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One Laptop Per Child Discussion
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Tom Munnecke interviews Michail Bletsas, Chief Connectivity Officer of the One Laptop Per Child project from the MIT Media Lab. (http://laptop.org) They discuss the role of technology in education, the design of the laptop, and the technologies be developed. Interviewed at the NetSquared Conference in San Jose, May 30, 2006. Roland Berger from Club of Rome also appears at the end.
This is Tom Lineke with Mikhail Blesses from the MIT Media Lab, and we're talking about
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the $100 laptop for child project. And we've been talking about this on some other video
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blogs, by the way. The question I have, it has to do with the difference between good
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intentions and the net benefit that's delivered. And if I were a woman in Nepal living on $50
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a year, would I want other people to invest in a $100 laptop for my child? And my concern
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is Nicholas Negroponte is a very powerful and charismatic leader. His brother is the
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UN ambassador, John Negroponte. He knows Kofi Annan. And there's a tremendous upsurge of
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top-down technology and funding and political power behind this, which can be very positive.
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And the MIT Media Lab is developing some very innovative technology here. But when it actually
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gets into the field, what's the feedback loop to know that this is a net beneficial activity?
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First of all, the laptop is not a top-down. We hate top-down. The thing that we are not
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going to do is go to a poor country and try to use any kind of political connection that
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says, you know, we think that the laptop is the best for you. This is a poor laptop.
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We chose, pretty much, a pile of cows from the beginning just to be geographically diverse,
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to be big. So the expense for the laptop, it was made a big impact. It's a different
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thing talking about Nigeria, which has 120 million people and lots of coins. It's a different
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thing talking about Nepal. Very few people and very few natural resources. We don't think
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that the laptop is by itself a panacea or it's going to solve a lot of problems unless
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it goes into a more holistic, if you want, framework. You can't use the laptop in, you
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know, Niger. I mean, you can use it in Nigeria. We think that we can use it in Nigeria and
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it's going to make a big difference in Nigeria. It's about time for Nigeria to be known in
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the internet for other things than Nigerian spam. But yes, putting it in Niger is going
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to be a lot more challenging. That's why we are not trying to do it immediately because
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we don't know exactly how to do it. On the other hand, we do believe that access to information
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does improve lives. We do believe that giving kids a platform on top of which they can practice
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instruction is learning, will improve education, whether the teachers are trained or not. It
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will do immensely more good if the teachers are trained, definitely. But it is a way also
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to get away from not having good teachers, good libraries, good materials, educational
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materials in a lot of places. Just the e-book mode is what gets industries of education
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solved completely. We also think that in order to get yourself into the new era, you don't
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have to go through all the evolutionary stages. You don't have to go through everything that
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the western world went through. So the laptop is a way for some of the kids to leapfrog
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into the new era. Now, are we absolutely positively sure that the laptop is going to have a positive
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effect on each and every one of the kids that it's going to get that? No. And I can't tell
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that. But we think that it is going to have a positive effect to the majority.
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What's your feedback mechanism? How you evaluate this and know if you're going in a positive
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direction or not?
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That's a hard question. This is an educational project. And as an educational project, you
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either have to do testing at the end of the year, which we don't think that it's going
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to measure the qualities that the laptop is trying to instill on kids. And it's also driven
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by governments. And governments also have to show results in four-year periods in the
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good places of the world. In the bad places of the world, usually they don't care. So
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it is a hard question. And we're trying to put localized measures in place by the government
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itself. This is not something that we are going to go and tell them. Measure this.
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Now, I can give you some examples from the state of Maine. The state of Maine is probably
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the world's largest, not largest anymore because it's Marseille and other places, but it's
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a large one-laptop-per-child experiment. It has not been done in our ideal way. It's only
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been done at grades six and seven. But one thing that is immediately obvious is that
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language skills have improved, dieting skills have improved, because the kids have a lot
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more enticing ways to practice that. Truancy has gone up dramatically. And that's not something
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that has been rare.
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Up or down?
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I mean, people don't drop out.
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Don't drop out, okay.
