There are half a dozen projects for producing cheap computers, including ones at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, most more interesting than the simputer. But none of them is based on any analysis of educational needs. I propose that we should delay such design until we have a sizable body of well evaluated learning material.
OK, let us forget the value of the Simputer in fields other than education (for example data collection in the Tsunami affected regions).
Let us also forget that the Simputer is here and in use today (unlike other efforts elsewhere).
Even forgetting these issues, should we reject the Simputer simply because there is no "sizable body of well evaluated learning material"? Do we need a "sizable body"?
I, like many others on this list have lived and worked in the developing world. I, like many others on this list, have experienced some of the needs found within the tiny part of the developing world we have personal experience of.
However, I do not believe that our limited experience of life in one part of the developing world gives us the right to claim that we know the answers - in fact we can rarely even claim to know the questions.
Even if we have lived in the developing world all our lives we would not know the answers for the developing world as a whole. The developing world is a very large place, with very different problems in each area. Even within a single country the differences in problems faced by the average person can be massive.
Given this fact I caution members of the Digital Divide Network to not fall prey to the mistaken belief that we will *ever* have a "sizable body of well evaluated learning materials", or any other materials for that matter. The developing world is a big place with many problems.
Please do not halt progress in one area whilst we wait for progress in another. Instead, examine what each tiny step can bring to the table, accept the limitations and work around them.
With this in mind what does the Simputer bring to our efforts?
It is my belief that the digital divide will not be closed by those who believe they "know" the answers. It will be closed by those who ask the right questions of the right people.
Note there are three important parts in that last sentence: "ask", "right questions" and "right people".
Many of us are asking questions.
Those of us asking questions rarely ask the right ones because we start from our developed world position of "knowing" the solutions - we are looking for somewhere to apply our solutions rather than looking to understand the problems.
Those asking the right questions often cannot ask them of the right people due to the Digital Divide itself.
I welcome the Simputer, complete with all its imperfections. It is precisely what we need in our efforts to open communication lines with the very people we should be working *with* in order to develop Alfreds "sizable body of well evaluated learning materials".
Ross
PS. this mail is written with acknowledgment to Earl Mardle (http://kn.com.au/2005/03/shameless_self_.html#more ) who, in a fleeting visit to the UK took the time out to point into words what I had inadvertently been doing all along
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