Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child

lil_lisa

I know there's a sticky for videos but I'm hoping to go into depth with this topic and don't want to change the thread's topic so I'll start a new one.

So, I came across this video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_negroponte_on_one_laptop_per_child.html

Does anyone else have an issue with what he's saying?

I feel like there's a lot of information missing from his speech, I don't believe that these laptops inspired the children to stay up late at night emailing their teachers about school work.

Is there something wrong with a child knowing more about skype than a telephone?

Will they turn into people who know each other by their facebook or twitter nickname instead of what they look like?

Is this the kind of world we want to create or even lean towards?

Please debate this with me as I have a huge issue with it. I can see the positive side to having children learn and think so much so young in their lives, but is it going to be too much??

Victor

I've no audio, so couldn't listen.

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And what is the laptop doing for the other X hours per day?

I think children need to learn technology, partially though technology, but they need to learn other stuff also.

looksee

I listened to the video, and while I am a great fan of the TED lectures, I didn't think much of that one, I got the impression he was selling his own wonderfulness rather than promoting the project.

It is great that children in developing countries can learn how to use modern technology, but the idealistic approach is a bit worrying.

Why do the children take them home? Why not supply a school with a number of them and let the children share them, they are surely not using laptops all day every day? Also it requires complex networking and blocks to prevent the students I teach from spending class time trying to watch youtube, playing games and checking facebook and soccer scores, I doubt that children in the more remote areas of the world would have a very different approach!

Do the children in these schools have a proper supply of writing materials and books? Many children do not have even these basics.

It's in many ways a noble idea, but I think it could be better used. Still its easy for me to say that, I have not supplied even one computer to a third world school.

lil_lisa

I'm more worried about the fact that these children and these countries have very little in ways of education. Some even have none. So to go from having none to opening all this information and these websites and the way the internet is now onto these people cannot be a logical move. We all understand how the internet works and what are scams and what is real. These people don't understand any of this and its just being given to them without any background or knowledge of what this is?

I just feel the consequences are going to be horrific.

In saying all this, I do understand that they are trying to help other countries and advance their knowledge and education but it may be too much too soon.