smilebringer ([info]smilebringer) wrote,
@ 2006-07-27 11:21:00
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HRD rejects OLPC
Just saw this on /., I must be slow today. And the news is a month old, apparently. Viva la /.!
(I should check my feeds more often..)

Some links:
  • The Hindu:
    "Rejecting the Planning Commission's idea of implementing 'One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Scheme' as "paedagogically suspect", the HRD Ministry feels it would be appropriate to instead utilise the money for universalization of secondary education."
    (more there)
  • TOI:
    "The HRD ministry has rejected the idea of 'one-laptop-per-child' (OLPC) being aggressively marketed by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Laboratory. "India must not allow itself to be used for experimentation with children in this area," the ministry has said."
  • Register, Slashdot, Gizmodo, etc.
Info about the OLPC project: the home page, a great talk by Nicholas Negroponte at IT conversations, and how it looks like.


Just links, I am feeling very un-opinionated today. But the HRD's arguments do make sense. I don't think the whole 'detrimental to child development' idea holds a lot of water, but it is true that we need more money spent on building and maintaining schools. There is also suspicion cast at the maturity of Prof. Negroponte's idea. His thoughts are very much inspiring, and not just from the OLPC angle(please listen to his talk linked above if you haven't), and I do hope the idea picks up steam, despite this setback.

Nigeria has ordered a million units, but the delivery will depend on more countries jumping in and pushing the numbers up to 5-10 mil, according to Gizmodo. Makes sense, as the cost is kept that way mostly by the promise of large volumes. I heard there is smalltalk on these things, in which case I weep for the millions of kids who won't get to play with it. Sad sad.


Unrelated: Please read this and leave a comment if you can help.

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[info]kragen
2006-07-28 11:02 pm UTC (link)
Hey, is the HRD's opinion in full available on the web somewhere? I'd really like to read it.

I've been of the opinion that OLPC would fail to produce a usable machine since hearing Lee Felsenstein's criticism of it last year.

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[info]smilebringer
2006-07-30 03:23 pm UTC (link)
I couldn't find a full report online, the best I have is the bits and pieces quoted by various newpapers. It might turn up here at some point. Will ping you if I see a source.

Also, thanks for the info about Lee Felsenstein. I was aware of most of the points he makes, but from the comments to his post I found another critique, that dwells on what I thought was an important argument against the OLPC.

But I still want it to succeed - as some commenters to Felsenstein's post said: they're trying!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]kragen
2006-08-03 10:32 pm UTC (link)
Thanks! The critique link mentions several arguments against OLPC: that it is technology-driven rather than demand-driven, that it comes from outside the developing world and therefore fails to build local capacity, that people may get distracted from the knowledge to which the technology theoretically provides access, by knowledge about the technology itself, that there might be cheaper alternatives, that it is easy to waste time with computers, that it appears to be an ego trip, and several others. Which argument in particular did you think was important?

I am sure they will succeed in the ways in which the Media Lab measures success: basic research somebody else applies, press attention that draws funders to support the Lab, and cool ideas that make talented students want to go to the Media Lab instead of somewhere else. The stated goals of the project, I think, are merely means to those ends.

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[info]smilebringer
2006-08-04 02:01 am UTC (link)
Hmm.The critique does touch upon all these issues, I suppose. But the central argument, IMO, was that for education, developig nations need solutions to a lot of problems, and OLPC aims to start at a be-all solution, a technology tool, and hope that it will trigger the changes needed to bolster the progress of education. The point there is that jump-starting a country's child education system is a probably a horrendously complex endeavour, and best not attempted by providing a silver bullet.

I am not considering the 'there are cheaper alternatives', 'there are more urgent needs', 'it will be stolen' etc arguments, because those are the details(and can be very rationally reasoned against), and as the article says, the more pertinent reason to be doubtful is the wrong in assuming that the OLPC will somehow magically solve the education woes in these countries. Let me quote:

"Undoubtedly, many kids will take advantage of the new opportunities brought to them by the computers, some for good, some for bad. Again undoubtedly, many computers will end up in the black market, used for different purposes, turn into mobile porn theaters or boom boxes, and so on. That's not the issue. The thing we really need to deal with is this new- brightest-idea-under-the-sun, that the problems of world education can be solved through a specific technological innovation and its transformational, revolutionary potential. This new tool, in the best possible scenario, will force a poor country's whole educational system into becoming a very different animal, without consideration of the goals looked after and the possibility of reaching them through lesser, although cheaper and locally produced and locally enabling, means. And in the worst possible scenario, this gadget will end up changing nothing, and the poor will get the chance to receive the worst education possible in full color. "

It can transform the educational system, but it remains to be seen whether this transformation will be what is needed at these countries. There is too much randomness in the 'plonking down of millions of laptops' way of overhauling and education system (which I hope the governments of these places have given long enough thought so as to make it effective for them to some degree).

I don't know enough about the Media Lab's motives to dismiss the project as a means to achieve success for the lab itself ;). But from what is available in the media(his talks, mostly) about Negroponte and his posse, there is a lot of actual commitment towards education, from his early work in developing countries and such.

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(Reply from suspended user)

(Anonymous)
2008-07-18 04:50 am UTC (link)
I am replying to a spam comment. Perhaps you should delete it.

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celpjefscycle
(Anonymous)
2008-01-12 07:39 am UTC (link)
Thanks for information.
many interesting things
Celpjefscylc

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