Showing posts with label One Laptop Per Child. Show all posts
Showing posts with label One Laptop Per Child. Show all posts

February 22, 2011

The Little Techno Bus That Could




In an accomplishment sense, I am very proud of what Pope County, Arkansas is doing in terms of advancing education with technology on school buses for K-12 through the Aspirnaut program (photos from their site), founded and supported by Vanderbilt University.


Government Technology Magazine reports in February 2011 that Aspirnaut is transforming school buses into mobile classrooms, so that ”idle time is transformed into extended learning time with laptop computers and Internet access.”


The Hector School District buses are now equipped with computer screens, earphone jacks with headphones, wireless Internet, and scanning devices to record bus activity.


“The five 19-inch customized computer screens stream math and science content from PBS, NASA, the Discovery Channel, CBS News, and the Smithsonian Institution for students to watch on their hour-long rides to/from school. The screens also include video-conferencing capability.”


Students are seated on the bus in groups by age and grade to listen to their specific curriculum by plugging their headphones into jacks beneath their seats. The content of each bus-seating zone is then correlated to what the students are learning in the classroom.


Dr. Julie Hudson, co-founder of the program in 2007, is looking to improve student’s achievements, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). These are learning areas where we have fallen dangerously behind in national rankings, and this is seen as harming our innovativeness and competitive capacity for the future.


On one hand, I think that this type of extended learning program is very valuable to our students and provides them the opportunity to get additional constructive learning time in. Also, it’s great to distract them from getting into potential trouble on the ride home. :-)


Yet, on the other hand, I am also concerned that we continue to put more and more pressure on our children to seemingly always be productive, learning, and competing. Some examples of this are not just extended learning days (on buses or off), but also extended school years, even summer school, AP classes, SAT courses, some wonderful volunteer programs, internships, oodles of extra-curricular activities, side jobs, and more. Certainly seems like it’s not easy to be a kid these days!


Now, even a simple bus ride to/from school/home is no longer a time to unwind, sleep, socialize, listen to music, play video games, or just be kids. Even the choice of video content on the buses is purely educational and there is nothing social, fun, or relaxing for the children anymore. How about an episode of The Brady Bunch?


While, I certainly understand the need for us to advance our education, skills, and competitive positioning, and the learning bus is a great concept to move us towards that. However, I cannot help but remember a more innocent and carefree time in my own childhood, where there was “a time and place for everything.”


Then (not that long ago!), we took learning seriously and worked hard—always with a focus on the future (What will I be…Where do I want to end up…How can I live up to my potential?), but we also made sure to have time for friends and fun—downtime and think time. Today however, with the high-tech, always on, 24/7 society that we are creating for our children and ourselves, are we losing a sense of balance, perspective, even our innocence (so to say)?


In relation to this, I wonder sometimes about the Kingdom of Bhutan’s concept of measuring Gross National Happiness instead of what we measure Gross National Product, and I ask myself, where is our school bus heading?


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January 1, 2011

A House for The People


(Source for graphic: The $300 House)

National Geographic (January 2011) reports that one out of every seven people—or 1 billion people—in this world lives in slums.


Forbes (11 June 2007) predicts “By 2030, an estimated 5 billion of the world’s 8.1 billion people will live in cities. About 2 billion of them will live in slums, primarily in Africa and Asia, lacking access to clean drinking water and toilets, surrounded by desperation and crime.”


Harvard Business Review (January-February 2011) shares an innovative idea by Vijay Govindarajan to design and mass-produce houses for the poor for $300! Moreover, these units would include “basic modern services such as running water and electricity…[and] create shared access to computers, cell phones, televisions, water filters, solar panels, and clean-burning stoves.”


The breakthrough idea of the $300 high-tech house is that this is not something governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or charities would develop and deploy, but rather one that is a challenge for commercial interests who can take lead on creating mass scale, “ultra low cost, high value housing…as a mega opportunity, with billions in profit at stake.”


While I understand that the profit motive is very compelling and efficient in getting results, I would suggest that when it comes to helping the poor and downtrodden that we need to temper this as a driving factor, and let our humanity and conscience kick in as well. In other words, sure make a profit, but by G-d have a heart.


With The $300 House, aside from the notion of truly helping people—en masse—and making a genuine difference with moving them from slum houses to homes is the concept of leapfrogging them in their technology. Think about it:


- Solar power
- Walter filtration
- (Even) Tablet PCs


This reminds me of the One Laptop Per Child initiative of 2005 that sought to put $100 laptops in the hands of hundreds of millions of disadvantaged schoolchildren to advance their educational opportunities. It expands and augments it to make the change impactful to people’s lives on the ground today in terms of how people are able to care for themselves and their families, so that they can get to a brighter tomorrow and put that education to work.


While we may never be able to fully eradicate poverty, we can certainly significantly raise the status of living for the masses that need help through commercial opportunities, technological proliferation, and of course, through a charitable heart.

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November 24, 2007

One Laptop Per Child and Enterprise Architecture

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative announced at the World Economic Forum in 2005 set out to put $100 laptops in the hands of 100s of millions of disadvantaged schoolchildren within 4 years and help eliminate world poverty in the process.

The Wall Street Journal (24-25 November 2007) reports that this ambitious non-profit program has hit some snags.

The problems faced by this benevolent program provides lessons in EA for practitioners into what can go wrong if User-centric EA principles are not followed:

  1. Functionality versus price--as the OLPC computer added functionality, the $100 laptop became $188 plus shipping and many potential buyers balked at the pricetag. On the other hand, countires like Libya complained about the inferior functionality and quality and said, "I don't want my country to be a junkyard for these machines." From a User-centric EA perspective, we need to understand the requirements of our users and understand the trade-offs between functionality and price. Then we need to make conscious decisions on whether we fulfill needs for greater functionality and quality or whether we seek to hold the line on price for our customers. These are important architectural decisions that will affect the organization's ability to compete in the marketplace.

  2. Compete or partner--the OLPC machine went with open source software like Linux and AMD chips; these put the laptops head to head with companies like Microsoft and Intel, which come out fighting, with the gloves off. Intel is aggressively promoting its version of the laptop for developing nations called the Classmate for $230-$300, and Microsoft has announced $3 software packages that include Windows and a student version of Office. From a User-centric EA perspective, the decision of the organization whether to compete with the big players (like Microsoft and Intel) or partner is another major architectural decision. While we shouldn't make decisions based on fear of what the competition will do, we do need to be cognizant that if we go head-to-head with "the big boys", then they will respond, usually in a big way. Now OLPC is reportedly in discussions with Intel to design an Intel-based laptop.

  3. Training and support--In User-centric EA, do not underestimate the importance to the end-user of adequate training and support. The OLPC made the mistake of minimizing the importance of training and support and said that the "plan is for the machines to be simple enough that students can train themselves--and solve any glitches that arise." Not very realistic given the state of technology today, and many countries quickly "questioned who would fix them if they break."
By not following certain foundational EA principles, the OLPC program has floundered and "nearly three years later, only about 2000 students in pilot programs have received computers."

This is a shame, since so much good from this initiative can still be done.
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