This last Christmas, my daughter's grandpa purchased an XO for her. Operating in a Linux-based, open source environment has been confusing for me. I am an admitted Microsoft lemming. Bill Gates owns my object-oriented soul.
But I was thrilled for her to have her little green and white wonder, and it is her mother who has been playing with it the majority of the time. (Although it takes a first grader to remember where to find the camera function and how to play the games!)
The concept of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is innovative, and could have been an international success story, had the premise of the project not been steeped in Western learning traditions that began with Piaget. Don't get me wrong, I have read Piaget's learning theories, and agree with him in large part.
The problem lies in the fact that Eastern educational learning theories do not necessarily agree with Piaget, and because spreading his learning theories are the basis for the XO, it is not only insulting to the Eastern market, but threatening to their educational status quo.
Nussbaum's Businessweek blog (link at bottom) explains the failure of OLPC in more detail.
Was OLPC insulting? Innovative? Misguided? Improperly marketed? Misunderstood? A stroke of genius before the world was ready? Little more than another child's toy for middle-class Americans, from its inception?
Would love to hear what you think...
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2008/05/the_end_of_the.html
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1 comment:
That's cool you got an OLPC computer-Yeah too bad it all didn't work out. I think it was a great program.
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