[Olpc-za] OLPC makes Groklaw; good video of Ivan Krstic

[Morgan Collett]

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070621204444692

You have got to see this. It's the keynote talk by Ivan Krstic, OLPC's
Chief Security Architect, at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership
Council's Open Source Summit this week. Thanks to the wonderful Dan
Bricklin, we can watch the talk too. From this talk, I finally
understand fully what the project is for. It's not to design a cheaper
laptop. It's to create a a new way to educate. The laptop is a
surrogate brain, so if a kid is curious he or she can get on the
laptop and find out the answer. Is that not how children naturally
learn? They have questions and they ask for answers.

If we had been there, we could have seen one because he passed it
around. I so want to play with one. Why find a way to educate in a new
way? Because a billion + children in the world have no schooling or
inadequate schooling. Also speaking is Eben Eliason, a UI designer who
explains the software. The talk begins by Ivan saying that he gave a
more technical talk at Google about security, and if you'd like to see
that, it's here. Python is the "mother glue". He lists all the
components, all Open Source.

The laptop has a View Source key. Wow. If they're in a browser, they
see HTML; if running an application, they see source code. These
six-year-olds are going to figure out how to code. No wonder in all
the pictures, the kids are smiling. If you are a programmer, he says,
they still have a need for your help.