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One Laptop Per Child Nicholas Negroponte's Project

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Title: One Laptop Per Child Nicholas Negroponte's Project


1
One Laptop Per ChildNicholas Negroponte's
Project
  • By Pete Riley

2
Goal
  • To provide children around the world with new
    opportunities to explore, experiment, and express
    themselves.
  • It's an education project, not a laptop
    project. Nicholas Negroponte

3
Countries Participating
  • Within the next 12 months, as many as 10
    million laptop computers will be distributed to
    the children of the following countries
  • Argentina
  • Brazil
  • Libya
  • Nigeria
  • Pakistan
  • Rwanda
  • Uruguay

4
  • Countless children who live in remote villages,
    some without electricity, some who may not have
    access to clean water or healthcare, will
    suddenly have the computing power that is fairly
    close to that of you and I and businesspeople
    worldwide.

5
Staggering Numbers
  • The program seeks to put an estimated 100 million
    laptops into the hands of developing-world
    schoolchildren in the next couple of years.
  • Total cost of about 10 billion dollars
  • 100 million laptops is double the number produced
    annually throughout the world today.
  • Would meeting this target cause global shortages
    of liquid crystal displays and other key
    components?

6
  • Khaled Hassounah shown introducing the Childrens
    Machine XO to Nigerian students in a one-room
    school
  • Khaled Hassounah is Director of OLPC's African
    and Middle Eastern operations

7
  • The interface of the XO Children's Machine was
    designed to reinforce concepts of teamwork and
    interconnectedness. Pentagram and Red Hat
    collaborated with OLPC to conceptualize the
    pictorial Sugar GUI

8
  • This school is the first test deployment site for
    OLPC's XO laptops. OLPC installed a satellite
    dish, power generator, and modem to give the
    school electricity and Internet connectivity.

9
Different Reactions
  • There are of course people in favor of this
    project and those that question it
  • This is not just a matter of giving a laptop to
    each child, as if bestowing on them some magical
    charm. The magic lies within within each child,
    within each scientist, scholar, or
    just-plain-citizen-in-the-making. This initiative
    is meant to bring it forth into the light of
    day. --7th Secretary-General of the United
    Nations, Kofi Atta Annan

10
Different Reactions
  • what happens to the children's educational
    experience the next day, month, year?
  • Just one computer per Nigerian student is 73 of
    the entire Nigerian government's national income,
    and Nigeria is one of the richest countries in
    Sub-Sahara Africa
  • Motivation and education of mentors and students
    will not be free, cheap, fast, or as easy as one
    laptop per one school's children in one capitol
    city

11
  • There is the thought that Negroponte is selling a
    miracle and not real dynamic change

12
Argentina by the numbers
  • Laptops must be bought in at least 1 million
    blocks and the price has escalated to 138 per
    laptop equaling 138 million just for the
    laptops
  • from the CIA World Fact Book and The World Bank

  • Children 15 or under 10 million
  • Literacy at 15 and over 97.1
  • Internet users 10 million (2005)
  • Then buying 1 million laptops would only reach
    10 of children under 15

13
Argentina (Cont.) More Numbers
  • Total Federal expenditures 39.98 billion
  • Public expenditure on education 5.6 billion per
    year
  • Number of students per teacher 17
  • Public expenditure on education minus teachers
    salaries 300 million
  • 138 million per year would consume half of the
    non-salary education budget nationwide for only
    10 of the student body per year
  • If Argentina were to borrow
  • Public debt 72.5 of GDP
  • And note this is only hardware. No software,
    teacher training, or related hardware

14
The XO Machine and a portable pull-string power
generator
15
A few common criticisms and answers to them
  • The laptops are too expensive! The poor
    developing countries will drown in debt!
  • This is a common criticism, but countries like
    Pakistan have billions of dollars which they end
    up wasting on everything from the railways to
    useless perks for govt. officials to building
    roads which no one uses, so a few hundred million
    dollars for laptops is cheap. That money would
    have been wasted otherwise, and in any case, a
    couple of rich Arab countries have offered to buy
    the laptops for Pakistan.

16
A few common criticisms and answers to them,
(cont.)
  • Not every child will get a laptop!
    Discrimination!
  • Some delusional people come up with this
    ridiculous argument. They have probably never
    seen a third world country. Life isnt fair -
    deal with it. And, if the OLPC project is
    successful, than there would obviously be a great
    push to roll out similar tech to other students.
    This is 2007 - in a couple of years its quite
    possible the 150 dollar laptop will be the 50
    dollar laptop and churning out millions of units
    a month.
  • What will the kids do with a laptop anyways? Its
    not like the teachers will be able to guide
    them.
  • Leave that to the kids. Most teachers in public
    schools dont exist - and many of those that do
    show up to teach might as well have stayed at
    home for all the good they do. The OLPC idea is
    that the laptops enable kids to learn for
    themselves. In a school of a few hundred
    children, a few are bound to be able to figure it
    out.

