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Question of the Day: What is the ultimate French toast topping?
USD 100 laptop killer?
- Thread starter rpm
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km2
Expert Member
That's great people, but where is the software to truly make it useful in an education environment? Not just talking about your OpenOffice/Firefox etc, but software which can teach kids parts of the school curriculum in ways that are better than their traditional textbooks using animation, automatic testing, scoring, etc.
Otherwise these laptops are just going to sit there in the lab unused except for a few kids who need to type their projects up, and somewhere that disinterested teachers can dump learners to "research on the internet" when they don't feel like teaching.
Otherwise these laptops are just going to sit there in the lab unused except for a few kids who need to type their projects up, and somewhere that disinterested teachers can dump learners to "research on the internet" when they don't feel like teaching.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
I've been using one of these devices for the last few weeks and it's one of those 'simple-in-concept' devices that just seem to make sense once you use it.
Putting complex PC's with internet connectivity into schools is fraught with problems and have met with limited success. Here is a simple search and mail terminal that gives school kids access to sites such as WikiPedia for research as well as e-mail.
In a nutshell it's a simple terminal (think MiniTel / BelTel) with a qwerty keyboard and a LCD display with a built-in GPRS modem.
School kids type in their search queries and the terminal connects via GPRS to a back-end server where the query is sent out to sites such as Wikipedia. The results are reformatted to text only and pushed down to the terminal where the info can be viewed, stored on a personal flash drive or printed.
One 'smart' terminal (with GPRS) can connect an additional 4 terminals, giving a school up to 5 terminals per SIM.
Because the device is not a PC or have open internet access, it's perfect for school kids to do projects, etc.
Really a cool little device. Will see if I can post a pic.
Putting complex PC's with internet connectivity into schools is fraught with problems and have met with limited success. Here is a simple search and mail terminal that gives school kids access to sites such as WikiPedia for research as well as e-mail.
In a nutshell it's a simple terminal (think MiniTel / BelTel) with a qwerty keyboard and a LCD display with a built-in GPRS modem.
School kids type in their search queries and the terminal connects via GPRS to a back-end server where the query is sent out to sites such as Wikipedia. The results are reformatted to text only and pushed down to the terminal where the info can be viewed, stored on a personal flash drive or printed.
One 'smart' terminal (with GPRS) can connect an additional 4 terminals, giving a school up to 5 terminals per SIM.
Because the device is not a PC or have open internet access, it's perfect for school kids to do projects, etc.
Really a cool little device. Will see if I can post a pic.
km2
Expert Member
Pity. I'm all for the great efforts that OLPC/Classmate/this lot are doing to try and bring down the cost of a connected terminal, but I'm worried that these people aren't learning from the failures of those that have come before. There's only so much use for Wikipedia and the kinds of general research that this allows in school (not that much), university is just much more suited to that.
Email, fax? It's like my school of a good few years ago when they really didn't know what to do with all the computers, so they had the kids write to "penpals" in foreign schools. Nice? Yeah, quite fun. Educationally useful? Not really, they learn about sending email, but that's something which you can get a 60+ year old to pick up in an hour.
Here's my beef. We live in a country with dismal marks for science and maths, partially through overcrowding, partially through inadequate equipment, partially through undertrained/overworked teachers. These people need to take their cheap laptops, and start writing web-based software to effectively cover the current OBE syllabus. Include William Smith or whatever lessons on demand etc. Put in a testing system so that it's possible to adequetly track students progress through the year and make it easier for teachers who don't have to mark 45 individual work sheets. Use these computers to improve the education of OTHER subjects, to encourage teachers to use them to improve their marks, and not just computers for the sake of teaching computers. Otherwise it's going to be yet another year of computers sitting in a lab with teachers scratching their heads for stuff to do with them.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
Some pics on the unit on my desk.
http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php/photo/9028
http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php/photo/9027
@km2, sometimes one needs a simple solution for a specific task. This device falls into that category.
What you describe is another solution, much more complex and while achievable, will need a lot of work to develop and especially maintain.
As you said, in your own school, PC's were mostly unused and probably took a lot of maintenance to keep them running.
Now think of the complexities of trying to give some kind of internet access if your school is under a tree, miles from Eskom power.
http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php/photo/9028
http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/showphoto.php/photo/9027
@km2, sometimes one needs a simple solution for a specific task. This device falls into that category.
What you describe is another solution, much more complex and while achievable, will need a lot of work to develop and especially maintain.
As you said, in your own school, PC's were mostly unused and probably took a lot of maintenance to keep them running.
Now think of the complexities of trying to give some kind of internet access if your school is under a tree, miles from Eskom power.
km2
Expert Member
Looks like a nice device, although maybe the keyboard is a bit small. What's your WPM on it like, and is it comfortable over any period of time? Probably better if one has small hands too.
I think it does an excellent job solving the wrong problem. It's the same belief that the OLPC crowd had, get people connected, make it easily maintainable, and voila: Education flourishes! If you're a hardware enthusiast, or a telecoms company it's pretty "wow". But if you're a school-level teacher, it doesn't solve the real problems. It doesn't make educating easier. It doesn't make it faster. It's just one more thing that teachers have to mess around with, and it results in no direct improvement in kids marks.
