OLPC article in Business Week

[Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat]

Summary from Slashdot.org

"The current issue of BusinessWeek has an expansive article of the
history of OLPC and why it has, to date, been a flop. Among the
reasons: no preparation for the educational systems expected to use
it, uncertain pedagogical theories, poor business management,
competition from Microsoft/Intel, and no input from education
professionals in designing the software. As BusinessWeek quotes one
educational expert, 'The hackers took over,' and the applications are
too complex for children to use. To date, 370,000 laptops have been
shipped — a far cry from the original 150 million planned to be
shipped by end of 2008."

Full Article:

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_24/b4088048125608.htm

--
=======================
Arnan (Roger) Sipitakiat

Faculty & Researcher
Dept. Computer Engineering
Chiang Mai University
Muang, Chiang Mai, 50200
Thailand
Tel. +66.53.94.2024 Ext 105
FAX. +66.53.94.2072
=======================

[Hugh Thaweesak Koanantakool]

This is not good for the future of OLPC. For OLPC-Thailand, it is a small
movement, exploratory and a learning process on education. At least OLPC
(plus some facilitation) can induce school children to be very creative and
eager to learn. Evaluating Sugar environment is probably a different story,
but OLPC is of a disadvantage if we want to introduce personal computing to
secondary school kids, especially those who has been using Windows.

Thaweesak

[Hugh Thaweesak Koanantakool]

Totally agree with you, Walter.
In the open world, the best thing for Sugar is to make it available on many
other hardware platforms. In my opinion, Sugar has more consideration to
kids more than Windows. We all know that Windows is orientated to business.
I am willing to install Sugar on my mainstream laptop any time that it is
available.

Thaweesak.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter Bender" <walter...@gmail.com>
To: "Hugh Thaweesak Koanantakool" <h...@nectec.or.th>
Cc: "ES_AParon" <par...@cscoms.com>; <olpc-t...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 04:38
Subject: Re: [OLPC-TH] Re: OLPC article in Business Week

>I don't see any down side in the fact that Sugar is going to be
> available on more hardware than the XO-1 laptop from OLPC. At the same
> time, I hope that the desire to introduce personal computing to
> secondary school kids doesn't diminish the desire to introduce it to
> elementary school kids.
>
> -walter