[Air-l] India Rejects One Laptop Per Child

[Mark Warschauer]

I am a strong supporter of the OLPC project, and I also support 
India's decision not to participate.

I support the OLPC project because I basically see it as an 
additional low-cost hardware alternative.  I'm all for computer 
equipment becoming cheaper and more accessible, rather than 
exclusively targeting the high end market.  To be honest, even though 
I see other aspects of technology implementation, such as teacher 
development or curriculum development, as crucial, it never bothered 
me that OLPC didn't provide these, because I never saw OLPC as a 
single be-all, end-all, or any kind of total integrated package, but 
just an additional hardware alternative.  One of the positive 
benefits I predicted from OLPC is that it would put downward pressure 
on the computer price market, and I think that has already occurred, 
through sparking other laptop and desktop projects targetted at 
low-income groups in developing countries.  OLPC also appears to be 
developing some innovative design features that again might be more 
broadly useful beyond this particular product (see the most recent 
issue of Wired).

At the same time, while I welcome the development of OLPC and other 
low-cost computing alternatives, that doesn't mean that I think any 
particular country should be obligated to purchase them.   I 
certainly don't know enough about the finances, context, and 
educational objectives of every developing country to know which ones 
might or might not reasonably benefit from such a substantial 
investment in one-to-one computing for their children (including not 
only the hardware, but the substantial amount of additional funds 
they'd have to spend for distribution, training, curriculum 
development, repair or replacement costs, etc.).  It's certainly not 
surprising to me that India, which has a GDP per capita of about 
$600, would reject the initiative.

In other words, my stance is Yes to OLPC and Yes to individual 
countries' declining to participate in OLPC.

Finally, in answer to Jeremy's question about what happened to the 
laptop project in Maine, the answer is it's still going strong.  The 
program was renewed after the first four-year contract (2002-2006) 
for a second four-year contract (2006-2010) for all 7th and 8th grade 
students in the state. There is also a laptop program in Maine at the 
high school level, but it is adopted (and funded) district by 
district and is thus not universal.
Mark
-- 
Mark Warschauer
Associate Professor of Education and Informatics
University of California, Irvine
2001 Berkeley Place
Irvine, CA 92697-5500
tel: (949) 824-2526,  fax: (949) 824-2965
markw at uci.edu; http://www.gse.uci.edu/faculty/markw