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I'm about 50-50 in-between you folks. > Assuming that there is avaliable internet for your internet connected laptop You don't need internet to have a communi

I'm about 50-50 in-between you folks. > Assuming that there is avaliable internet for your internet connected laptop You don't need internet to have a communication tool. Mesh networks can actually work pretty well. OLPC had mesh networks. And they don't need to eventually reach the internet, either. Being able to send a text message to your neighbor, even 100 yards away, could have been pretty powerful. Connect a few of those together in a mesh, and you might be able to communicate MILES away. I don't actually know if the OLPC was any good at this, but it was built out of pieces that could have enabled it. > Assuming there is available electricity for said laptop You don't need electricity for a hand-crank laptop. OLPC had hand-crank power. The fact that you bring up these factually incorrect arguments makes me think you don't actually know anything about OLPC. It's worth educating yourself, they made some interesting and good choices. They also made, in my opinion, some TERRIBLE choices. Oh, and you said "lighting." Since the OLPC was hand-crank powered, it was often the brightest light source available to the families that got them. ...and on to your next point... I think that OLPC computers COULD HAVE HAD instructional videos, like Khan Academy, in how to improve water quality, preserve food, deal with pests and diseases and infections and wounds, reproductive health, building good shelters, identifying cloud patterns. Kind of like a US Army Field Survival Guide. All tailored to the local language and culture. In that respect, it could have been like air-dropping a Peace Corps volunteer with engineering know-how, into a community. Sadly, the OLPC project didn't address those problems.

cjbprime 13y ago
Hi, I worked at OLPC. You might not be aware that OLPC shipped offline Wikipedia snapshots (in an appropriate language) on each laptop, or that people made Khan Academy video packs that were downloadable to a "school server" with enough disk space, or that children who received OLPC laptops helped to translate Khan Academy videos to their own language: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2013/02/01/children-in-peru-write-their-own-history-on-wikipedia/ http://blog.printf.net/articles/2013/02/01/children-in-peru-... http://blog.laptop.org/2011/06/06/khan-academy-videos-and-olpc http://blog.laptop.org/2011/06/06/khan-academy-videos-and-ol... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khan_Academy http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khan_Academy So we did work on some of these issues, often successfully e.g. in the case of Wikipedia. We didn't have our small US team make instructional videos, though -- that doesn't seem wise (smacks of colonialism) or sustainable (OLPC laptops went to something like 30 countries). There are plenty of things we should have done better, though. The mesh network was a failure in most locations, and the "hand crank" power didn't work, though we were able to run laptops off single solar panels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITHNbOrPQyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITHNbOrPQyM
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  A Wikipedia snapshot is great, but it's not a textbook. It's a reference. If a community was going to get 100 laptops, I was hoping each laptop would get something like 1/100th (or 1/50th, for replication) of the videos. No "school server" necessary. But I guess that idea is dependent on the mesh network... It sucks that the mesh network and the hand crank didn't work. Did the rip-cord work? I'm glad the Khan Academy videos were getting translated, that's great. > our small US team I wish you'd figured out a way to go big. Something like enlisting the top 10 US universities for Education degrees to get all of their graduating students to each make a 30-minute educational video for OLPC as a senior project. Make it trivial to record videos on the OLPC itself, and trivial to share them with each other... Never mind me. I'm just an armchair quarterback. Thank you for working on it.
- adricnet 13y ago
  Hey CJB! Thanks for wading into this olpcnews FUD inspired mess ;) Glad to see you, even to rehash old arguments. Cheers, adric

cjbprime 13y ago

Hi, I worked at OLPC. You might not be aware that OLPC shipped offline Wikipedia snapshots (in an appropriate language) on each laptop, or that people made Khan Academy video packs that were downloadable to a "school server" with enough disk space, or that children who received OLPC laptops helped to translate Khan Academy videos to their own language: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2013/02/01/children-in-peru-write-their-own-history-on-wikipedia/ http://blog.printf.net/articles/2013/02/01/children-in-peru-... http://blog.laptop.org/2011/06/06/khan-academy-videos-and-olpc http://blog.laptop.org/2011/06/06/khan-academy-videos-and-ol... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khan_Academy http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Khan_Academy So we did work on some of these issues, often successfully e.g. in the case of Wikipedia. We didn't have our small US team make instructional videos, though -- that doesn't seem wise (smacks of colonialism) or sustainable (OLPC laptops went to something like 30 countries). There are plenty of things we should have done better, though. The mesh network was a failure in most locations, and the "hand crank" power didn't work, though we were able to run laptops off single solar panels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITHNbOrPQyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITHNbOrPQyM

VikingCoder 13y ago
A Wikipedia snapshot is great, but it's not a textbook. It's a reference. If a community was going to get 100 laptops, I was hoping each laptop would get something like 1/100th (or 1/50th, for replication) of the videos. No "school server" necessary. But I guess that idea is dependent on the mesh network... It sucks that the mesh network and the hand crank didn't work. Did the rip-cord work? I'm glad the Khan Academy videos were getting translated, that's great. > our small US team I wish you'd figured out a way to go big. Something like enlisting the top 10 US universities for Education degrees to get all of their graduating students to each make a 30-minute educational video for OLPC as a senior project. Make it trivial to record videos on the OLPC itself, and trivial to share them with each other... Never mind me. I'm just an armchair quarterback. Thank you for working on it.
adricnet 13y ago
Hey CJB! Thanks for wading into this olpcnews FUD inspired mess ;) Glad to see you, even to rehash old arguments. Cheers, adric