Scaling the Digital Divide

One Laptop Per Child, the organization that created a $100 computer for children in developing countries, has been redesigned. The new computer now looks like an e-book and costs $75 per device. The old design ran on free, open-source Linux, which gave children "the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content." But after pressure from Intel and potential buyers, OLPC ditched the open source software like they ditched the rubber, spill and dust-safe keyboard, in favor of a Microsoft Windows operating system.

Walter Bender, president of OLPC Software and Content until his resignation in April 08, stresses that these laptops are just the first steps in the effort to close the digital divide:

"None of us have been so naïve to think that a connected laptop is in itself a cure to the problems of poverty and ignorance; it is an agency through which children, their teachers, their families, and their communities can manufacture a cure. Computers are tools with which to think, sufficiently inexpensive to be used for work and play, drawing, writing, measuring, composing, editing, mathematical thinking, programming, communication, and sustainable economic development."

He advocates for the use of free and open software as a way to get closer to a constructionist learning model.

"Constructionism is a theory of learning pioneered by Seymour Papert. Papert first started developing the theory as a student of Piaget in the early 1960s. Over the course of more than 40 years of research and practice, Papert and his students found that children learn best when they are in the "active role of the designer and constructor" and that this happens best in a context where the child is "consciously engaged in constructing a public entity" - something "truly meaningful" for the learner. Further, the creation process and the end product must be shared with others in order for the full effects to take root."

It is frightening to think that a benevolent project with such potential for social change could be pressured to revert to becoming simply distributors of PowerPoint. I know, I know, that's not really fair on my part. Let's hope that the potential for children to become creators and to understand how their machines work will not be lost.