(2005-11-06) More Media Lab Laptop Info

Fresh info on the MIT Super Cheap Laptop (OLPC). Will include Logo and Squeak Smalltalk. No Hard Drive. The idea is to make the laptop required equipment for all school students and price it on a basis where it replaces textbooks. In some of the developing world school systems Negroponte has investigated, textbooks cost $20 per student per year - if the laptop is sold to students (or provided by the national government) with a five-year financing option, it costs the same amount as annual textbook spending. Except that, if schools need to license intellectual property from existing publishers, the cost would certainly increase... It's clear that the strategy behind the device is a trojan horse one - sell the device as an EBook, then see what students are able to do with a flexible, net-connected, programmable tool.

Negroponte's team is seeking not only a technological breakthrough but also a teaching breakthrough. They believe that illiterate kids can, with a little instruction, learn to use computers on their own and then use the laptops to teach themselves to read. After that comes math, history - you name it. Alan Kay, a Xerox PARC veteran, is working with MIT mathematician and educational theorist Seymour Papert to build software that "watches" each student and makes suggestions. Papert's "constructionist learning" (Constructionism) approach encourages children to reach conclusions through trial and error.

Nov17 update - Professor Negroponte said he had asked the most enthusiastic countries, Thailand and Brazil, not to give written commitments to buy the machines until they had seen the working model, likely to be produced in February... To take part in the initiative, governments have to commit to buying a million machines. http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41028000/jpg/_41028104_laptop_longafpbody.jpg