Andy Carvin posted the audio from Nicholas Negraponte’s address last week at the MIT Emerging Technology Review conference today on the MIT $100 laptop project, and this evening in my Microcomputer Applications class we are listening to this audio file and reflecting about it. Here are my notes from the first 30 minutes of the session, with my thoughts indicated with a preceeding asterik.
Concept images of the $100 laptop are available from MIT’s website.
Kids take to computers like fish to water
- work in Cambodia, Costa Rica
- this is true internationally
Average income in some villages in Cambodia is $47 per year, where MIT piloted this initiative.
* Fears of parents in Cambodia that students would break the laptop is same as US parents and educators have. Results from the MIT project is similar to what I have heard from other 1:1 laptop initiatives: If kids have the laptops 24/7 and really feel like they “own” the laptop, they take care of them and have a lot of pride in them.
Parents in Cambodia loved the laptop because at night it was the brightest light source in the home.
- 1 laptop out of 50 broke
- 100% of the AC adapters broke
Communications is not the problem, real issue is access to the technology
- that is why focus of this project is getting laptops to students
- still need work on infrastructure / connectivity issues, but those are moving forward on their own quite well
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) non-profit was founded
- because this is setup as a nonprofit, technological breakthroughs that
- they have told governments that the price will float and change, but you will get this at cost
- whatever the cost is now, it is going to go DOWN in the future
- scale is important, not just because you can buy millions of components for less
- also important because of mindset and attitude
Countries are going to pay in advance for the number of units they are going to purchase
- This will let them have enormous purchase scale and power
50% of the pr is sales, marketing, distribution, profit
- other 50% breaks down to the display and everything else
- display is where the MIT Media Lab has really been working to reduce cost
- 75% of the laptop is “there” already
Everyone who makes software: the next release always seem to be worse than the previous one
- now you just try to load a PDF file on a superfast, supernew computer, and you sit there and wait
- so now we are developing skinny Linux, and this will wipe out about 75% of the cost of the machine
Dual mode display works like a DVD player, full color, 7.5 inch screen
- in 2nd mode (this is the technical key), it is a black and white 4X resolution reflective sunlight readable screen
- is readable in sunlight, uses very little energy
- so this is like a low-power eBook and a laptop all in one
Power will be wind-up as well as AC power
Laptop is not just traditional WiFi
- each laptop when you opens it up becomes a node on the mesh network
- each laptop in the mesh can function as a router
* This reminds me of the ad-hoc networking capabilities of Mac OS X and the collaboration possible with the free program SubEthaEdit (free to educators and students)
this is amazing technology is superb especially when you are using technologies that allow for offline use and online use
- 2 MB can serve 1000 kids hands-down
Grey markets are a big deal to the project
- not just a case of when you shift 1000 machines into a market, 500 go onto the black market
- hardest: like in Brazil and elsewhere, where gov’t provides food, some parents sell the food themselves and the kids still go to school hungry
- want this laptop to only be made available via the government, so it becomes like stealing a post office truck in the US, or black market military jeeps
Laptop will have a handcrank for power
- machines will probably be made of rubber, must be indestructible
- will be hermetically sealed
- will allow for personalization, may engrave each student’s name on the laptop
Are working on a MOU (memorandum of understanding) with the United Nations now
Brazil seems to already have a bottom-up culture
220 million students in primary and secondary schools in China
- more than 50% of all primary and secondary age students on the planet are in China
November 17th at a world conference in Tunis this project will launch
- by year 2, 12 years after launch (Dec 07) looking for 150-200 million units
World production of laptops this year will not quite hit 50 million
- so we are talking about producing 3 times the number of laptops produced worldwide in a year now
To people who say “this is not MIT Media lab stuff”
- this is the tool, the WikiPedia equivalent
- if 500 or 800 million kids now have this type of access, you are helping innovation and inventions directly
Content discussion
- will each country do it and create contnet?
- it is the life work of Seymour Papert and others who will use it as a platform
- Squeak, Scratch, other programs will be running on it
- it is the tools that kids are using
Favorite: built a display not only flexible and flat, but one that can be printed too
Power consumption is absolutely critical
- working toward 100 to 1 crank minutes to powered minutes
Have many designers looking at this as a future product
Question: are we empowering students with tools of freedom, what about nations like China that are suppressing creative expression
Answer from NN: We are selling you a trojan horse in the form of an eBook
- China spends $19 per year per student on textbooks
- so NN says, we will deliver this as a textbook with the textbooks built in, and amortize that over 5 years
- in Brazil, the country pays for textbooks now for students
- so we are going to use the textbook channel to get this paid for
In Maine, didn’t see anyone who was enthusiastic about the laptop initiative get less enthusiastic
- many who were not enthusiastic have moved to the enthused camp
- truancy in Maine plummeted as a result of this project
- lots of exciting results
It costs a lot more to get more teachers
- with laptops, students can do a lot more peer to peer learning
- that integrated view of life, and making that available to students, can have a much greater impact than just adding 2% more teachers
On this day..
- Contrasting Amazon and Apple's PR Event Style: Bezos v Jobs - 2011
- Touring Australia at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo - 2010
- Considering Somalia's Situation: Rated as the #1 Failed State - 2009
- LAME much easier to install on latest Audacity for Mac - 2009
- Where do you find the time? Shirky's Answer - 2009
- Voicethread about Civil War artifacts in Oklahoma - 2007
- Social Bookmarking 101 - 2007
- The causes of freedom and social justice - 2006
- Fast clipboard image to JPG - 2006
- IM Survey Results - 2006
