[Its.an.education.project] Sugar on the EEE PC

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Friday 09 May 2008 9:33:26 pm Eben Eliason wrote:
> > Even if you were to provide an computer exclusively to each child, they
> > are unlikely to be in use all day long. Programmers in IT companies may
> > spend their whole day before a computer, but children do have a life
> > beyond the keyboard :-).
>
> You bring up two points both of which, I feel, support the goals of
> OLPC and Sugar.  First, child ownership ensures that the kids get to
> take the laptops /home/ with them.
Access to computing should not be confused with ownership of laptops. Ask 
anyone who used a laptop for more than a few hours away from a power 
socket :-).

For many kids, "home" is a single room affair. They spend most of their waking 
hours in the outdoors.  "I live in a very big house where the sky is the 
roof", joked a kid. Ownership per se means nothing to them.   What they need 
is access to a learning environment. Often, a village school is the only 
place where they can learn.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xETrXmnRDco for a reality check.

Education can happen even on entry level laptops in such schools. The higher 
cost could be offset by sharing one laptop between two kids (OLP2C!).

Subbu