May be I can share an experience from a village in Bihar, India, arguably a state that has slid further behind where it was a couple decades ago according to most indices of development..
My team sent a couple PCs to one of its districts that was most notoriously high on criminality index.. That was 1998.. A couple of local volunteers had come forward to spread the use of PCs in that region.. The first few months were noticeable for significant requests to help fix problems from an UPS to keyboard, mouse, burnt mother board and what have you.. And then the requests stopped.. The barely literate young people who studied in schools with one room for five grades were able to gain self sufficiency in keeping their PCs functional.. satish jha [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 7/12/06, Dave A. Chakrabarti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"he seemed to say that they are making the computer so simple to fix that the children can take care of the problems." Bonnie, That statement, if Negropointe is making it, packs an awful lot of promise with not much substantial detail (yet). I've never seen a piece of hardware so simple that a child in a third world nation (who is completely digitally illiterate) could intuitively repair. A child who has never seen a laptop before cannot intuitively use a mouse / trackpad. No matter how simple this device becomes (and I'm not convinced it can be all that simple), there is a question of training and support. I'm thinking about the children I've seen in villages in India...you would have to train a teacher to train those students how to use an Ipod, let alone a laptop. And that's just to use it! Repair and support is a whole new area of training and infrastructure. Stephen, The Ipod is definitely an intriguing tool for training (I should convince my boss to buy me one for, er, training purposes). I'm wondering how long it'll be before someone comes up with a Linux distro that'll run on it, or before Apple releases OSipod, adds wifi, and takes over the mobile computing market in one swoop. For the price, I'm actually not sure the Ipod's the best educational tool (though it has "cool" value in attracting users to it). A little more than a video Ipod will buy you a mobile tablet that will not only play audio and video but also connect you to the internet, handle office documents, email, etc. This strikes me as a more useful tool for all kinds of training... Dave. ------------------- Dave A. Chakrabarti Projects Coordinator CTCNet Chicago [EMAIL PROTECTED] (708) 919 1026 ------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > In a message dated 7/10/06 5:20:25 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > >> This is a very grand vision, no doubt, but there crucial points that may >> be brushed over in the rhetoric. I'll point out one example, since it >> was one I was looking for: "The children will maintain the laptops >> themselves". >> > > I am sure that I am not steeped enough in the initiative to answer this > question, but he seemed to say that they are making the computer so simple to fix > that the children can take care of the problems. which will be simple based on > the design of the tool. We did not talk about content, I did with a young lady > from MIT but we only were talking about specialized software or initiatives > that meet the millenium > > I was only sitting in the audience reporting what I heard. It is good to > think about the content. So often we only talk about the hardware. > > Bonnie Bracey Sutton > bbr > _______________________________________________ > DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list > DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org > http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide > To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. > _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
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