And when it comes down to that, there are far better things to spend your $100 on. Better textbooks, more equipment, things which actually help kids learn the subjects that they go to school to study.
So while I commend these people on an excellent job making a nice small cheap laptopish thing, they should realise they're following down the exact same fail path that a few other companies have already explored.
Maybe I've missed something, but how are they going about this differently to Negroponte and the rest?
No I do understand that, and I think the two things go hand in hand. You'll struggle to get teachers to commit to any kind of education software if they can't rely on the computers working, and a low maintenance computer like this makes that possible.
I'm not disagreeing there at all. It's a nightmare at schools where computers progressively fail and no one really knows how to reinstall etc. But you know the real problem? No one cares if they fail at the moment. Lose access to Wikipedia? Big deal. Using the internet at school is just a nice "perk", but doesn't make school-level education any better. Now we'll have more resilient computers, but without useful software they'll remain a small perk, and one where underresourced schools would still do better to spend their limited money elsewhere.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
PM me your contact details, and I'll put you in touch with the guys at Psitek.
risingtide
Senior Member
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I thought that a picture is worth a thousand words.
IMO, without graphics capability this thing is close to useless.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
While it can do elementary graphics on-screen and can print full graphics, again you need to consider the application. Easy, inexpensive and reliable access to information in a typically hostile environment, i.e. probably not aimed at you or me.
This device is not intended to go into the type of school 99% of us on this forum had the privilege to attend. Where PC's were available and there were resources to keep them going.
If you need to build a device that will allow kids in disadvantaged communities to be able to access the web in a controlled manner, you'd come up with these kind of requirements:
1. Must use GPRS for connectivity - (98% of SA's population have 2G coverage.)
2. Must use a robust OS, booted from flash. - (No support, upgrades, viruses, etc.)
3. Must have little intrinsic value outside it's intended application. - (No incentive to steal it.)
4. Must be able to run off DC with internal batteries. - (many schools won't have Eskom power.)
5. Must be plug and play and very robust. - (going to used by non-sophisticated users. And be banged around a lot.)
6. Must control the type of content available. - (No adult, chat, youtube, torrents, etc.)
7. Must support any intended content as km2 indicated above. - (not just search but content designed for the specific curriculum, e-mail, etc.).
I can go on, but you get the point. PC's fail miserably in the above points and a device like this can address the requirements well.
@km2, I've spoken to the developers about your points and it seems they're on the same page with qualified educators helping them to develop relevant content. The search and e-mail I've been playing with are just the first applications to be made available.
Rouxenator
Dank meme lord
v3g, are you going to roll out these to the community services containers as well along with the standard insigi phones?
I guess that is probably why you are playing with it
I guess that is probably why you are playing with it
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
v3g, are you going to roll out these to the community services containers as well along with the standard insigi phones?
I guess that is probably why you are playing with it
It's not a Vodacom product, the developers asked me to test it and give feedback.
But it could well work in the scenario you mentioned. Again giving people access to search and e-mail, but now other applications come to mind.
For example CV creation. The terminal can run a template where a person can enter his or her details, and get a nicely formatted CV that can then be mailed, printed or faxed from the terminal.
Actually, the OLPC crowd put quite a lot of thought into changing the education game.
The eToys programming environment has strong roots in the constructionist work of Seymour Papert, Alan Kay and others:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etoys_(programming_language)
(Dunnoh why www.squeakland.org seems to be down at the moment).
This is why everyone's blood ran cold when Microsoft announced that they wanted to get Windows running on the OLPC, instead. I think their motives are slightly less altruistic than Viewpoints and co.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
I wonder how long it will take for that 8 year old kid genius to get Linux to run on that "terminal", once you have Linux the world opens up in possibilities
One thing's for sure; He'll immediately have a job....
km2
Expert Member
I saw some of the software ideas that the OLPC guys put together, and most of them I thought were really clever. (little physics ones where you could see forces interact etc) I think one needs to make sure one doesn't just focus the OLPC on teaching computer programming, for the amount of money it takes it needs to act in a support role for nearly every other subject.
The problem I saw was that they didn't want to get involved in individual countries curriculum, they wanted to focus on isolated things e.g. "Small demonstration on how electrostatic forces work". Now that's fine to start with, but school textbooks sell because they can give a comprehensive approach to a syllabus. That's what I think the OLPC crowd lacked.
Having all the apps written in a nice simple language like Python was a great idea, not at all happy with Microsofts involvement, mostly because I haven't seen them come up with anything better and history is not on their side.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
Sackboy
Executive Member
I have my reservations about this idea. GPRS is likely to cause frustration amongst hyperactive little people for a start.
Also if thieves would not be interested, why would anyone else? That isn't making sense to me.
Rather have one of those cut down little Acer One type mini-laptops, put a wi-fi card in it and connect it to a school hotspot running ADSL.
They need to learn that a computer is adaptable, programmable, so have some a language on it - like they had with Turtle Basic or whatever.
Also if thieves would not be interested, why would anyone else? That isn't making sense to me.
Rather have one of those cut down little Acer One type mini-laptops, put a wi-fi card in it and connect it to a school hotspot running ADSL.
They need to learn that a computer is adaptable, programmable, so have some a language on it - like they had with Turtle Basic or whatever.
vodacom3g
Vodacom Representative
Won't you explain how you are going to get ADSL to these schools?