One Laptop Per Child in Nepal
eakprasad duwadi
One Laptop Per Child in Nepal
Mirage or Miracle
One day before One Laptop Per Child unit came with a slate like device, I had told my friends, "What they planned in New York is not suitable for children of Doti". Nonetheless, they made me feel it can be useful because dozens of children sought how to operate those laptops slowly.
The emerging world must leverage this resource by tapping into the children's innate capacities to learn, share, and create on their own. One Laptop Per Child is one of such programs which has been targeted to the children.
Nepal is no exception. Many laptops are showering this country shortly. One Laptop Per Child unit, Sanoo Sathi (Small Friend), a non-profit making organization has already started in Nepal with the mission to provide every children of Nepal with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves.
Like many other counterparts, Government of Nepal has been struggling to compete in a rapidly evolving, global information economy, hobbled by a vast and increasingly poor that cannot support it, much less contribute to the commonweal, because it lacks the tools to do so.
According to some educationist pundits, XO Laptops will bridge their desires now because XO embodies the theories of constructionism first developed by MIT Media Lab Professor Seymour Papert in the 1960s, and later elaborated upon by Alan Kay, complemented by the principles articulated by Nicholas Negroponte in his book, Being Digital.
Needless to say using the XO as both their window on the world, as well as a highly programmable tool for exploring it, children in Nepal will be opened to both illimitable knowledge and to their own creative and problem-solving potential. They claim that it is extensively field-tested and validated among some of the poorest and most remote populations on earth; constructionism emphasizes what Papert calls "learning learning" as the fundamental educational experience. A computer uniquely fosters learning learning by allowing children to "think about thinking", in ways that are otherwise impossible.
The laptop has wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a interconnect network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, and local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. Unlike the target $100, its current price is $125 which is twice the amount that GoN spends per child every year.
The emerging world must leverage laptop by tapping into the children's innate capacities to learn, share, and create on their own. The answer to that challenge is the XO laptop, a children's machine designed for "learning learning."
Undoubtedly, XOs are a wonderful way for all children to learn learning through independent interaction and exploration. However, there are many unanswered questions also. Whether XO displaces the teachers, if XO is fit only to urban kids, whether it kills the creativity of the children, etc are some of such impasses.
Thus, for XO laptop in Nepal, such software should be developed which makes it easy access to the kids living in the remote villages.
Eak Prasad Duwadi
eakprasa...@gmail.com
Mobile: 9741 157200
Land line: 4280988
This e-mail and any files transmitted with it may contain privileged or confidential information.If you received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender. Thank you for your compliance.