I must say that I’m split on the news that Nicholas Negroponte’s original game plan for the One Laptop Per Child project is not working.
One one side, I was really hoping that the program to develop and sell an education-specific computer directly to education ministries around the world would work and provide a blueprint for how technology could change teaching and learning.
I guess it was too much to expect that politics and greed could be kept out of the channels, allowing educators to try some radical new ideas. I’m just very naive that way.
However, on the selfish side of things, the plan to allow people in the US and other industrial computers to buy two of the devices (at double the namesake price of $100 each) and keep one is very attractive.
That will give educators in this country a chance to play with the little green machine and give it a trial run with some of our students. (And drive the people in our IT department nuts. :-)
At the $200 price, we could get four or more of them for what we are now paying for one standard laptop.
Of course, we won’t be doing many video projects on them but maybe we’ll also discover that we don’t need all that power just to get kids connected and communicating with each other.
Sales are supposed to start November 12th and if you leave your email address, they’ll send a reminder just before that date.
Sounds like a great holiday gift – for two.
…And “driving the people in our IT department nuts” is good because???
Because it usually means we’re pushing the use of instructional technology forward instead of sticking with the same old crap.
I have nothing against our IT people (well, most of them :-) but sometimes they are far too happy to embrace the status quo and much too afraid of teachers (and others) experimenting.