[kictanet] Lets all move to remote parts of Africa - The laptops are coming :)

[Agosta Liko]

Rad!

You have just spilled my gameplan ... :)

This article reads like one from theOnion

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Rad! <conradakunga at gmail.com> wrote:

> What will stop enterprising businessmen from collecting all these laptops
> and driving to city centre to sell them?
>
>
> On Monday, November 7, 2011, Agosta Liko <agostal at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/11/the-sods-must-be-crazy-olpc-to-drop-tablets-from-helicopters-to-isolated-villages.ars
> >
> > The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has devised a bizarre plan for
> deploying its new XO-3 tablet. The organization plans to drop the
> touchscreen computers from helicopters near remote villages in developing
> countries. The devices will then be abandoned and left for the villagers to
> find, distribute, support, and use on their own.
> >
> > OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte is optimistic that the portable
> devices—which will be stocked with electronic books—will empower children
> to learn to read without any external support or instruction. The strange
> scheme reflects the OLPC project’s roots in constructivist education
> theory, which emphasizes self-directed learning.
> >
> > The OLPC project was originally founded to produce low-cost
> education-focused laptops for children. The organization planned to sell
> the devices in bulk to governments in developing countries, which would
> then distribute them in classrooms. The plan was to leverage economy of
> scale in manufacturing to bring the costs down, making the laptop cheap
> enough that governments would be able to supply one to every child.
> >
> > Although the ambitious project sold several million laptops, it fell far
> short of its lofty goals and has been on life support for the past few
> years. In addition to fundamental logistical and technical failures, OLPC
> also suffered from internal friction, ideological conflicts, and poor
> management. OLPC was forced to downsize half its staff and discontinue its
> software platform in 2009 (a separate organization called Sugar Labs was
> founded to pick up where OLPC left off on the software) after its second
> give-one-get-one fundraiser fell through the floor.
> >
> > After the staff cuts, OLPC dropped its plan to produce a
> dual-touchscreen laptop and instead decided to focus on tablets. The
> organization showed off glossy concept art of an impossibly thin XO-3
> tablet at the end of 2009. Last year, it announced a partnership with
> hardware component maker Marvell. OLPC pragmatically chose to adopt
> Marvell’s off-the-shelf reference design instead of trying to pursue the
> unrealistic form factor that was shown in the original XO-3 mockups.
> >
> > The tablets that Negroponte intends to fling from helicopters are based
> on that Marvell design, but with a few enhancements, such as solar powered
> batteries that will allow them to be used in regions without access to
> electricity. It’s not clear yet if the organization was able to
> successfully meet its target $75 production price.
> >
> > Negroponte described the helicopter drop plan at the Open Mobile Summit
> event in San Francisco. According to a PC Magazine report, he compared the
> project to the classic 1980 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, which depicted
> how an isolated tribe in the Kalahari Desert might react to discovering a
> Coca-Cola bottle that fell from an airplane.
> >
> > “We’ll take tablets and drop them out of helicopters into villages that
> have no electricity and school, then go aback a year later and see if the
> kids can read,” Negroponte told The Register. He reportedly cited Professor
> Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall experiment as the basis for his belief that
> dropping the tablets will encourage self-directed literacy.
> >
> > Among the major challenges that the OLPC project was never able to fully
> overcome during its laptop days were supporting the hardware in the field
> and providing teachers with the proper training and educational material.
> In light of the cost and difficulty of tackling those issues, it’s not hard
> to see why the eccentric stealth drop approach looks appealing to
> Negroponte.
> >
> > The obvious downside, however, is the sheer improbability that a
> majority of the dropped devices will ever serve their intended function. It
> seems unlikely that Negroponte will find governments that are willing to
> fund such an odd boondoggle, though Marvell has provided some financial
> backing. Perhaps somebody needs to air drop Negroponte a healthy dose of
> common sense to go with his change-the-world ambitions.
> >
>
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