ConFigures

Laptops and Learning

Regarding my One Laptop Per Child entry, I know some folks are skeptical about the value of this project.  I don’t mind skeptics.  Healthy skepticism is useful.  I do wish the naysayers who seem to imagine OLPC is going to pitchfork laptops at people would go and read up on them.  Whether OLPC succeeds or fails, it’s not just about the laptop; people have actually done some thinking (and writing) about integrating laptops into education, about content, about discovery.

However, even if they were pitchforking the laptops, there’s some precedent showing that kids can teach themselves to use computers pretty quickly, and apply what they can learn on them to improve their lives.   Courtesy Chas Owens (comment in One Laptop Per Child News), “Poor kids living on the street can teach themselves how to use a computer and the Internet”:

• New Delhi guy embeds computer with Internet access in concrete, kids teach themselves to use it
• “minimally invasive” computer education spreads to other parts of India

Then there’s the teenager in Malawi who first taught himself to build windmills to generate electricity from a book, who used the Internet to figure out how to redesign the second one he’d built, which supplies power for his parents’ house, and charges car batteries and mobile phones.