the OLPC project and another project which uses Intel's Classmate PC reference design. How should we use our money?
What do you think the Minister is told? Intel could conceivably offer the continuing OLPC project a suitable microprocessor or other ICs in the future; but for now they are offering an entirely different system for school use. - Docdtv 04:50, 14 December 2006 (EST)

The lion now lies down with the lamb: Intel has just joined the OLPC Board! - Docdtv 17:56, 13 July 2007 (EDT)

And then Intel quit again. 2008-1-4

Naysayers

Competitors

It is no surprise when competitors diss a product.

Others

Some of the active critics (some constructive) or opponents of the project:

  • John Wood, founder of Room to Read, claims that his project costs less and delivers more. The claim is that for $4 per child, schools get some number of printed books. This contrasts with $189 per child for XOs (less than the cost of printed textbooks that Room to Read will not supply) and all the riches of the Internet in addition to software for collaborative discovery.
  • Wayan Vota, founder of OLPC News Not affiliated with OLPC. Wayan Vota is a supporter of the laptop concept and a severe critic of the program's implementation and of Nicholas Negroponte in particular.
  • Theo de Raadt, OpenBSD. Letter to OLPC complaining about the Marvell microkernel (supplied to OLPC through Marvell, but not owned by them, so they can't relicense it). "I am extremely dissapointed (sic) you have chosen to work against the very obvious goals of "open", and I hope that in time you are made to feel ashamed of the choice you have made." In fact, replacement of this microkernel with Free Software has long been planned, and some people are working on it.
  • Bruce Perens, the original author of the Open Source definition used by Debian and tireless activist for Linux, has a conspiracy theory about Microsoft and OLPC. Ivan Krstić has written a refutation. Perens agrees that he was wrong. (Personal communication to Mokurai)
  • Dr. Steve Eskow, who works with NGOs in Ghana, has concluded that OLPC is "snake oil", and has been saying so at length on the BytesForAll mailing list, ignoring all corrections to his misstatements of fact, and denouncing Edward Mokurai Cherlin, his opponent in these exchanges, as a religious zealot who ignores all evidence.

Potential problems

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