30 November 2007 at 6.19 pm · Filed under saving the world, social justice, the digital divide
since i heard about the one laptop per child program i’ve had reservations. my reservations concern things like – environmental impact of the machines, exporting a toxic western culture, survivability of the earth if we continue to build societies like my own that are all about ‘give give give’.. stupidly i hadn’t thought about things like – lets feed them before we give them a laptop.. i had assumed that those issues were being thought about by those running the program. apparently not. i found this article over at the pacific research institute website:
Let Them Eat Laptops
National Center for Policy Analysis
11.19.2007
National Center for Policy Analysis, November 19, 2007
Early reviews of One Laptop per Child’s (OLPC) finished product — the XO, or “$100 laptop” — extol its many innovative features. None of these reviews, however, mention what the XO fails to provide, such as a source of clean drinking water, abundant and nutritious food, or medicines for curable diseases, says Daniel Ballon, a Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.
Further, the project could actually hurt developing countries, says Ballon:
- OLPC’s business model actually requires substantial investment from the governments, diverting limited resources away from a population’s critical needs.
- The “$100 laptop,” which actually costs $188, can only be purchased at a minimum quantity of 250,000.
- OLPC targets countries like Nigeria, where one out of three children suffer from malnutrition; there a $50 million minimum investment could instead be used to feed more than a million children for an entire year.
Beyond exploitation, OLPC seems to feel entitled to a monopoly, shaming Intel’s rival low-cost laptop. Apparently the non-profit group fails to understand a basic market concept, says Ballon:
- In a free market, consumers enjoy the freedom to purchase those products that best suit their needs.
- When governments make purchasing decisions on behalf of the people, they rob the consumer of that freedom.
- If OLPC wished to compete in the free market, they would target their product directly to the consumer.
- By opting instead to lobby for government contracts, OLPC ensures that the XO remains immune from market forces.
If OLPC cannot wait for a laptop market to materialize or distribute the XO exclusively by donation, there are viable alternatives for realizing the project’s mission, says Ballon. The use of cell phones is skyrocketing in the developing world. By the end of next year, this market will include 50 percent of the world’s population. Mobile devices are an inexpensive, tested technology, and increasingly offer access to the Internet.
Source: Daniel Ballon, “Let Them Eat Laptops,” TCS Daily, November 7, 2007.
12 November 2007 at 1.10 pm · Filed under localization, my ideals, saving the world, social justice
i just returned from the american evaluation association national conference in baltimore. i went because i was presenting, and because it was a good chance to see my ma who lives just a few hours south in southwestern va. i didn’t attend many sessions because i was hanging with my ma, but the last session of the conference i did go to had to do with social justice and evaluation.
now, i’m a sucker for anything that says social justice. i’m a big ol social justice nerd – anything that may have to do with saving the world and stepping out of my white upper middle class highly educated privilege will get me to turn my head and put everything else down and pay attention.
the most interesting thing that i drew from the presentation were boxes, and how we put people in boxes on all the many different forms we fill out. the housing folks at cornell are trying to help people bust out of their boxes, trying to understand how people define themselves, or redefine themselves. because it isn’t until we understand this, that we can truly serve them. and yes, there is the whole political agenda thing that comes along with those boxes – believe me, i know there is a political agenda thing attached to those boxes, but i won’t go into that here.
so, what do others think? is a social justice agenda like this important for the field of instructional technology, or do we just move along and pretend that the status quo of how we define people suits us just fine? and then for me there is the question of balance – how do we know when we have gone far enough, and how do we know when we have gone too far? how do we know what the line between social justice and overreacting has been crossed? and how do we honour the fact that for many people that line is in such different places in the sand for so many different people.
this definitely ties back to discussions of religion in the classroom – this whole idea of understanding how people view themselves and making it all relevant and respectful.
i’m starting a collaboration with someone, and i’m headed home to eugene for the winter break. i’m definitely going to be talking about these subjects with folks back home, and maybe at some point i can find the balance, and i can understand more the questions i seek to have answered. until then, though, i’ll just continue to play with it all, and figure out someway to bring the idea of social justice into my work as much as possible, without – i hope – turning off those people who need to hear the messages most.
5 November 2007 at 4.11 pm · Filed under culture, discourse, saving the world, teaching
over the weekend a post was made on ITFORUM, an instructional technology listserv, posing questions about discussing religion in education and how to do it. happily a thoughtful and respectful conversation followed and the original poster summarized all the points at the end of the weekend on the list, and on his weblog.
now, this morning as people get back to work the list is being hit with a lot of unsubscriptions. it is suspected that the nature of the conversation has caused the unsubscriptions. personally, i think that before the suspicion is acted upon and that those of us who participated are scolded for taking part in such a discussion, we should follow up with those folks. but, lets pretend that the suspicion is correct – the question arises – does religion belong on the forum?
well, if you read the post, you’ll see that my opinion is that yes – discussions of religion do belong on a forum about education because religion is such an integral part of people’s lives. we live in a multicultural world and if we are designing and delivering instruction for that world religion is going to be a part of that. people bring perspectives influenced by religion to their learning, and if we are to instruct in meaningful ways we have to acknowledge that.
further there’s the whole world peace issue. i know, everyone says they want it. well, it seems as though today religion and world peace are intertwined – we can’t seem to have peace unless the world religions learn to live in peace. to me it seems as though that isn’t likely to happen if a bunch of educators can’t talk about religion, especially if that conversation is about – how do we talk about the topic. how are we going to educate if we can’t talk about seemingly controversial topics?
i think (the collective) we spend too much time dancing around the difficult topics because they are difficult. how can we truly make the world a better place if we rely on only politicians to do the difficult work of talking about these topics? how are we going to educate those young politicians into older thoughtful politicians who do the talking if we continue to skirt around these issues in forums like ITFORUM? in such a diverse world i think that if we skirt these issues we are only doing the world a disservice. we cannot continue to relegate these issues out of our offices and back to home. learning / educating is about discourse, its about tackling the hard problems, it’s about coming up with possible solutions. where can we start to tackle these issues? why can’t we talk about these issues on a forum like ITFORUM – a forum full of brilliant minds devoted to education of all ages and industries? to me, if we all want world peace, it’s got to start somewhere – we’ve got to stop brushing these topics under the rug, because they are going to come up over and over and over again, and at some point we’re going to have to look it squarely in the face. wouldn’t it be nice of a bunch of educators (define that word as you wish) could say – hey! we’ve figured out different ways to tackle these difficult problems? i think so.
I'm Brooke, a second year PhD student at Utah State University in Instructional Technology. My interests include digital resources, reuse and localization. Specifically I'm interested in the interplay between culture and reuse of oer's (open educational resources). How can we reuse instructional materials so that they are culturally relevant to users. What is culture? How do we define it in an educational setting? Is making something more culturally relevant more motivating and will that make it more instructionally effective? How can we quantify culture so that we can create processes to more easily adapt instructional resources for the complexities and depth of culture? It's a lifetime of work. 