The BBC website has some interesting coverage on the emergence of the XO laptop. The site contains a lot of articles looking at different aspects of how the introduction of the XO in developing nations is going. It also includes a lot of interesting media including short video clips.
One of the articles is a review of the XO by a nine year old from England. He uses his laptop to "his laptop to write, paint, make music, explore the internet, and talk to children from other countries".
Another part of the site I liked was the Factfile which shows the technical features of the XO.
In the article Glimpsing Nigeria's Digital Lifeline, the authors talked about some of the challenges such as broken machines, unreliable Internet access and the need for funding for filtering.
I liked the coverage on this site because it showed some of the positive aspects of the $100 laptop as well as some of the challenges as well as some of the political forces surrounding this machine.
Showing posts with label XO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label XO. Show all posts
Dec 18, 2007
Nov 29, 2007
Journal of an XO in Africa
Laptop Magazine sent an OLPC XO (also commonly known as the $100 laptop) to a woman named Salimata (Sali) Fandjalan in Africa. She kept a blog of her experiences which were published on Laptop Magazine's site http://laptopmag.com/News/Notebooks/The-OLPC-XO-Goes-to-Africa.htm .
Her blog is fascinating because it talks about the complexity of using this device in a third world country. Often when we hear about the $100 laptop (now actually closer to $200) it is portrayed as a magic wand as if the device by itself will solve world problems. One of the excerpts from her blog that I found interesting was~
"All children who get an XO WILL NEED TRAINING!!!!! There is nothing OLPC can do about it; there is nothing the children or their parents can do about it. Without training, the XO is nothing more than a little pretty green-and-white box that looks like a misshaped, overgrown bunny with no teeth".
Just as in the US, technology implementation is a complex process that goes beyond the device itself.
Her blog is fascinating because it talks about the complexity of using this device in a third world country. Often when we hear about the $100 laptop (now actually closer to $200) it is portrayed as a magic wand as if the device by itself will solve world problems. One of the excerpts from her blog that I found interesting was~
"All children who get an XO WILL NEED TRAINING!!!!! There is nothing OLPC can do about it; there is nothing the children or their parents can do about it. Without training, the XO is nothing more than a little pretty green-and-white box that looks like a misshaped, overgrown bunny with no teeth".
Just as in the US, technology implementation is a complex process that goes beyond the device itself.
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