OLPC talk:Mission

Why do children in developing nations need laptops?

This assumes, however, that the "wealth of information on the Internet" is of the same quality as a textbook, something which has yet to be proven (the interesting but problematic case of the Wikipedia/Britanica comparison aside). So the question is: does the creation of a library, money to train/pay teachers, and the development of a physical education infrastructure provide a better environment for children to learn? Given that results of laptop use in schools in the West are inconclusive at best, I fear that this is a massive experiment, costing millions of dollars and thousands of person-hours, that should not be undertaken. What are the economics of creating a physically-based educational infrastructure? How far could one go in that direction with the funds and time that are being put into the OLPC project? Let's perform that experiment first, since the results are at least more conclusive. ---nak

Isn't this project just a techno-Utopian dream? A band aid when more serious surgery needs to be done?

It's true, people don't have a "decent shot" at a good eduction. What are the provisions of the project for the training of teachers and the community on educational use of the laptops? I have heard nothing about this vital part of the project---in fact, this is more important than the technology itself. Who are the people developing the educational software, and do they have experience in schools in the third world? Do they know the needs and desires of the people who the laptops are targeting? Or are they Western-trained, imparting our way of schooling and teaching into places where it might not be appropriate? While you say elsewhere on this page that this is not a "laptop project", all of the talks I've heard so far focus entirely on the technology to the detriment of the educational tools. I need to hear plans for how this will be used, concrete plans, even if those plans might change, in order to be convinced that this project will succeed. For the easy part is the technology; the social implications, and embedding of this new technology into an existing system, is the hard part. ---nak

Is this project really about getting computers to kids?

If this is an education project rather than a laptop project, where is the focus on education, on teachers, on providing textbooks, materials, buildings, training, salaries, etc? I fear that unless you begin to work on these much more difficult problems now, the project will be doomed. ---nak