17
A few common criticisms and answers to them,
(cont.)
  • Another common argument is that the money would
    be far better spent on schools and teachers
    instead of the laptops. After all, what good is a
    laptop when you cant read or write?
  • In a ideal world, this is obvious, and far better
    to spend money in a way that benefits all
    students, rather than spending it on laptops for
    a few students. In Pakistan, money is already
    spent on education all around the country -
    building thousands of schools and paying tens of
    thousands of teachers which dont exist. All that
    money just goes to line the pockets of a whole
    chain of corrupt politicians. That system isnt
    working - and a few hundred million dollars cant
    even begin to make a dent in it. This is not a
    zero sum game - buying laptops doesnt mean that
    govt. schools stop buying blackboards and chalk.

18
Laptops arent food. Children in third world
countries need food medicine, not laptops
  • This is a commonly stated argument, and is so
    childishly wrong that the proponents need their
    own 100 dollar laptops to learn some of the facts
    of life. Most children in third world countries
    arent starving, and while they sure could do
    with better food and medicine, the old adage
    comes to mind Give a man a fish and you feed
    him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed
    him for a lifetime. Most Pakistani children
    arent starving, and there are already a thousand
    or so NGOs and charities thinking about how to
    help those who are, and yet more working on
    medical aid. Heck, even the Pakistan govt. is
    making noises about food and medicine. What we
    dont have, and desperately need, is a way to
    empower them to rise out of their poverty. The
    OLPC project provides children a chance to do
    that - not all, perhaps not even 10 percent of
    the recipients will use the laptops, but thats
    where future solutions will come from - not the
    thousands of NGOs shoveling aid every which way.
    Africa is a prime example - the continent has
    more food than it needs, yet people still starve.
    The massive quantities of foreign food aid have
    undermined local agriculture and wrecked their
    markets, with countries like Ethiopia locked into
    a vicious downward spiral of food aid dependency.
    Even then, countries like Ethiopia already have
    more food aid than they need, so this argument is
    just plain nonsense. Countries like Brazil,
    another participant in the OLPC program,
    certainly doesnt need any food aid, and for that
    matter, even Pakistan suffices without any.

19
  • The OLPC wiki says on this
  • While it is true there are many people in the
    world who definitely need food and shelter, there
    are multitudes of people who live in rural or
    sub-urban areas and have plenty to eat and
    reasonable accommodations. What these people
    dont have is a decent shot at a good education.

20
Anonymous Quote
  • ..Im counting on the brainpower and energy of
    a few hundred million hungry children. You and I
    cant out-think them, especially not in advance.
  • So are you going to stand there cursing the
    darkness, or teach people to make candles?

21
The Final Design of the XO
  • The XO Running in Tablet / e-Reader Mode

The XO with peripherals
22
60 Minutes interview with Nicholas
  • On the criticism about theft
  • "What says an older kid isnt just going to
    swipe this thing?" Stahl asks. "It seems like
    its inevitable." "Well we spent a lot of time
    on security," Negroponte says. "If this is stolen
    from a child, within 24 hours it stops working.
    It will not be useable."

23
  • But lately One Laptop has had to contend with
    a new challenge competition. This lab in Sao
    Paulo is testing two other laptops the Brazilian
    government is thinking of buying for school
    children, including one made in India and
    Negropontes biggest competitor the Classmate by
    Intel, the giant chip maker. "Because the
    numbers are so large," Negroponte says. "They
    look at those numbers and they say, 'if were not
    in those, were toast'."

24
  • In Brazil there are 55 million schoolchildren,
    most of them poor, many live in favelas, or
    shanty towns. In China there are 200 million
    children. Worldwide Nicholas Negroponte says the
    potential number of kids who could get laptops is
    over a billion, a fact which has not gone
    unnoticed by Intel and other hi-tech companies.

25
Will the laptop be available in the US?
  • Right now Negroponte is in talks with some states
    and school districts. He says it will be sold
    commercially in the future, but youll have to
    buy two one for your child and one for a child
    in a poor country.

26
Conclusion of Introduction
  • There is much more to research, including the
    future benefits and negatives of such a huge
    venture. If these students graduate into
    economies that are not ready to change into
    information societies, their exposure to
    computers will have given a whole generation of
    students the skills they need to get out of their
    countries. The hope though is that the students
    will demand computers in their work lives,
    potentially transforming the economies of their
    countries
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