By Andy McCue, 31 July 2006 16:05
NEWS
The $100 laptop project pioneered by Nicholas Negroponte has again come under fire for failing to address the need for basic communications and education infrastructure in developing countries first.
Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project to distribute the wind-up Linux laptops to children in developing countries was dealt a blow last week when India ditched plans to order a million of the devices, saying classrooms and teachers are needed more urgently than "fancy tools".
And although Nigeria has placed an order for a million of the $100 laptops, IT chiefs believe the laudable project is a "leap too far", with two-thirds of silicon.com's 12-strong CIO Jury IT user panel saying the project is "fundamentally flawed".
Nick Clark, director of IT services at Tower Hamlets College, said a computer is of little use unless connected to the internet.
He said: "A wind-up laptop may keep going but what is it going to be used for without the communications infrastructure? It may be better to invest in that infrastructure and provide a cheap mobile phone with browser to access it. But then there's the question of who will pay for the calls."
Chris Broad, head of IS&T at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, added: "Giving equipment or even building a school does not contribute to educating the children unless the trained teachers and infrastructure is also there. India is right."
Some were more critical of the project. Russell Altendorff, IT director at the London Business School, said: "Professor Negroponte and the US in general must realise that many countries will treat their largesse as imperialism by another means. They mean well but they really have to respect the capabilities of other countries to make their own way. More realistic trade agreements would be a better way of helping the third world."
Alastair Behenna, CIO at Harvey Nash, said the $100 laptop is "simply ahead of its time" rather than fundamentally flawed but Paul Broome, IT director at 192.com, disagreed.
Broome said: "How can it be wrong to offer such a tool? Much depends on how it will fit into any country's education policy and curriculum."
Others may also point out the fact that India's home-grown PC manufacturer HCL can produce a desktop computer for almost the same price as the $100 laptop.
Do you think the $100 laptop is a good idea for developing countries or fundamentally flawed? Let us know and post a Reader Comment below.
Today's CIO Jury was...
Russell Altendorff, IT director, London Business School
Alastair Behenna, CIO, Harvey Nash
Peter Birley, IT director, Browne Jacobson
Les Boggia, IT division head, Carole Nash Insurance
Chris Broad, head of IS&T, UKAEA
Paul Broome, IT director, 192.com
Nick Clark, director of IT services, Tower Hamlets College
Colin Moore, head of IS, Department for Education and Skills
Rory O'Boyle, head of IT, The Football Association
John Odell, group IT director, BBA Group
Peter Ryder, head of ICT, Preston City Council
David Supple, director of IT and creative services, Ecotec
If you are a CIO, IT director or equivalent at a large or small company in the private or public sector and you want to be part of silicon.com's CIO Jury pool, or you know an IT chief who should be, then drop us a line at editorial@silicon.com
Comments
There are 20 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
I have always thought that this was the wrong project. One of the issues that is always raised by Negroponte is that he has seen unused equipment in schools and gives the reason that students don't use it because they don't feel ownsership which they would do if they had a computer each.
However I recall the early days of computers in schools here in the UK. My mother was a teacher, and was given a computer to use in her classroom, but she was given little or no training, and had no idea - nor did anybody else - how to use it herself, let alone how to incorporate it into her teaching, thus for quite sometime the computer gathered dust in the corner of the room.
That was 20years ago, and things have changed in the UK and computers are an everyday tool in the home as well as in schools.
If an educational establishment is unable to incorporate computers into it lessons because the teachers have little ideas of how to use them, how is giving a child a computer of its own going to help. Also how is a limited device using Linux going to help when most of the rest of us are using ever more powerful microsoft based machines.
2. Jerome Goldstein
The main criticisms of the jury seem to have been neither misinformed or cliched left wing nonsense concerning "imperialism". As for that, the fact is that the countries implementing the project will pay for the laptops, which no-one is forcing upon them. Since when does a sale of a product become imperialistic because it does not generate a profit for the supplier? In that case, retrovial AIDs drugs would equally be imperialistic.
