One Laptop Per Child Nicholas Negroponte's Project

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One Laptop Per ChildNicholas Negroponte's
Project

• By Pete Riley

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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
  

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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

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• 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.

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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?
  

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• 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
  

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• 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

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• 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.

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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

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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

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

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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
  

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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

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The XO Machine and a portable pull-string power
generator
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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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?

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The Final Design of the XO

• The XO Running in Tablet / e-Reader Mode

The XO with peripherals
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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."

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• 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'."

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• 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.

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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.

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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