[OLPC India] India Digest, Vol 22, Issue 19

[Marc Valentin]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Satish Jha <sjha at vsnl.com> wrote:
>> I am overwhelmed by the kind of support this project is receiving from
>> everyone.. from individuals to institutions and corporations and
>> governments.. they have all been trying to do their best..
>>
>> My corporate relations adviser informs me that an airline has agreed to give
>> a number of free tickets for the staff, a business house is willing to offer
>> office space and support for all the schools it runs and the children they
>> have run up in six figures and so on..
>>
>> However, our goal is to reach out to those who cannot help themselves.. And
>> our efforts are focused primarily in that direction.
>>
>> While individual initiatives greatly contribute to the cause, aggregating
>> them in an organized way may get a lot more out of them.
>>
>> We should also keep in mind that our production batch size is 50,000 at one
>> time and unless we can scale up, the program will have different kind of
>> management challenges.
>>
>> In this listserv, if we can focus on how to aggregate to large numbers, it
>> will be a great help indeed.
>
> Maybe what we need is a simple list or table of people who what small
> batches of XOs in their school, village, neighborhood etc., organized
> by location, etc. That way we can combine small batches into a larger
> order. If 50 schools of 1000 children each speak up, we get 50K. It
> could very well be a simple form that people fill out with all these
> details and contact info, potential donors (whether they have any or
> are seeking, etc).
>
> This could even scale worldwide...
>
> Thoughts?

I think it must be very exciting to see all the children of a school
roaming around with XO laptops but I don't see the educative aspect in
it. First, you need capable and motivated teachers, very difficult to
find. Second, children can easily share the laptops during the day,
they are not going to spend the whole day using the laptops, isn't it
? It depends on the quantity of divisions in the school but with one
division, 50 laptops are certainly enough so during a class using XO,
each child can have his own laptop. (That was the source of the
misunderstanding in a previous message : we have 35 laptops and 50
would be just perfect).
If you consider the budget aspect only : 1000 laptops means $200,000
only for the hardware. You still have to count the training and the
maintenance. It is a very big amount, too big for a 1000 children's
school. I know donations can come from abroad but local people will
feel you mis the point, the main problem in India is the lack of
infrastructures and the poor attendance of the teachers and the
students.
-marc-
http://www.OeuvreDesPains.org