Thia indeed has been the critism of olpc lack of support. sounds like they might also be having a reliability problem. as for content lets see if the famed html5 can maybe put a dent in it.
Simon Vass Technical Manager E-Tech Uganda Ltd http://www.etech.ug Tel: +256 (0) 312260620 or (0) 312260621 Email: [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: Mugarura Cavin <[email protected]> To: lug <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, 24 May 2010 19:16:12 +0300 (EAT) Subject: [LUG] OLPC Lug, i came across this post online, and since the EAC (East Africa Community) is planning to embark on a massive OLPC project, i thought might be useful The Full posts and related threads are available on edutechdebate.org *May 24, 2010 08:59 am | Alejandro Lavarello* Hi Mark. I live in Uruguay, the emblematic country for the OLPC project. My daughter Emilia go to public school and has one XO. I have used the XO, and I am a regular Linux and Windows user. I agree with your article. When XO began to deteriorate, the daddys began to "repair" with scotch tape. The keyboard replacement costs here about U$S10 , and the screen replacement about U$S20. Many can afford this costs; but the poor children not. Result: in months, poor childrens do not use more their XO. Here we have the "plan Ceibal". This plan, as stated by government agency LATU, is about giving conectivity and XO to all school childrens. This is NOT an educational plan. Silently, the XO is forgeted in school classes, and teachers return to traditional teaching. The childrens use their XO for playing music and platform games, like "SuperVampireNinjaZero". Educational games are slow and Flash-based, and hated by childrens. Software developers do not like to program in Python; they have background in Java, Flash, C, and not feel the necesity of learn a new slow interpreted language. Java is slow and consumes much of the XO "disk" space. Result: only a few government agencies or 2 o 3 great enterprises have developed bored and slow software for XO. Childrens that have a PC in his homes do not like to use theirs XO. Sugar is another problem. Nobody likes it. Is a pain trying to save all Journal entries using Journal. File handling is a torture. And volunteers always end erasing the entire children's Journal without backup because the XO rapidly ceases to work when Journal is full. They indirectly teach that children's files are without value. I think that my country have spend too much money in OLPC. I think that regular informatic rooms with a dedicated professor will be a better choice. OLPC "plan" is not part of the scholar curricula. Nobody evaluates if each children have learned abour informatics. Can send me your opinion at: alejandro.lavarello (at) gmail (dot) com . Sorry by my poor English. Cavin -- The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like machines. _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ All Archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---------------------------------------
