Nicholas Negroponte is the founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) http://www.laptop.org established to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves. OLPC was founded by Nicholas Negroponte with a core of Media Lab veterans, but quickly expanded to include a wide range of exceptionally talented and dedicated people from academia as well as industry, the arts, business, and the open-source community.
The scheme is hoping to put low-cost computers into the hands of people in developing countries. Ultimately the project's backers hope the machines could sell for as little as $100 (£55). Test machines are expected to reach children in February as the project builds towards a more formal launch.
Ask any primary school head in any corner of the world and they will probably tell you that’s a good idea. Like Nicholas, I think the idea that school children are still being encouraged to learn through Microsoft products is ridiculous. Instead of finding new ways to share, communicate and express themselves, children are being spoon-fed their applications. And let’s be honest, these kids are not going to be using spreadsheets and word processors by the time they hit work. It’s only out of touch politicians that could possibly still think that they will.
Perhaps the $100 laptop and Encanvas will herald in a new way of educating children, where IT is absolutely embedded into the coursework of children. Encanvas provides a much better way of librating children from the straight-jacket of corporate business applications – because, using Encanvas, children can fashion their own applications in a way that embraces their personal creativity. Blending Encanvas with the $100 dollar laptop could be the next big step in embedding IT into the class-room across the world.
Good job Nicholas!
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