Unlocking learning
Digital pioneer Nicholas Negroponte wants to put cheap, Linux-based laptops in the hands of as many as 150m children in developing countries by 2008. It’s a project that could help uplift the world’s rural poor.
At first glance, Wired magazine cofounder Negroponte’s idea seems harebrained. He wants to provide millions of notebook PCs to children in parts of the world where there’s often no electricity, where schools are rundown and teaching resources limited, and where putting food on the table is a daily struggle for many families.
But listening to Negroponte speak, as I did in Hong Kong last week, you quickly realise that his project, known as One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), is not only ambitious but could also transform education and uplift the poorest of the world’s poor by bringing them into the information age.
Negroponte (63), chairman emeritus of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the purpose of the project is to alleviate poverty through education. It’s clearly a radical approach, one in which children are encouraged to learn for themselves — “to learn learning”, as he puts it.
OLPC, which is a nonprofit organisation, is premised on the idea of “constructionism”, which says that children learn through making things. The idea is that children can teach themselves, share knowledge and resources and learn by building things using computers.
Negroponte, who chairs OLPC, says teaching is only one way that children can learn. “In the first years of our lives we all learnt how to walk and to talk in ways that didn’t involve teachers. Suddenly, at age six, you are told to stop learning that way and for the next 12 years, if you are lucky, you will do all your learning by being [instructed].”
The son of a Greek shipping magnate, Negroponte believes that giving computers to the world’s poorest children will help lift them out of the cycle of poverty. OLPC, with the help of its partners, has created a laptop specifically designed for children that will cost less than US150. Negroponte hopes to bring the price of the machines down to less than $100 in the next couple of years.
Each laptop has a 500MHz processor, 128MB of RAM, 512MB of flash memory and a built-in digital camera. The machines run Linux and have screens that can be swivelled to turn them into electronic books. Importantly, the laptops use less than 2W of electricity and can be recharged with human energy (by turning a crank, for example).
The most exciting feature of the laptops, though, is that they can communicate with each other, even when they are switched off, creating a wireless, mesh-like network. Whichever laptop is closest to an Internet access point — these would typically be located at schools and connected to cellular base stations or to satellites — will provide connectivity onward to other users. “As long as you have 15% battery left, you will be a participant in the network and you will be routing messages for other kids,” he says.
OLPC hopes to sell 3m-5m laptops next year. They will be bought by governments and distributed to communities. In 2008, the organisation hopes to sell between 50m and 150m. Argentina, Pakistan, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand are already on board, with China, Turkey and Bangladesh set to follow. SA has also expressed interest.
But critics point out that high telecom costs in developing countries could make it prohibitively expensive to get schools connected to the Net. They also say it will be difficult to fix the machines if they break. And will computers really solve the education challenge?
Some of the criticism may be valid, but Negroponte deserves praise for trying to solve one of the world’s most intractable problems.
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