Stephen E. Dinehart's IMD Blog

this is the biggest idea i've heard all day. i wonder how many non-prof tech firms there are out there. this seems to be a wonderful trend - enfranchising the world's poor through technology! i'm rejoicing at the thought - I sure hope it works. if it does, the results will be mindblowing. cultural interchange and competition on a global stage! the next step will have to be vast improvements in automatic translation technologies. pick the personality/style of your ambassador and your words can be digested by anyone and everyone. hey if this plan is succesful, maybe we even can get one of these for Jess and Yuechuan! go future!

Thanks for the thought, Noah.

I'm intrigued by this project. Maine had an initiative several years ago where Gov. Angus King declared that there would be laptops for every seventh-grader in the state. (Wired article from 2002). This move was met with great fuss, and I remember the question being raised as to whether this was the best way to spend money on education. I'd say that's my biggest question about this move - is this the best way to advance education in these countries? I suspect the answer may be no, but that this is the best way Negroponte can help out. I hope it works.

Incidentally, there was a recent article in Maine Today about the current state of Maine's laptop program. The comment about teacher education seems even more critical in Negroponte's project - who is going to teach all these children about computers?

Well shoot, I guess I don't know how to tag links in a comment.

Here's the URL for the Wired Article:
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,49046,00.html

And the URL for the Maine Today Article:
http://business.mainetoday.com/geekspeak/002828.html

I don't think a laptop per child policy is a good idea, then we all turn into friggin' robots w/ bad backs by the time we're 20. A couple of laptops per classroom are a good idea, it'll teach people how to share, and having kids use the laptop for a limited amount of time will force them to be more efficient. These low-power, low-cost lappies are a god-send for remote rural areas, and I think that using them for communication is just as important as utilizing them as part of a lesson plan. The next logical step is providing some sort of free satellite network for "developing" countries and having the "first world" help pay for it.