OLPC & Intel Join Up

David Berlind covers the new alignment between the One Laptop Per Child EDUCATION project and the big chip-maker.

What interests me about this new development, which represents a smoothing of earlier ruffled feathers, is how much the nonsensical anti-OLPC rhetoric will now diminish. The answer is MUCH, if most of it had been originating from Intel; not much, if it has been originating from the Other Gorilla.

Comments

[W^L+]

What interests me is what I do not hear. Intel's Classmate system is a traditional laptop in a shock-resistant package. They are still making them, but if they do not begin using Linux+Sugar, they are not helping children.

This says it all: "IA-based, runs on already available content, applications and operating systems with full compatibility to standard PC ecosystem"

In a Western school, you will see small children being taught to use a particular brand and version of office software. Several years later, when they hit the workforce, all of that training is useless.

Instead, we need to teach children to explore and teach themselves what they need to know, to harness their natural curiosity for their own benefit. Educational software needs to be mostly like LOGO (exploration based) and less like PILOT (quiz based).

[Sam Hiser]

Excellent points, Walt.

This next gen of kids is platform-agnostic. My 9-year-old is equally facile on Mac, Linux and Windows. And she hates the Blue Screen of Death.

We can only corrupt their wonderful minds.

[JZA]

The ClassmatePC was done in the Intel factory in Brazil and the guy infront of the project was from Chile. However as he was given an interview you see the traditional cathedral model.

they make that laptop for the school. They miss the boat completely on the concept of education.

OLPC was a hack of the current broken education system in the 3rd world countries. The school was just a hub to distribute this laptops.

Intel use this laptop as a method of control for the teachers to the students.

For example the ClassmatePC will shutdown if the teacher (who will use a regular laptop) wants it. Giving you the same feeling of a corporate laptop which you can't put anything that you dont have permission.

OLPC was built to be taken apart and learn and use technology. Not for the teachers(the most technoophobe person in the class) to tell students what to use and what not.