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Lud crats in India may spurn OLPC laptop—while India ranks 4th in Google ‘ebook’ search stats
July 31, 2006 | 3:59 am
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By David Rothman
Fascinating, isn’t it? While India might reject the OLPC laptop project, the country is #4 in “ebook” search stats on Google.
A little disconnect? Might the elite be out of touch with the needs and desires of the masses? Granted, techies in places like Bangalore might be distorting the stats, but I still wonder.
Meanwhile how about the top Indian educat’s statement that the laptops could harm creativity? Does this mean that word-processing makes it harder to write an essay? Or that you’ll be less creative if you read your books on a computer rather than on paper?
Swifter than India about OLPC: Nigeria, which is buying a million laptops. This is reportedly the project’s first official order.
Ahead of India in the Google stats: Vietnam, Iran and Indonesia. Maybe instead of thinking about nuking Iran, the White House should consider parachuting a zillion OLPC machines into Ayatollah Country to further corrupt youth already open to Western heresy. The TeleBlog, by the way, regularly gets Iranian accesses. Hi, guys. Yep, both countries have crazies in charge.
Related: Latest OLPC laptop design, including the above shot of the OLPC machine in the tablet mode. Hmm. I wonder if the people involved used graphics software? Nope, can’t be. Surely they can only be creative on paper.
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Comments:
I hope that the “One Laptop per Child” program succeeds; and I think that it does have great potential. However, Negroponte and his team appear to be aggressively courting adversity.
The proposed laptop is an intricate device and its successful construction and deployment depends on the proper implementation of several interlinked innovations, e.g., a novel LCD screen, new wireless components, a new power supply mechanism, etc. There are also open questions about integrating the device into schools and society both pedagogically and economically.
A pilot project would be very helpful and perhaps essential. Instead, OLPC wants to directly rollout five million devices. Why tempt fate? Even the gods feared the Moirae.
Garson, while I’m supportive of the OLPC project, I couldn’t agree more with you about the risks of faulty execution.
Negroponte needs to decide. Will he be flexible? In India, one clash could be between the traditional British system of learning and the constructivism favored by Seymour Papert. OLPC ideally will be flexible about its software to allow a variety of pedagogical approaches. You could really be on to something.
Perhaps the struggle isn’t just over tech vs. nontech but over educational philosophies.
As for a pilot project Negroponte might argue, “Been there, done that in Thailand, etc.,” but the Indians may want a country-specific project with the hardware in use.
However, at the same time, from afar, I do hope the Indians will be open-minded–from the education secretary on down to the individual teachers, many of whom, of course, fear technology in terms of loss of control.
We can pretty well speculate that the kids will feel more comfortable with the laptops than will the teachers. It’s a matter of appropriate training even though this will not work with all teachers. I’d like to know more about the limited Thai experiences, pre-OLPC. There, Negroponte might have succeeded in sharing his enthusiasm with the people involved–I don’t know the details. Will the same be possible in India? Let’s hope that he can use a more appropriate form of persuasion for local consumption.
Thanks,
David
From desktoplinux.com:
Thanks for the information Bill Janssen. Four million untried machines is a large “pilot project”. The wireless system and machines used earlier in Thailand were very different.
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The DailyTech article says: “The use of a laptop could hurt the creative and analytical abilities of a child said Banerjee. A student may become too dependent on electronic tools and applications and fail to use their own thinking abilities.”
This is a superficially updated form of an old and flawed argument. In fact, mathematical calculators faced the same misguided disparagement. While it does make some sense to limit the use of calculators in a few early classes, today automated computation with calculators and computers is a vital technique that students should master.
The rickety argument against “dependency” on tools could have been made against slide rules in previous decades, but I never heard it put forward seriously. Indeed, one might even condemn textbooks as new-fangled monstrosities and call for a return to the halcyon age of declamation and memorization.
Bill, thanks. I saw the Slashdot piece before noticing your item. Keep us posted on anything and everything OLPC. Thanks! David
I visited a very interesting site, they have a vast collection of books which have been categories and are presented to viewers in an easy-to-search format. You should check it out.
http://www.khichdee.com/category-catid-11-paraid-0.htm