As for the misinformed aspect: the laptops will be equipped with mesh networking and internet connectivity. The internet backbones will be provided by the countries concerned, but given the speed with which these proliferate, it is pretty inconceivable that this would not happen. Negroponte's son, it should be remembered, connected a Cambodian village to the internet, and connected laptops provided by Dr. Negroponte, succesfully and without Superman's help.
3. Nicolas Charbonnier
Go watch the videos. Children at age 6 suddenly go from a "Try and Learn" to a "Sit down, listen to the teacher and learn" mode of learning.
Children want a computer to try and learn with.
at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Video_of_the_OLPC
It comes with wifi-mesh internet, children can teach the teachers how to use it. There are lots of children with electricity and with internet infrastructure for example cheaper than 10$ ADSL per month, but they do not have a computer because it costs more than their parents monthly salary.
It's about eigther you let capitalism thus Intel and Microsoft continue to have a monopoly on Computers. Or you get some big companies together as the ones behind OLPC, and you rebuild a computer and the OS in a way so it is as cheap and as fast as possible.
4. Lee Felsenstein
While Negroponte argues that the mesh networking feature of the laptop will obviate the need for ISP connection, it will most likely result in the banishment of the laptop from classrooms. What teacher has ever tolerated the passing of secret notes among pupils in class?
The OLPC vision of education is so radical that veterans of the 1960's counterculture would blush - forget organized education and leave it all to the kids armed with superior technology. The potential for antiocial use is somewhat frightening.
Bravo to India for clear-eyed analysis and for not falling into totem worship of the laptops.
5. Sabot
The $100 laptop is fundamentally a good idea.
How is the cheapest laptop available a bad idea? When you wish to bring tech to poor countries would you not want to bring good value also?
All of this press is just fud to keep this product from being released. Release the product and let the market decide.
What I find fundamentally flawed are the people that try to keep low cost tech out of the hands of the poor.
6. putdownpete
More nonsense from know-nothing Brits. If you had read McLuhan you would know that the medium is the message. And the medium is the PC, not the teacher and not the internet.
Get the notion of COMPUTING through these kids heads, and dispense with the humanist crap.
Any application, including PONG, will teach kids more about computing that some bogus teacher afraid to touch the keyboard for fear he or she may get gimblies.
7. Nicholas Negroponte
"Also how is a limited device using Linux going to help when most of the rest of us are using ever more powerful microsoft based machines."
I urge you look carefully at our specs and examine why Open Source is 50% of the world's server market. Our laptop will not only be very fast and not limited, it will have three features no other laptop has: sun-light readable mode, human power option, and mesh network built in. "Limited" is hardly the right word.
I wonder if you would advocate one pencil per classroom, or a special room for all pencils, called a "writing room."
Nicholas Negroponte
8. Tim Ware
The $100 project is rather like buying scanners for hospitals. It completely ignore the cost of running the background infrastructure - or maybe it doesn't and provides western companies with a sponge to mop up aid dollars to the wider detriment of the presumed beneficiaries
9. Peter
This is just nonsense.
The laptop's are all able to form/particapte in a wireless MESH network.
The laptops ARE the infrastructure. One laptop with internet, means in theory that all other laptops will have internet acces.
So, this project is indeed an investment in communcations infrastructure.
I.a.w. the whole 'fundamentally flawed' stuff is fundamentally flawed itself.
10. anonymous
Wouldn't it be better to spend the money on more IT suites in schools rather than giving each child a laptop that is bound to be broken/stolen within a very short space of time? This way at least they'd have better equipment to work from. $100 would buy decent 2nd-user desktops with applications you see in the real world.
11. Robert H Hedderley
The idea is a good one but like all ideas it has to have the right environment in which to function as intended. There are lots of situations where it will fail for one reason or another and a lot where it will be a complete success. The environment in which it is deployed has to be correct; there is no universal panacea as far as education or anything else is concerned but to do nothing would be to deny this option where it can flourish. My biggest concern in respect of the deployment of any item of technology is the ability of the user base to maintain it and I hope that this has been catered for. Every country irrespective of their ability to purchase such equipment must decide what they can afford and what priority can be given to such things and it is not the function of others to make their decisions for them or deprive them from gaining whatever value they can from such a project. I am sure that there are a thousand and one projects that I and others would consider to be higher up the humanitarian scale; such as clean water and the ability of some areas or the world to feed themselves, but that does not mean that this project does not have validity, in an environment which can support it and enable it to flourish, and it does not mean that countries such as India that have much more pressing and fundamentally important priorities, are doing anything wrong by holding the viewpoint that they do.
