Nicholas Negroponte, ex-head of MIT media labs and the driving force behind OLPC is claiming that his brainchild, the $100 laptop, is as vital to a child as a pencil. After a rash of recent press attacking the fundamentals of his project, Negroponte tagged the following soundbite to his response to those who doubt the project’s fundamental premises:
“I wonder if you would advocate one pencil per classroom, or a special room for all pencils, called a ‘writing room’.“
This is not the first time that his line has been trotted out by the OLPC. I came across this first whilst reading the FAQ section of their website:
Continue reading ‘$100 laptop is not a pencil’
Wow, more Mobile computer classrooms (MIU)… Somehow I missed a project run by Sun Microsystems. There’s not a lot about it on the page i found here and all the links are dead, however it seems fairly recent (0705 in the link could mean July 05?). I’ve emailed and will post more when I know more. Having said that, I’ve just found this link at Sun about the project expanding into Paraguay. Hmm, maybe I should persue this further.
UPDATE: The project is running and the page I linked to has been fixed. Here are a couple of links to videos of the “Sun Ray Bus”:
Low Bandwidth (Real Media)
High Bandwidth (Real Media)
It has been a while since I really thought about my idea to create a mobile computing classroom and I spent a bit of time online today and actually found a mobile computer lab for sale in the US.
Months have passed since I talked here about my mobile internet unit (MIU) idea, so I thought I’d update you a bit. As yet, the plans remain… plans. I contacted a number of people who were involved in a similar project in Malaysia and they have been keen to encourage me to look at the idea further. I still haven’t been able to fully cost how much a unit would cost and so today I set about searching the web for more information to help me get a bit closer to a final figure. The other day in town, I saw a huge truck that was being used as a mobile phone shop. I’m trying to get hold of the owner of the business to have a chat about it, but to no avail. I can’t seem to track him down. I’ll try and get a pic of the truck soon though as its exactly what I imagined the MIU would look like and I’m keen for others to see it.
Continue reading ‘Mobile Internet Unit available for sale’