Word: olpc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...World Economic Forum in 2006, Marthe Dansokho of Cameroon declared that African women who work in the countryside don’t have time to sit with their children and research crops, assuming they’re even literate. But the XO is not a gimmick cure-all. OLPC is not even a laptop program. It’s an education and communication program: the key to smashing cycles of strife. In the long run, this is the right way to go. And, in the long run, they’re not all dead: The global south is not quite...
Perhaps a more apt criticism of OLPC is that the laptops don’t directly support local educational infrastructure. The project is decentralized and shifts agency to kids and away from state educational systems. OLPC supplies equipment, not teacher training or better curriculum. But there’s no reason why OLPC can’t accompany other state-sponsored initiatives. Ablorde Ashigbi ’11, an OLPC representative, claims, “An XO is never supposed to substitute for a teacher. But it does purposefully empower the children. People don’t realize there?...
Some communities are not comfortable with children browsing foreign advertising, entertainment, and general worldviews whenever they like. There’s a legitimate fear the OLPC pushes flashy consumerism and invasive technology on peoples. Mohammed Diop, a Malinese economist, has attacked the project as an attempt to exploit poor nations by making them pay for millions of impractical machines. To many who are used to a history of false promises and downright lies, allowing a U.S. company to hold a financial stake in the education of their children is anathema...
...long as the program’s coordinators and supporters don’t adopt a blind charity mentality but converse to find ways to use the equipment best on the terms of recipients, there should be no reason to stop for fear of cultural debasement. So long as OLPC shies away from the popular “Save the Third World from All Its Self-Imposed Problems” rhetoric, tensions can dissipate enough for the laptops to do what they’re supposed...
...OLPC should not lose heart. There may be hardware problems, and even over-ambition problems, but the NGO is on the right track. Indeed, groups around the world are emulating its endeavors: The Indian government is busy working on a laptop for a mere 500 rupees...