12. Geof Todd
The $100 PC is begining to look like a surrogate for action rather than addressing the priorities in the respective countries. At best it's an idea ahead of it's time, but if we want to support communities through the deployment of technolgy, then it should be about the output/result - what can we help the community to achieve, through the use of technology? As a Trustee of an educational charity in Tanzania (Village Education Project Kilimanjaro), we have supplied PCs, with Internet connections, that help to inform and extend the educational opportunities of the local communities around Kilimanjaro. The PCs have been supplied free from numerous sources, but how they are deployed and used is the key. Please see http://www.kiliproject.org/computercentre.html for more information.
Geof Todd
13. anonymous
This sounds like the laptop is being built to a certain price rather than quality. Whenever the "magical" price barrier is broken there will always be problems relating to component quality. It is especially true in the field of consumer electronics that a cheap product will not last as long as a more expensive one. Take a look at the ZX Spectrums many years ago - not too dissimilar a concept to the $100 laptops. Loot at how many Spectrums broke within a few weeks because of keyboard failure!
However one of the good points I've noted is the charger/power cord within the carry-strap. Now that's a brilliant idea! Perhaps even the idea of solid state storage (instead of a hard disk) is good for power consumption, robustness, and speed.
Sometimes it takes a project like this to bring innovation forward.
14. anonymous
The OLPC was never ment to be a standalone solution, it is part of the
larger picture, as Nicholas Negroponte has frequently highlighted.
Instead of waiting for the teachers and the educational
system to catch up with existing technologies, let the children learn and
explore in their own time, whilest teachers and schools get greater
awareness of more recent learning methods.
Yes more open market trading would be very benefitial to the third world in general, but surely we shouldnt use that as an excuse for not providing educational tools to the adults of tomorrow.
As stated on the OLPC's FAQ page, recycling first world computers will require a huge amount of manpower, and the children will not be able to associate with the device as closely. How many of us remember the Tamagootchi, and how popular they were amongst kids a few years back.
15. anonymous
Princpally, the machine idea is good. However, it is not much use unless connected to the enormous library of information called the Internet.
HOWEVER - we are running a multi-villaged sized mesh (Locustworld) for getting access to the 'net in Rural England. One of these laptops could act as an internet gateway to another more remote village. Stick it on a tall pole, with a higher gain antenna and you can go for miles.
It is still a good idea. Do it.
16. anonymous
don't these low educated poor people need something more useful, like water or a box of rubbers? Get serious.
17. SP
I agree with your jury and the Indian government, this is a flawed idea.
In countries that OLPC is targeted at there are far more fundamental educational needs - classrooms and teachers. For a vast number there are even more fundamental needs - food, clean water and shelter.
Many devices would never even get to the children: the scheme would be used to siphon money into the pockets of government officials.
Education can help some escape poverty and for a tiny handful this might enable them to learn and gain work, but there are simply far too many. Most need more fundamental education - sustainable food cultivation, health, economics and population control. Even if we could educate them all to be Information Workers, where would they get work?
Where is the content these kids will learn from? The Internet is 90% plus English speaking and 90% plus of the target population don't speak English. How will they use the resources available? Someone commented that children will learn without a teacher or classroom. How?
If we want to help the 3rd world, we need to address the issue of trade barriers and subsidy - The US and EU spend more subsidising their own farming communities than they do on international aid, preventing 3rd world countries from competing.
It will take more than a few laptops to solve the problems, no matter how well they work, technically, or as an educational tool.
18. Jacob Shellman
In short, I like the product, but so far, I haven't seen much when it comes to its distribution and maintenance. Even if they get the computers to the school children, especially in remote parts of developing countries (which is a very big if), how will they get technical support for problems and questions? How will they be able to fix the machines when they break? How can a child afford a $100 computer (depending on how countries distribute internally, it may come to this)? One of the problems is that computers in the private and public, entrepreneurial sector are already in high demand, especially those that have internet access. So far, the only distribution method I have seen is that of the producers of this computer to sell them to government that will supposedly distribute/subsidize them to school children (for free?). Governments in many developing countries are, to say the least, a lot more corrupt than our own. They're not likely to simply give them to rural school children, but rather put them on the market and make a profit on them.