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Sorry, my English is not perfect. So those are not things that are measured by the standardized
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test. If they are measured, it takes time for that to seep in. So those are the things that
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we want government to learn. And also the laptop at the end of the day, if you really
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want to be successful, it's not about teaching kids what they should know. It's teaching
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them how to learn what they don't at the end. And that's what the piece that we are trying
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to fill, that has not been filled by traditional education.
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So where is the content for this coming from? Is it being generated by the kids themselves?
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Do you have curriculum? Where is that coming from?
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You have to have curriculum. You have to have software. My favorite one, just because of
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my experience going through school, where I went through physics class, which was my
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favorite class, having done three experiments my whole school year. By having the virtual
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lab, the laptop, I think will do tremendous things for that kind of teaching.
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You also need multiple books, and we need to work on royalties there and things like
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that to get the content in place. And that solves the lack of materials to a large extent
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in the developing world, where most of the cost is actual distribution of physical books,
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which doesn't happen. And the third, my big hope, is make the kids develop content. I
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think that is really fundamental. That's the big win.
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Do you have any ideas for peer-to-peer learning models, a Lancaster method, or online where
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kids teach each other? Or you could have a tutor or mentor from MIT teaching a high school
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kid physics in Nigeria or whatever.
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That's tele-teaching, if you want. What I'm mostly concerned is the kids doing their homework,
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for example, in an apartment building or in a village somewhere, and being able to talk
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with each other and ask questions with each other. I think that teamwork is really important.
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I think it's also very important getting bigger assignments, that none of them can tackle
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one by one, and the laptop being the platform by which they collaborate.
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I see. Through a wiki-type model. And are these wikis shareable? Are they networkable?
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Yes, yes. That's the one piece that actually we are putting a lot of effort as OLPC, as
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a non-profit. We are actually putting resources into getting a nice, easy-to-use wiki platform
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on every laptop, so that 50 kids can actually publish immediately without having to go through
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special servers, special publishing software, or anything like that.
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Do you have a video camera at all?
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That's the big fight, the internal fight right now. It's a bill of materials issue.
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We want to have a camera exactly for that reason. We have very good audio support, and
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we'll have voice over IP built in immediately.
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You do already?
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Yes, we have that.
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So are you just adding video or not?
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The video piece is something that we banked. We had a lot of internal fights, and it's
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not even resolved yet. It's just that we don't have $4.
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$4 after the video?
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To spend for the video. I mean, when your total bill of materials is, it's about $120
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right now.
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I see.
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We are already over budget. $4 is a lot. And there are various trade-offs that you have
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to do. So one of the things that is, do we do double injection molding to put soft plastic
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around the edges so when the laptop drops, it becomes more durable, or we do the camera?
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Personally, being an engineer and being a geek, and Walter Benders, who is the president
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for software, the idea was to put the camera in there. It seems that the design people
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and the durability people are willing to argue. We had that specific idea.
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Yeah. Well, I guess part of me wants to say do both and start with a higher cost prototype
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that the cost will come down for the next generation.
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Yes, exactly.
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But open up the video channel so that you can talk about video conferencing.
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Not only video conferencing, but doing exactly what we have been doing right now.
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Yeah.
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And letting kids from each part of the world having these things available to other parts
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of the world. For that, we have the solution. I mean, Google is going to take care of that.
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In the Uplift Academy, we've had a number of people very interested in the educational
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model. Peer-to-peer teaching, mentoring programs where women can learn, can teach Spanish lessons
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over the web, for example. The classroom connection, global classroom connection is another theme
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that's come up, just connecting classrooms. So a northern classroom could talk to a Ugandan
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classroom or something like that. So there's a whole lot of interest in that. Are you opening
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this up? Would this be open channels for people to contribute?
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Yes, it's totally open. And whatever lack or perception of lack of openness exists right
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now has to do with the fact that we are 12 people working full-time on that. So our web
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publishing right now is not where it should have been, but we are doing it on our spare
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time right now. But this is by definition an open program, and this is open for everybody
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to come in and contribute. We definitely have a few dogmas of our own. One of them is the
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One Laptop per Child principle. That's why we named the foundation One Laptop per Child.
