[Robotgroup] FW: [Robotics] Low-cost laptop update

[Betty]

I like the part where he says kids should be using computers for "making
things" not learning boring office uses.

Happy New Year,
Betty

-----Original Message-----

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Forget windows, folders and boxes that pop up with 
text. When students in Thailand, Libya and other developing countries 
get their $150 computers from the One Laptop Per Child project in 2007, 
their experience will be unlike anything on standard PCs.

For most of these children the XO machine, as it's called, likely will 
be the first computer they've ever used. Because the students have no 
expectations for what PCs should be like, the laptop's creators started 
from scratch in designing a user interface they figured would be 
intuitive for children.

The result is as unusual as - but possibly even riskier than - other 
much-debated aspects of the machine, such as its economics and 
distinctive hand-pulled mechanism for charging its battery. (XO has been 
known as the $100 laptop because of the ultra-low cost its creators 
eventually hope to achieve through mass production.)


But the main design motive was the project's goal of stimulating 
education better than previous computer endeavors have. Nicholas 
Negroponte, who launched the project at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology's Media Lab two years ago before spinning One Laptop into a 
separate nonprofit, said he deliberately wanted to avoid giving children 
computers they might someday use in an office.

"In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary 
school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the 
children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint," 
Negroponte wrote in an e-mail interview. "I consider that criminal, 
because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, 
sharing, not running office automation tools."

To that end, folders are not the organizing metaphor on these machines, 
unlike most computers since Apple Computer Inc. launched the first Mac 
in 1984. The knock on folders is that they force users to remember where 
they stored their information rather than what they used it for.

Instead, the XO machines are organized around a "journal," an 
automatically generated log of everything the user has done on the 
laptop. Students can review their journals to see their work and 
retrieve files created or altered in those sessions.

Despite these school-focused frameworks, its creators bristle at any 
suggestion XO is a mere toy. A wide range of programs can run on it, 
including a Web browser, a word processor and an RSS reader - the 
software that delivers blog updates to information junkies.

The computer also has features anyone would love, notably a built-in 
camera and a color display that converts to monochrome so it's easier to 
see in sunlight.

"I have to laugh when people refer to XO as a weak or crippled machine 
and how kids should get a `real' one," Negroponte wrote. "Trust me, I 
will give up my real one very soon and use only XO. It will be far 
better, in many new and important ways."

Wayan Vota, who launched the OLPCNews.com blog to monitor the project's 
development because he is skeptical it can achieve its aims, called 
Sugar "amazing - a beautiful redesign."

"It doesn't feel like Linux. It doesn't feel like Windows. It doesn't 
feel like Apple," said Vota, who is director of Geekcorps, an 
organization that facilitates technology volunteers in developing 
countries. He emphasized that his opinions were his own and not on 
behalf of Geekcorps.

"I'm just impressed they built a new (user interface) that is different 
and hopefully better than anything we have today," he said. But he 
added: "Granted, I'm not a child. I don't know if it's going to be 
intuitive to children."


on a related side-note, Seymour Papert, who was heavily involved in the 
project has now been moved to a US facility after his accident in Hanoi.

http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196701
963&articleID=196701963&sa_type=&section=industries&subSection=News+By+Verti
cal+Industry
Seymour Papert, Injured In Vietnam, Now In Intensive Care In Massachusetts

Seymour Papert, the MIT professor who was struck by a motorbike in 
Vietnam earlier this month, was in intensive care Tuesday in 
Massachusetts General Hospital after being airlifted from Hanoi.

Just hours before the accident on a busy Hanoi street, Papert, 78, had 
been describing how to build a computer model of Hanoi's jammed streets. 
According to reports from colleagues attending a mathematics meeting in 
the Vietnamese capital, Papert looked at Hanoi's chaotic traffic grid as 
a possible instance of his "emergent behavior" work; the traffic 
patterns were considered an example of large groups that follow simple 
rules without a central leader, but then spontaneously evolve solutions.

Papert, who co-founded the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, has also 
been a major figure in the One Laptop Per Child program.

According to a bulletin on the MIT Media Lab's Web page, Papert was 
airlifted to the United States on Dec. 18 and has been in a stable 
condition in the intensive care unit ever since.

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2006/12/645110/

After becoming unconscious, Professor Papert was transferred to the 
Vietnam - France Hospital for emergency aid. The professor remains in a 
dangerous situation.

In the latest news, Professor Papert has been carried back to the US for 
further treatment.
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