The angle is “Giving computers directly to poor kids without any instruction is even more ambitious than OLPC?s earlier pushes. ?What can we do for these 100 million kids around the world who don?t go to school?? McNierney said. ?Can we give them tool to read and learn?without having to provide schools and teachers and textbooks and all that?? - in the last paragraph.

Dug deeper - I came upon this article - “As we industrialized learning and created schools, we needed to measure the system?s efficacy and each child?s progress. What you really want to measure is curiosity, imagination, passion, creativity, and the ability to see things from multiple points of view. But these are hard to measure other than one on one, and even then, the assessment will be subjective. So instead, we measure what a child knows, and from that we infer that the child has learned how to learn. This is the real aspiration we have for our children: learning learning.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429206/emtech-preview-another-way-to-think-about-learning/

The question now becomes, was the kids being used as a grand experiment for the observation of learning in children to create the conditions to promote the conditions of “Nicholas Negroponte is the founder and chairman emeritus of MIT?s Media Lab, and the chairman of the One Laptop Per Child foundation.”?

On One Laptop per Child site - “While he was there he met some of the students eager to show off how they liked to use the tablets (they are using Motorola Xoom tablets with mainly off-the-shelf Android literacy apps, with a few custom apps and tweaks by OLPC). At some point, one of the children (below) stood up to quiz the others on what they were learning.”
http://blog.laptop.org/2012/07/30/a-visit-to-olpcs-ethiopian-literacy-project/#.UI_7JW_A-So

A personal account detailing the account of the laptops and the children. But I must point out, the first article in Malkin’s posts, gives the impression that the village had no school, and laptops were just given to the children. “We arrived at such a site, and it didn?t seem particularly significant except for one rectangular building that stood out for being slightly too developed. Its walls and angles were more straight than usual and it was fitted with windows that could open and close, rare for most huts in the highlands. As we walked closer down the mountain we could see solar panels aligned on top of the roof ? technology that seemed completely out of place in its surroundings. This unique building was built by MIT as the village?s new school house and storehouse for the precious tablet computers.”
https://evanszablowski.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/one-laptop-per-child/

The language on the laptops is in English. However, one can’t help to catch the optimism of Evan, in the last link. “This was not foreign aid, or handouts to their people. This was education, and just the first step in enabling them. Enabling the young minds of Africa for brighter futures. For a brighter nation, and a brighter continent.”

But now it has simply become something else entirely, and what is lost, are the uses of laptops and what the technology could do to transform education in the rural villages and throughout developing countries such as Africa. It has now become the usual 21st century education mantra, of curiosity,  imagination, passion and creativity. The spin….....of those who…........and the education of children.

Thanks for the links, Nancy.  But I’m not sure why you close your post on such a pessimistic note. 

The topics and arguments in this SQE blog are not on any curriculum and there is no test, yet I soak up learning, passion, inspiration, and ideas from you, Malkin, and a world of other like-minded contributors.  Technology allows me pursue my interests and evolve my own views, even if they are not offered or approved by my school <g>.  These empowered kids will find their own communities and educate themselves in spite of their teachers.  What more can we hope for?

I get a little turned off by articles, stating that they are surprised children are learning. Humans are built that way, and it comes to no surprised that the kids latch onto the laptops, and even learned how to work around features that were closed, and open them up.

It does not matter who the children are, and in this case the claim is made there is no consumer goods and no printed word in the African village, but it is the tone of the article, inferring that the children lacked the ability to learn.

Its the so called 21st century mantra that I don’t buy into it. Children are natural learners, but children still need guidance and instruction. Otherwise there would be a lot of kids still not diaper trained by the age of 6. The laptop, no doubt in my mind, the African children did the same thing as a North American child of 3 or 4 years of age, when an electronic device is given to them. My youngest who is now 17 years old, was a pro by 2 years old, learning off the electronic toys, DVD player, and her father’s cell phone. No one instructed her, and she only lost interest when she was thoroughly knowledgeable on it. It did not take long for my youngest to stopped playing with the electronic toys, and look for a new challenge.

What really gets me,  I do know that laptops for the developing countries would put education on the maps in the countries, but will MIT stick around for the long term?  Will they stick around dealing with the administrations of governments where education is not a top priority, let alone all the other serious problems found in countries like Africa?  Will the African governments release their coffers of cash, to aid their citizens?  Not according to the news accounts around the world, there is no political will to do so, and includes the top global concerns.

The world leaders, keep on with their mantras, the global education leaders their mantras, and yet little progress has been made since I was a little girl, in the 1960s. I am not pessimistic, but cynical of the global and national governments that has the tendency to squashed any initiatives that hold promise, but is not in compliance with the values and goals of the governments. Likewise, our schools in NA, where education fads and crazes are the norm, and damn with the outcomes.

In the one link, the last sentence, “Having massive libraries of explicative material like modern-day encyclopedias or textbooks is fine. But such access may be much less significant than building a world in which ideas are shaped, discovered, and reinvented in the name of learning by doing and discovery.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429206/emtech-preview-another-way-to-think-about-learning/

The troubling thing, in the NA school systems, children like mine are dismissed, labels are etched into their foreheads, and parents are told their children are slow learners, and has far less curiosity and creativity in their bones. Reinventing in the name of learning, is only reserved for the children who excelled from the get go. in the public schools of NA.

If it was not for the technology, I highly doubt my 17 would be sitting in advance classes. Yet, it was the technology and the cognitive benefits that were denied to my child. What is the percentage of children in the NA schools being denied access to the technology to improved the cognitive as well as their learning?  It is left up to the parents, as I did, and the background noise of the school, the naysayers behind, telling me I was wasting my time. Tough job, when the school had turned my child who hated learning, and schooling. There was a reason why my child had illegible writing, and could not string a few words together to form a sentence. Like other children, it had nothing to do with ability, home environments, and the other SES variables, Children will learned and progress providing they have the tools. For the African children, and the village, a new school that gain significance on the introduction of laptops. No doubt the parents will be leading the charge to retained the instructors to provide an education that suits the children and the community. Now let us hope. the tech guy continues to come to the village, for repairs and maintenance of the laptops and gear.

I am a cynic, because it seems that good policies and practices global wide, are being tossed out, in favour of policies and practices that are of no benefit for the long term futures of citizens. Plus, a little cranky, after reading the headlines today…....it does not help.

We should give all kids computers.  That way they can go online and get a quality education!

Advocates for self-learning have been aware for years about this proven way that children can and do learn no matter the resources provided.

What surprises me most is that the adults have not figured this out yet, sometimes we just have to look back and remember some of the important things we learned without an adult to direct us, simply we learned because we had an interest in something.