Blog Juice for Educational Technology

From BBC News Article of November 17, 2005

A prototype of a cheap and robust laptop for pupils has been welcomed as an “expression of global solidarity” by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The green machine was showcased for the first time by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte at the UN net summit in Tunis. He plans to have millions of machines in production within a year.

The laptops are powered with a wind-up crank, have very low power consumption and will let children interact with each other while learning. “Children will be able to learn by doing, not just through instruction - they will be able to open up new fronts for their education, particularly peer-to-peer learning,” said Mr Annan. He added that the initiative was “inspiring”, and held the promise of special and economic development for children in developing countries.

Green machine

The foldable lime laptop made its debut at the World Summit on the Information Society, which is looking at ways of narrowing the technology gap between rich and poor. Nicknamed the green machine, it can be used as a conventional computer, or an electronic book. A child can control it using a cursor at the back of the machine or a touchpad on the front.

Although children will be able to interact with each other through the machines, education was still the priority for the laptops. But by using mesh networking, the vision is for children to interact while doing homework, and even share homework tips on a local community scale. Collaboration will also be encouraged by using open-source software, which the children could develop themselves and use in local communities.

“Every single problem you can think of, poverty, peace, the environment, is solved with education or including education,” said Professor Negroponte. “So when we make this available, it is an education project, not a laptop project. The digital divide is a learning divide - digital is the means through which children learn leaning.”