I think the idea is good because these computers could really fulfill a need for public and business operations and productivity, as well as some needs at the university level. However, I don't think that getting the computers to school children is a realistic one.
You've probably heard of the term NGO (Non-governmental Organization). One of the reasons there are so many in developing countries is that governments are so corrupt, inefficient, and incompetent that there is a need for distribution of goods, services, education to circumvent the government in order to get to the people in need. I've seen no discussion on the part of the computer makers to work through NGO's, or to work with those who have experience on the ground in distributing to vulnerable populations.
Getting a computer to every school child is a nice idea, but realistically I think that it would be more successful to try to fulfill developing countries' business/public operations' needs, and then maybe go for school children. With a weak distribution methodology, you're not going to be able to circumvent the commercial and general population's demand for cheap but decent computers and get directly to the children. Even if some school children got a subsidized (free) computer, it would be easy for a businessman to approach the child's family and buy that computer for even a fraction of the original price, simply because there is so much poverty already.
Some thoughts I've had about how this could be made to work better are these:
Do things that decrease the demand from the commercial and general population and simplify the features specific to students (pre-university). This may include replacing internet access with an infrared capability, in which students in a classroom could beam their assignments into the teacher's computer (similar to how my ancient PDA—a handspring visor—can beam over files to another PDA). This might require a stronger infrared beam than my PDA, I really don't know much about computer infrared technology.
Keep the qwerty keyboard (or the European keyboard), and have programs that are specific to children, including simplified versions of spreadsheet, word processing, etc. For example, the student version of SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), can do data analysis of up to only 30 variables, fulfilling the needs of a very simple questionnaire that a student might do as a class assignment. The full SPSS version can handle hundreds of variables (extensive surveys) and is used by professionals to analyze and publish research. Something similar could be done for word processing (limit to number of characters per document or other limited features, spreadsheet (limited number of cells), and other programs. Perhaps less memory or something like that. This would be for the purpose of making the laptop less useful for the general population a
19. Dimitri
Most people miss the point.
It's amazing (and disapointing) how so many people look at this groubd breaking idea and see it in such narrow terms.
Everyone's refusing to look at the big picture which is that people, especially kids with PC's will experiment and learn and do so a lot faster than any teacher can teach them. There's nothing like personal interest and motivation to spark the intellect.
All the criticism focuses on narrow detail:
- The telecom infrastructure: Un-necessary due to the mesh networking and decreasing telecom costs.
- The need for teachers: how is having a laptop and access to ifnormation going to be worse? How many teachers can you hire and train for a few hundred dollars? Not many.
Training for teachers who may have no idea how to use the machines: To be blunt, anyone who can't learn how to use a simplified PC hardly derves to be a teacher. These days 70-year olds learn with a little experimentation. And kids learn amazingly fast. People who can't learn don't want to.
-The potential for anti-social use (!): This one staggers the mind. Maybe we should keep all knowledge away from poor people. You never know what they'll do with it. Let's keep them stupid instead. Nice.
-We should give poor nations aid in areas like water and food: (A) The OLPC project is not directed at countries that are in the middle of a famine or civil war. It's directed at poor but developing nations. And if they use it to their advantage they'll reduce their reliance of food and water aid.
Corrupt govermanets will steal the laptops and sell them: Why? They're worth very very little. And not many will want to buy them (if they can afford something better).
Overall, I found most of the points to be missing the forest for the trees.
Even if only one out of 50 laptops delivers value, it'll make a huge difference. It'll create a whole class of skilled, educated and motivated people who can lead developing nations forward. And it will reduce the increasing gap between the knowledge economies and those stuck in 19th century agrarian models.
The project won't change the world, but it's a 1st step on a development path that can do just that.
Let's take a step back and consider how to make it work instead of focusing on whatever narrow detail occurs.
20. A Cynic
Will the machines be available globally or just to US-friendly countries?