Why OLPC Struggles Against Educators, Big Business

afabbro writes "The current issue of BusinessWeek has an expansive article of the history of OLPC and why it has, to date, been a flop. Among the reasons: no preparation for the educational systems expected to use it, uncertain pedagogical theories, poor business management, competition from Microsoft/Intel, and no input from education professionals in designing the software. As BusinessWeek quotes one educational expert, 'The hackers took over,' and the applications are too complex for children to use. To date, 370,000 laptops have been shipped — a far cry from the original 150 million planned to be shipped by end of 2008."

Re:distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as i read that article a while back about the guy who complained there wasn't a decent distribution system in place I knew it was doomed[...]Hackers think it just takes code.

Not to push the point, but the guy you are talking about is Ivan Krstic, one of the OLPC hackers, and he was complaining about the failure of the project's administration to put a distribution system in place. Which shows the hackers wanted the project to succeed as much as anyone and were under no illusions that code would fix everything. Blaming the hackers for a lack of a distribution system is silly.

Read the non-print version for photos

[greenfield]

Check out the non-print version [businessweek.com] if you would like to see photos of the XO laptop. Of course, while you will also have advertisements, the content is nicely formatted for the screen.

I often wonder why Slashdot posts links to a version of the article formatted for printing rather than the main article.

Re:It was predictable

[clang_jangle]

From the first paragraph in TFA (which you clearly didn't bother to read):

One by one, the children ran into the school yard, lining up in a grassy field next to a low-slung building of classrooms topped by a rusty steel roof. Most of these children in Luquia, a tiny, impoverished town 13,200 feet above sea level in the Peruvian Andes, wore ragged navy-blue uniforms, and many had not bathed in days. Their small adobe homes have dirt floors, no running water, and no bathrooms. They share sleeping space with dozens of squeaking guinea pigs, which scamper underfoot before becoming the family's rare meal of meat.

Sounds to me like you shouldn't call me a troll, troll.

too soon to write off as failure

[bugs2squash]

I have an XO - It has lots of flaws.

But my son loves it, he's 6 and he loves playing sim city, even when I point out that his city has zero population and he clearly does not know what tax is. He will learn about taxes all too soon and in the mean time, he will learn about computing organically. I'm pleased that he has a chance to do so without being force fed "only one way to do things".

And I'm sure the kid who thought the internet was inside the OLPC has learned a lot through having an XO too.

Would there even be a classmate PC if not for XO. Would classmate have been as good as it is if XO and the new OLPC had not pointed the way for how all of these devices could be better. Will the next generation of XO and classmate and ee-whatever be better yet next time around. YBY sweet fat A.

Seems to me that Negroponte has achieved a great deal, and I suspect that there's a lot more to come and that the children are the winners.

I and many believe firmly that widespread education is a dire need as well as sustenance, and that the former could help provide the latter in years to come.

I wouldn't write Negroponte or OLPC off yet, the OLPC foundation (and the Intel classmate team, for what they do) has my sincere thanks.

Re:Read the non-print version for photos

[Angry Rooster]

"I often wonder why Slashdot posts links to a version of the article formatted for printing rather than the main article." Because any time they link to the main article, everyone complains that they should link to the print version to avoid ads and multi-page crappiness. - Rooster

Not a "better mousetrap" - there IS a strong why

[tucuxi]

The /why/ is curiosity. Kids have lots of it, but you tend to lose it over time as they get slapped in the hand and get told by adults to get serious. There's no telling to the number of great engineers (or doctors, or artists, or what-have-you) that we missed out due to stifled curiosity.

If you have a better way to build a mousetrap, build it and see if people will buy it. Trying to tell them they need it before you build one is ... well, not how things work really.

The OLPC offers unlimited tinkering and very deep and broad educational (education as in building mental models of things and learning to learn, not as in rote memorization) experience for kids, and can help them learn to read and write and communicate and explore the 'net. It is not "a better mousetrap" - there was no mousetrap before, unless you are referring to the school itself as the mousetrap. And OLPC does not intend to displace schools.

Ok, the business model may not be too sound (but the entry of the ClassMate and 3$ Microsoft software bundles can be seen as partial successes - if the goal is affordable computing to 3rd world kids, things look much brighter than a few years ago). Yes, Negroponte is not a finance magician, and I guess he has learnt the hard way that large corporations do not always place developing nations before shareholder value - that's what PR is for, anyway.

How about the Wall Street Journal?

[Odder]

The death of OLPC is obviously Intel and M$'s fault. Executives from both companies derided the device as a "toy" and failure before it was designed and then did everything possible to kill it. Here are the the short version [theinquirer.net] and detailed original [wsj.com] accusation stories. Intel kept up the FUD war [slashdot.org], destroying sales that had been committed before the device was complete. Their employees even ran a hostile news site to make bad press [slashdot.org].

Re:How about the Wall Street Journal?

[Macthorpe]

It's not 'obvious' at all. I would personally blame the project's inability to deliver promised units, and the fact that those who get the chance to compare the Classmate to the XO often plump for the former unit. From the WSJ article you linked to:

"The Intel machine is a lot better than the OLPC," says Mohamed Bani, who chairs Libya's technical advisory committee but doesn't have the final say on buying laptops. "I don't want my country to be a junkyard for these machines."

Executives from both companies derided the device as a "toy" and failure before it was designed and then did everything possible to kill it.

I would imagine that Intel putting in a sales policy preventing their staff from directly comparing their product to the XO would strongly refute that allegation.

Their employees even ran a hostile news site to make bad press.

I assume you're talking about OLPC News, [olpcnews.com] a site which has remained suprisingly neutral - unless you want to pick an article out of there which is provably false and designed to create your precious 'FUD'. There's plenty of content there for people on both sides of the fence.