tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2480778479583123164.post6511699731474627082..comments2009-05-14T09:42:21.565-07:00Comments on LIS 202 • Digital Divides • Section 302: olpcUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2480778479583123164.post-62247968711165851952009-05-13T15:02:00.000-07:002009-05-13T15:02:00.000-07:00Your concern about children selling laptops flies ...Your concern about children selling laptops flies in the face of the actions of subsistence farmers in Peru and numerous other countries. They initially doubted the value of the computers, and insisted on their children working in the fields from the moment they returned from school until dark. Within a week, they changed their minds, after the children showed them how to use the computer. See http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay for more on this point.<br /><br />Sugar software is not about entertainment, but about genuine education aimed at economic growth, and thus at the solution to the rest of the problems of poverty. It is insulting to the developers and to the children receiving the computers to talk about them in this way. It is foolish to sneer at information. Knowledge is power, and the biggest problem of the poor is powerlessness.<br /><br />The governments of Peru, Uruguay, Rwanda, Ghana, India, and South Carolina have concluded that XOs for education are worth the cost, when compared with any of the alternatives. The governments of Venezuela, Brazil, and the Extremadura region of Spain have adopted other Linux computers for one-to-one computing, as have Maine and Georgia. <br /><br />Once we have digital textbooks, the laptops (particularly the planned $75 XO-2) will cost less than printing, warehousing, and distributing current printed books. There will be no limit on the amount of information made available to children, in contrast with state-mandated limits on weight of textbooks today.<br /><br />We are now getting more and more frequent reports of formal studies of outcomes of these programs. Even without the full suite of software and without digital textbooks, we have had many successes. We have begun collecting these reports at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Academic_papersAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com