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We think that's really important for this thing not to be a shared resource, to be given
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to the kids. That is going to solve the maintenance, most of the maintenance issues. Everything
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else is pretty much built from the beginning to be open to participation. There's nothing
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to lock anybody from loading their software on it. I'm pretty sure that as soon as we
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come out and this thing gets deployed in large numbers in the immediate future, Microsoft
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will come out with an operating system to run on it, and we are perfectly fine with
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it. And we are perfectly fine with people contributing at all levels. We think that
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it's more important for this contribution not to happen at the LPC level, although we
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certainly will do anything to our abilities to consult with the government on how to use
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that, but to happen at the school level.
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Okay. And is there a platform that we can get started on and just kind of prototype
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some stuff? I mean, could we cobble together a wiki and a...
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You can go and contribute to our wiki right now.
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Okay.
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For people who want to port software and things like that, we have developer boards that we
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are making available already.
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Okay. Can you define any architecture at all to design to?
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We have defined what the software stack looks like. Again, we want to avoid obesity.
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Sure.
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So we are not trying to exclude anything from running on the laptop, but we have certain
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guidelines.
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That's on your website?
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That's on our website. So to give you an idea, we think that Python is the language that
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we are putting there. We are not putting Perl. We had talks with...
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Python. Yes, Python.
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We had a discussion. We said Python is the way to go. If we want to teach kids the programming
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language right now, that is going to be there. Certainly for younger kids, Lego and its derivatives
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will be there.
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That will be broken?
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Yeah. Scratch and Squeak and the stuff that Alan K.
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Alan K is...
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Okay.
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Open Croquet?
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Yeah, things like that.
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Croquet?
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I've heard the term. I'm not going to say that I know exactly what it is.
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Oh, it's a three-dimensional Squeak.
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Okay. Yes.
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But high-end graphics and visual three-dimensional virtual space.
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I don't know that. The reason is that I'm not sure how good we are in 3D graphics. There
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is no 3D.
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So, you're going to support Smalltalk and Python natively on the machine?
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Yes.
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Interesting. And what wiki format?
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The wiki format, again, is an open question right now. It seems that we will probably
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have to develop something ourselves so that it can be integrated.
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Yeah.
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So, it's the web server and the wiki.
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Okay.
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It's one and the same thing.
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And e-book format? Have you decided on that at all?
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Open document.
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Open document.
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PDF, unfortunately, from the beginning.
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PDF? Okay.
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I mean, PDF is much better than talk, word, format, etc., etc.
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But we are trying to be pretty adamant about doing things in open ways that it's not going
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to exclude anybody from playing.
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Okay.
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We are not going to support open office.
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Okay.
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We are not trying to turn kids into office workers.
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Yeah.
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Probably, I'll be worried.
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Yeah.
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It's going to be the world processor of choice.
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Okay.
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Well, it's a very exciting project.
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The more that I talk to you, the more interesting it sounds.
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And if there's anything I can do to help with you, I've got a meeting coming up right after
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the Wikimania in Boston, another workshop.
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Are you going to be there at Wikimania?
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Yeah, I'll be at Wikimania.
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Probably, we are going to host half of Wikimania at LBC.
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Okay.
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So, it's going to happen at our offices.
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Okay.
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And I'm going to talk to all of these people.
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Okay.
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Rolando, do you want to say anything real quick before we retire here?
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Well, I had just one thing that I wanted to say.
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I think besides the odds against this project and your...
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Is it centered?
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I don't know that.
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Yeah, it is.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So, besides the odds against, as you pointed out, there are some question marks, I think
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the real value of this project is that it breaks a spell.
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It's the first real example for a project that tries to reverse a trend.
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And I think industry will somehow have to follow.
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Certainly, there's a trend, a natural trend towards lowering costs.
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I think this buys us maybe five years.
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I don't know.
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So, that's the real value.
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- Fecha:
- 16 de octubre de 2007 - 12:04
- Visibilidad:
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- Enlace Relacionado:
- http://olpc.tv/
- Duración:
- 17′ 01″
- Relación de aspecto:
- 4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
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