BBC on OLPC ($100 Laptop Project)
The One Laptop per Child project received positive coverage in the BBC news today.
More countries than I realized have joined the project, and they represent a wide geographic distribution: “The first countries to sign up to buying the machine include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.”
Project founder Nicholas Negroponte was quoted, saying “I have to laugh when people refer to XO as a weak or crippled machine and how kids should get a ‘real’ one,” Mr Negroponte told AP.
“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.”
And, further:
“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,” Mr Negroponte said.
“I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools.”
The XO’s operating system has abandoned the old UI paradigm of files and folders, instead moving to a wiki-like organizational structure based around the user’s “journal” in which all his or her data is stored. Having seen the trouble many users have with the computer folder metaphor, I am very interested in how the journal concept will fare, and I expect it to do well.