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“The Other” $100 Laptops

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Intel's Classmate laptopTechmeme tracks news all over the web, and a link on Techmeme today to a BBC article brought to my attention yet another inexpensive laptop computer for kids. Intel has a $200+ laptop (the “$100 laptop” is now close to $175) that could also be in the running.

The SimputerAnd let’s not ignore other efforts to create inexpensive computers, like Simputer and the recent announcement that India seeks to create a $10 laptop computer. (That’s, of course, going to be extremely difficult, but it does show that $100 may still be too high a price to achieve “everywhere” penetration.)

60-Minutes talks to Nick NegroponteOn CBS News, Lesley Stahl interviewed Nick Negroponte about the computer. There’s video there to be viewed. This is the CBS-OLPC institutional view, of course, but the discussion about OLPC in the blogosphere has gotten so negative lately that some positivity is welcome!

One Laptop Per Child

The Intel Classmate

The Simputer (Simple Computer)

-posted using Ecto

Learning for the 21st Century – the New Technology Foundation

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Along with the Project Happiness team consisting of its founder Randy Taran, Maria Linegar, Marsha Clark, and teacher Ward Mailliard, I recently spoke with Paul Curtis, who is Chief Academic and Innovation Officer for the New Technology Foundation in Napa, California. This may be interesting to you if you’re an educator or someone involved with students today. Project-based learning isn’t exactly new, but making it the model for an entire curriculum is certainly not a widespread practice.

New Technology Foundation’s mission is to “Support, refine and build on New Technology High School – a national model of project based learning in a technology rich environment. Disseminate the model – methodology, tools and resources – through replication, subscription and other means. Create and support a network of schools based on the Napa NTHS model that continues to innovate, identify and share best practices.”

Learning for the 21st century includes speaking and writing well – communicating. Critical thinking. And collaboration. They’re modeled more on what the workplace looks like and less on what traditional educational institutions look like. The Foundation disseminates the work – they don’t actually run schools – but they have seeded dozens of schools! And the number is growing rapidly.

In my opinion, “preparing for a career” (in the classical sense) is an almost impossible task today. Years ago, one might prepare for a career as a doctor, or a musician. But today it’s hard to imagine that a career, if viewed as a profession, would even exist longer than 10 or 20 years – let alone for an individual’s productive lifetime. The information learned by engineers graduating from universities today, for instance, has a half-life of 3 years. During an average individual’s lifetime, he or she will have to “retread” several times!

Play the interview:

Can I please have 1/10 of the $100 laptop?

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The $100 laptop visits ISDE5The Times of India today (5 May) reported that Indian researchers are striving to create a $10 laptop – having rejected the $100 laptop (now way over $100) as too expensive. Yeah, that may be true for many, many countries. $100 (or $150 or $175 or $200) could add up to a half year of labor for many people in many places.

Apparently the South-Asian researchers have gotten the cost down to $47 so far, labor included.

They report “A meeting of industry and academia is to take place in IISc, Bangalore, later this month to go through the two designs and invite more suggestions.”

Put a Little Sugar on it (OLPC)

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Wayne Hodgins has posted a good “current news” article that points to a number of other online comments on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative (the $100 computer). Wayne refers to Jeremy Allison’s article “A laptop to change the world” and Wayne quotes Jeremy’s final statement from the article “If it succeeds, I think it will change the world in ways we currently can’t envisage.” The second I start thinking about that I recognize that the Sugar interface that’s being built for the laptop which tag-lined this way – “Sugar is the core of the OLPC Human Interface. Its goal is to turn the Laptop into a fun, easy to use, social experience that promotes sharing and learning.” is what might accomplish this.

And I’m going to emphasize those words “sharing” and “social” – I think that’s where the laptop will have its greatest effect (that is IF they really can keep these computers networked). Computers and networks are for communication as much as they’re for computing. Actually FAR MORE for communication than for computing. (When was the last time you executed a good floating-point operation on your computer? In fact, do you know what a floating-point operation is?) Nope, you use your computer for communication far more than you do for computing.

Keep your eye on Sugar.

Geekin’ out on the $100 Laptop (OLPC)

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SugarMy friends are all over the map in terms of their opinions of the “$100 laptop” computer by the One Laptop Per Child [OLPC] project. They range from those who think it’s a total scam and rip-off (no link – anonymous for now) to those who are actively seeking to produce software for the computer.

But I was pointed at a really good “review” article today entitled The Laptop Crusade – Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop is a sweet piece of engineering. But can it really change the world? By Tekla S. Perry in IEEE Spectrum online. It’s worth reading. [The picture at the left is the Sugar interface that kids will use to operate the computer and discover their communities.]

You may already know that my opinion is that the OLPC computer:

  • Will actually work, and will be useful as a communications platform;
  • Be somewhat “fragile” in the field, and difficult to keep operating;
  • Cost more than $200 because nobody’s counting the cost of shipping, deploying and making it operational in the field.

All in all, I am positive about its potential and think that it’s worth tracking as the story unfolds.