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| Thread ID: 71149 | 2006-07-27 23:34:00 | India rejects One Laptop Per Child | Strommer (42) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 474197 | 2006-07-27 23:34:00 | Last year here on PF1, the topic of cheap laptops for school children in third world countries was debated. I think the general consensus was that it was not a good idea, seeing that there were plenty of other more pressing problems to be dealt with in the underdeveloped countries. I guess the government officials in India were reading :D our PF1 thread - have a read below, from Electric News. (www.enn.ie) India has decided against getting involved in Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child scheme which aims to provide kids in developing countries with a simple USD100 machine. The success of the (OLPC) project depends on support, and big orders, from governments. The loss of such a potentially huge and relatively technically sophisticated market will be a serious blow. The Indian Ministry of Education dismissed the laptop as "pedagogically suspect". Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee said: "We cannot visualise a situation for decades when we can go beyond the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools." Banerjee told the Hindu: "We do not think that the idea of Prof Negroponte is mature enough to be taken seriously at this stage and no major country is presently following this. Even inside America, there is not much enthusiasm about this." OLPC's original schedule was to deliver machines by the end of 2006, but it will not start production until it has received orders, and payment, for between five and ten million machines. But in better news it also emerged earlier this month that Nigeria is ordering one million machines.The idea is backed by AMD, Google, MIT, Nortel and Red Hat. ----------------------- Comments about Nigeria ? :lol: FYI : PEDAGOGY 1. The art or profession of teaching. 2. Preparatory training or instruction. |
Strommer (42) | ||
| 474198 | 2006-07-28 00:49:00 | On the surface, this could embrace a lot of knee-jerking by social philanthropists and social change leeches too . I don't want to go into details of them right now, but I want to make my own comment about computers and their effect on the young mind . Like books and chalkboards and pencils and paper, round-pointed scissors and sandbox play time, I believe there's a time and a place for even the most rudimentary devices of education . Feeling that computers are so easily useable by children for things non-educational and commercially-driven, I feel they are ill prepared to reason what's upbuilding and just downright corruptive . True, the computer is singly a very powerful tool for the geometrics of the world and workplace, but it has a rather limited value on a child-by-child form of non-tutored scolastics . If the atmosphere of education is the primary goal for presenting every child with their own window on the world, then that's a noble thing . I don't however feel that there will be enough control of- and steering by- teachers or proctors who espy the childrens' morals as high ground . Availability or lack of teachers has already been commented upon by these countries, and as such I feel letting a child loose with a laptop on the web will be disasterous . Home-studies are also not a viable option . . . children will not get much interface with parents who are computer illiterate and cannot know ways to monitor or correct misuse by their charges . Left to ourselves (and aren't we all not so self-regulating?), they would just wind up doing things non-educational unless pornography and games are now so licensed . Humans go for the quick thrill, and computers are just another tool to feed a libido with new unlimited access . Even though the world is spinning faster and faster, it might just be a better idea to level the playing field a little earthwide (read: all schools and children) by moving more towards the basic precepts of education and at a later time and date, move them into the tech fields so rife with corruption and malevolence when they are better prepared for it . |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 474199 | 2006-07-28 04:04:00 | Negroponte is a techno-freak. He used to write for Wired magazine. That magazine presents the impractical dreams of techno-freaks as if they are real, and will inevitably be part of everyday life. Russell Brown had an article in The Listener last week in this vein. | Graham L (2) | ||
| 474200 | 2006-07-28 06:27:00 | Maybe his mom was scared by a Popular Mechanics magazine that fortold we'd have personal flying cars for commuting and that nuclear energy would be so cheap that we'd get it for free in the 20th century. | SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 474201 | 2006-07-28 06:33:00 | there was a news article about 'tablets' in nz primary schools recently, in classes of kids who were about 6 years old or so . It showed the kids 'painting' using these tablets apparently they cost $2500 each, (I *think* i remembered that cost correctly) . . . . . and they were lookin at putting them into EVERY childs hands within a few years at a cost of around $500million . . . . . . . . . well it wont suprize me if they do . . . . new zealand is surely a place of hairbrained stupidity at times . These kids dont need some fancy electronic thingy to draw pics on they can happily use paper and paints, in fact many preferred that method . What a silly waste of money there's plenty of other stuff the kids and society in general needs much more urgently than those silly toys . . . . . . they dont actually do anything to improve kids education in anyway at all . . . . . . . . |
drcspy (146) | ||
| 474202 | 2006-07-28 10:42:00 | there was a news article about 'tablets' in nz primary schools recently, in classes of kids who were about 6 years old or so. It showed the kids 'painting' using these tablets apparently they cost $2500 each, ...What a silly waste of money there's plenty of other stuff the kids and society in general needs much more urgently than those silly toys......they dont actually do anything to improve kids education in anyway at all........ Beetle? WHERE is Beetle???? |
Strommer (42) | ||
| 474203 | 2006-07-28 11:00:00 | A slight deviation here from the intended topic. It says on the webpage "The Register and its contents are copyright 2006 Situation Publishing", does this still mean that the honourable Steve_L still allowed to copy and paste the texts from it, despite the copyright info? Although you have quoted the URL source, but all the same, you did not ask for ElectricNews.net's permission, did you (no arrogance meant, just pure curiosity and inquisitiveness)? Quite recently, I was made aware of the seriousness of plagiarism when my school's webmaster e-mailed me that I couldn't use a particular Garfield illustration on the webpage. She said that it is belonged to Jim Davis, which is linked to some big corporation. Although I had inserted the source URL <!-- invisibly -->, I don't think that's sufficient for her. Cheers :) |
Renmoo (66) | ||
| 474204 | 2006-07-28 18:47:00 | I plead guilty to doing just what you accuse . :lol: I, however think, that putting a URL in the page is OK for international law, as no actual text is sent or c/p'd . If one were to click on the URL and download the site, that appears to be in the spirit of the law, if not the actual intent . Some times, I c/p and add the writer's credits, which I feel is also in the spirit of the law, although it gets to the shady side . Many, if not most times, I re-orginize the text and add or delete some of the material for my own personal reasons . . . . . . maybe just to stack the deck a little . . . but truthfully although the concept of the article remains intact, I have editorialized it and used on-line corrections in it to a non-recognisable form as well as I can . Quotations, as far as I can tell, are also OK if they are not overly-done and don't grab the whole text as it was originally presented . |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 474205 | 2006-07-29 02:53:00 | The term is "fair use". That covers using a quotation from a work, often as part of a discussion (review, etc) of the work. Cutting and pasting the whole work, even with attribution, is not permissible without explicit permission from the owner of the copyright. (There's no need for a "copyright <so and so>" with date; copyright exists by virtue of the original publication). James's example of a Garfield cartoon is quite simply not allowed. It's hard to "quote" from a cartoon. You either show the whole thing, or none. And syndicated cartoons carry explicit copyright notices, as a reminder/warning, even though it's not needed. | Graham L (2) | ||
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