Laptops for all schoolchildren in Libya

[Avenging Eagle]

Report: Libya to buy laptops for kids

AP - Wed Oct 11, 8:14 AM ET

NEW YORK - The government of Libya has reached an agreement with an American nonprofit group to provide inexpensive laptop computers for all of the nation's 1.2 million schoolchildren, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

With the project scheduled to be completed by June 2008, Libya could become the first nation in which all school-age children are connected to the Internet through educational computers, Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop per Child project, told the newspaper.

The $250 million deal, reached Tuesday, would provide the nation with 1.2 million computers, a server in each school, a team of technical advisers, satellite internet service and other infrastructure.

The One Laptop per Child project, which has the support of the
United Nations Development Program, aims to provide laptops to school-aged children worldwide — for about $100 each. It has reached tentative purchase agreements with Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria and Thailand.

Negroponte, a computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he had met with Moammar Gadhafi and the project appealed to the Libyan leader's political agenda of creating a more open Libya and becoming an African leader.

The two men discussed the possibility that Libya would also pay for laptops for poorer African nations like Chad, Niger and Rwanda, said Negroponte, who is the brother of U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

Gadhafi surprised the world in late 2003 when he swore off terrorism and announced plans to dismantle his country's weapons of mass destruction programs. Libya was eager to end the international isolation and economic hardships from United Nations and U.S. sanctions. The U.S. has since opened an embassy in Tripoli.

A telephone call to that capital seeking comment from Libyan government spokesman Hassan al-Shawish went unanswered Wednesday.

Test models of the computers will be distributed to the participating countries in November, and mass production is expected to begin by July 2007, Negroponte said. They are to be produced by Taiwanese computer maker Quanta Computer Inc.

The machines are to be equipped with hand cranks or foot pedals, so that children can use them when electricity is too costly or not available. Expected to initially cost $150 and then be reduced in price, they will have wireless network access and run on an open-source operating system, such as
Linux.

The project was inspired by Negroponte's experience giving Internet-connected laptops to children in Cambodia. He said the first English word spoken by those children was "Google."

___

On the Net:

One Laptop per Child, www.laptop.org/

[Avenging Eagle]

Looks like Libya is now ahead of 204 when it comes to computers, just like the rest of the world.

Many people are realizing that our schools need to switch from textbooks to laptops at some point, and I think 204 should at least come up with a transition plan to do this.

Think about how many problems it would solve, including:

• guaranteeing that our kids are computer literate
  
• kids don't need to carry around $600 worth (50 lbs) of obsolete printed textbooks.
  
• etc., etc.
  

Here is a school in Arizona that has already done it.

>>
Arizona school trade textbooks for laptops
TUCSON (AP) 7/2005— A high school in Vail will become the state's first all-wireless, all-laptop public school this fall. The 350 students at the school will not have traditional textbooks. Instead, they will use electronic and online articles as part of more traditional teacher lesson plans.

Vail Unified School District's decision to go with an all-electronic school is rare, experts say. Often, cost, insecurity, ignorance and institutional constraints prevent schools from making the leap away from paper.

"The efforts are very sporadic," said Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association. "A minority of communities are doing a good or very good job, but a large number are just not there on a number of levels."

Calvin Baker, superintendent of Vail Unified School District, said the move to electronic materials gets teachers away from the habit of simply marching through a textbook each year.

He noted that the AIMS test now makes the state standards the curriculum, not textbooks. Arizona students will soon need to pass Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards to graduate from high school.

But the move to laptops is not cheap. The laptops cost $850 each, and the district will hand them to 350 students for the entire year. The fast-growing district hopes to have 750 students at the high school eventually.

A set of textbooks runs about $500 to $600, Baker said.

It's not clear how the change to laptops will work, he conceded.

"I'm sure there are going to be some adjustments. But we visited other schools using laptops. And at the schools with laptops, students were just more engaged than at non-laptop schools," he said.
<<



One more note: The $850 laptop price was in 2005, and now the price would be $400 or less.

And you know the overpriced textbooks certainly did not drop in price during that time.

Here is another article link:

www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-10/2005-10-20-voa65.cfm?CFID=4982087&CFTOKEN=59878939

[Avenging Eagle]

Finally, here is what Bill Gates thinks of the current, obsolete system in the US:

>>


Gates "appalled" by high schools

By Alicia Mundy

WASHINGTON — Bill Gates blasted the state of U.S. high schools yesterday in a speech before the National Governors Association education summit in the nation's capital.

