Talk:OLPC Nigeria

Hi,

I just retruned from volunteering in Nigeria where I worked with children in several schools on media education and ICT. Can you tell me what are the potential for developing a project related to your computers in Nigeria? My visit demonstrated to me the need for innovations such as yours in Nigeria.

Thank you.

Lee Rother, PhD (irving.rother@mcgill.ca)

The potential is at its most :). The platform is open, and distributions are available, so you could start working on any related project immediatly. There are even development boards that will become available soon if those are needed to do any initial testing for any educational software or content.

You could use the mailing lists to interact with people currently working on HDLT-related projects. You could also check out the OLPC Idea Pool for inspiration.

Dr. Lee Rother, I think your intentions are noble but do you know about the NEPAD e-school programme and the fact that Nigeria has committed itself to implementing the project will greatly conflict with the OLPC initiative. Joshua Kinuthia (joshuagichuhi@gmail.com)

NEPAD e-school program and OLPC

In fact the OLPC initiative is compatible with the NEPAD initiative. In the short term (the first five years) the focus of NEPAD is secondary education, while OLPC's primary focus is elementary education.

Countries, and Nigeria specifically, adopting the OLPC initiative is very compatible in terms of goals with the NEPAD e-school initiative. On the execution side, the hundred dollar laptop could offers a practical option for implementing the goals of the NEPAD initiative.

Nigeria's or Egypt's working with such a program, would only help those countries gain practical experience on planning and implementing such an initiative. Even if this is not the technology of choice for NEPAD in elementary education, the experience is still very relevant and reusable.