India Rejects One Laptop per Child Program

ex-geek writes "Seems like Negroponte's One Laptop per Child program has been rejected by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of India. Among the objections are concerns about the effect of extensive laptop use on children's health. Better uses for the monies, which would be required to roll out the OLPC project, are also named. Most insightful however is the observation that not one industrial country has so far implemented a similar program for its children, which casts doubt as to what the pedagogical use for notebooks in class really is."

Nigeria accepts OLPC

[Gord]

Worth pointing out that according to this, brief, article [allafrica.com] Nigeria has ordered 1 million of these laptops at $100 a throw.

Re:MS counter move

[alphakappa]

I understand, but the truth about India/Bangladesh is that the poverty line as defined by the government really is a poverty line i.e. it's barely enough to survive.

Re:Passing the buck

[Andabata]

You're assuming a "as it commonly is used" use of computers in the classroom. That's not what OLPC is about at all. It's not just about putting laptops in schools, is about changing the teaching methods by using them for what computers were made for: programming simulations, controlling systems, etc. Check out http://www.squeakersfilm.org/ [squeakersfilm.org]>this movie and especially http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php/Learning_Learning [laptop.org]>Papert's section on OLPC website

To everyone making critics out there...

[vhogemann]

I recommend you to take a look at the OLPC site (http://www.laptop.org).

The project is amazing, it's not just about handling a laptop to a child... They're producing a collaborative environment called Sugar (using GTK, Gecko and Python), to help children share content. Also, they're working on educational content, and educational applications.

The mesh network idea is just incredible, it will make possible to the children create their own content, and share it with their colleages even where there's no access to the internet, since the wireless card keeps on running even when the laptop is on sleep state. It also make it possible to share internet access throght a large area, since every laptop act as a router.

It's really fantastic, and you can see that there is a real commitment behind this. And, since everything is OpenSource, YOU can help them! You can contribute wiht code, or content, or ideas!