Using words such as "ashamed" and "appalled" to describe his reaction to the failure rates for students, Microsoft's co-founder called America's high schools broken, flawed and underfunded, and said the system itself is obsolete.

This was one of Gates' first major speeches on public schools before a national political audience. He was introduced by his old friend, Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat who is considered a possible candidate for president in 2008.

Though Gates' philanthropic funds have had an impact on education issues for several years, his personal appearance at such a venue suggests an even stronger move by Gates to fix public education by working directly with key political leaders.

"When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow," he said.

"The key problem is political will," he said, discussing resistance to change. He said it was "morally wrong" to offer more advanced levels of coursework to high-income students compared with that offered many minority and low-income scholars. And he trumpeted the goal of preparing every high-school student for either two- or four-year college programs.

"Only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for college, work and citizenship," he said. Gates spoke bluntly about the high dropout rates in America compared with those of other developed countries, and the differences between America's high-tech graduate degrees and those in India and China.

"In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did; China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the United States, and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $2.3 billion to education since 1999. It has designated $733 million to a campaign for "smaller learning communities" to replace mass-enrollment high schools.

Washington state schools Superintendent Terry Bergeson applauded the tough-love talk. "He did not pull any punches," she said. She added that it was important that Bill Gates himself came to the governors' conference, saying, "He is making a statement, and his voice will be heard."
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Gates grants support changes in 1,500 high schools, about 8 percent of America's secondary public schools, including several in Washington state. The program aims to reduce high-school populations to no more than about 500 students per school. Hundreds of new schools will be built, and many other large schools will divide into smaller entities within the same structure.

Gates said that he wants to emphasize the "three R's — rigor, relevance and relationships." By that, he means stronger curricula (rigor), better preparation for work and higher education (relevance), and a school structure where students have more support from teachers and counselors (relationships).

In discussing standards and achievement measurements, Gates called on community leaders to demand openness from their school districts. Localities need to know the percentages of students dropping out, graduating, going to college, he said, "and we need this data broken down by race and income."

"He's absolutely right," said Bergeson. "You can't allow schools to hide" this information by aggregating statistics over too many schools. "We need to measure it subgroup by subgroup."

"He really addressed the big-picture problem," said Bergeson. "This wasn't 'Big Education' rhetoric. Whether I agree with all his ideas or not, I think this speech was great."

Gates is a "player now in education," said Michael Casserly, director of the Council of Great City Schools, a coalition of 65 of the nation's largest urban public-school systems. "He's helped shape the conversation about many high-school reforms," he added, "though it's still too new to tell what effect they will have."

The governors, led by Virginia's Warner, welcomed Gates' candid assessment. Warner, who comes from the high-tech industry, has championed the Gates Foundation's efforts nationally, and has begun a governors' initiative to redesign high schools.

That was one reason, Gates told a small group of reporters before his speech, that he had come to address the governors directly. "That's where the resources are, and that's part of their mandate."

In that news conference, Gates said he would not give America's leaders a passing grade right now for their commitment to fixing education.

Gates acknowledged that there is some political resistance to the smaller-high-school campaign. "It's very complex," he said.

"But in many schools you need radical institutional change," he went on. "Any radical change is going to upset people. If you look, most of the pushback is not really against small," he said. He suggested it comes from those who run big sports programs, who are "asking why you're trying to change the status quo."

Asked about one Northwest school that is considering ending its $900,000 small-schools grant, the foundation's Executive Director Tom Vander Ark said school leaders "really need to go back and discuss their goals for their students." North Eugene (Ore.) High School's administrators gave mixed reviews to the smaller "learning academies" concept after visiting Mountlake Terrace High School, according to published reports.

The Oregon school's staff may vote to forgo the remainder of the three-year grant from the Gates Foundation and the Meyer Memorial Trust.

"They need to have a broader conversation with their community about the kind of education their kids deserve," said Vander Ark, noting that though he would be disappointed if the school pulled out, the grant is specific in its intent.
<<

[EagleDad]

I can just see it now, all of our kids will be on Judge Judy or Judge Mathis all the time because they're all suing each other over lost laptops ;-)

Just kidding, I like the idea though. I suppose if they all had the same basic model there'd be no reason to take some else's.

I would like to see the 2B1 actually being produced and en-masse for $100 first. And man, the Wireless access point will be a mess

[Arch]

This is the best part:

"The machines are to be equipped with hand cranks or foot pedals, so that children can use them when electricity is too costly or not available."


How useful are laptops when you're in a place where electricity is too costly or not available? The other thing that comes to mind is for the price, how durable will they be?

It almost makes as much sense as giving chaise lounge chairs to people in Siberia.

[wvhsparent]

Our kids would not want to use those laptops as they have experienced better ones.

[Avenging Eagle]

eagledad said:

I can just see it now, all of our kids will be on Judge Judy or Judge Mathis all the time because they're all suing each other over lost laptops ;-)

Just kidding, I like the idea though. I suppose if they all had the same basic model there'd be no reason to take some else's.

Yes, I do see some obvious problems with the plan, but there are probably solutions to them, if we can think of them.

Obvious Problems:

1. Kids destroy their laptops one way or another.
2. Kids are spoiled and don't like the laptop.
3. Teacher cannot figure out how to boot up the lesson plan.
4. Network crashes in the school

My "2 minutes worth of thought" solutions:

1 and 2: Kids who do not take care of their laptops will move to the dumbed down curriculum that is in place today.
3. Teachers who are not computer savvy teach the dumbed down curriculum to those students, and are phased out over time.
4. The network administrator is fired for being incompetent.

[wvhsparent]

avengingeagle said:

eagledad said:

I can just see it now, all of our kids will be on Judge Judy or Judge Mathis all the time because they're all suing each other over lost laptops ;-)

Just kidding, I like the idea though. I suppose if they all had the same basic model there'd be no reason to take some else's.

Yes, I do see some obvious problems with the plan, but there are probably solutions to them, if we can think of them.

Obvious Problems:

1. Kids destroy their laptops one way or another.
2. Kids are spoiled and don't like the laptop.
3. Teacher cannot figure out how to boot up the lesson plan.
4. Network crashes in the school

My "2 minutes worth of thought" solutions:

1 and 2: Kids who do not take care of their laptops will move to the dumbed down curriculum that is in place today.
3. Teachers who are not computer savvy teach the dumbed down curriculum to those students, and are phased out over time.
4. The network administrator is fired for being incompetent.

I like it

[cantretirehere]

Something else to think about is that more and more colleges are providing (loaning) laptops as part of the tuition. My son's college does this. The college pays for an extensive insurance program that covers a high level of loss and damage. My son
is in a 6 year program and he will recieve a new model at the beginning of his 4th year.

But, about college level laptop usage: How many kids know how to use Excel with confidence? This is a really powerful tool. It can be used for so many college classes. Yet, our district requires the purchase of a graphing calculator which will seldom be used after senior year.

Does my son use his graphing calculator for his science labs? No, he uses his laptop and Excel. He had to endure a learning curve that many of his classmates did not. Why are his classmates more computer, (ie Excel) literate? Maybe that is a question for their old school districts and for ours. Maybe their parents pushed it more at home than I did. My son didn't want to hear about Excel from me during his high school years because he used his graphing calculator, it was easy for him because that is what he used at school. But a bit obsolete IMO.

As for his non-science classes. He takes all of his notes on the laptop and all of the lessons that the teachers once used to write on chalk boards are now downloaded directly onto the students' laptops.

Since laptop usage is becoming quite common place in our universities it only makes sense that a wealthy district such as our own should make some kind of effort to introduce the kids to laptop usage in a learning and study environment. How about starting with seniors?

Sure, the kids are used to Word and Power Point. But using a laptop in the classroom environment is a different experience than at home.

BTW, a couple of years ago I heard that every ES in our district received at least one classroom's worth of laptops. Can anyone out there who has elementary kids tell me if those have been used to any great extent, and/or in what capacity? If they aren't being used regularly at the ES level, perhaps they would be better used in the high schools for science and math classes, at least.

[Avenging Eagle]

archwinsome said:

It almost makes as much sense as giving chaise lounge chairs to people in Siberia.

Good suggestion Arch!

[EagleDad]

cantretirehere said:

Yet, our district requires the purchase of a graphing calculator which will seldom be used after senior year.

Don't know about that, I still use my trusty HP 41-CX I've had since high school all of the time. Always need a good RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) calculator around Of course I have to admit I mostly use an emulator on the PDA these days. Thos N-cell batteries are too hard to find.