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August 12, 2006
The $100 Misunderstanding.
In it's latest design prototype, the One Laptop per Child machine is now in green and white. The most notable items in this iteration are a very large pointing pad - the width of the keyboard, the large battery compartment, helping balance the system electronics containing screen.
The system finally reminded me of Apple's eMate with it's hypertext based Dylan operating system. The inclusion of WikiPedia / WikiMedia as part of the operating system makes me wonder if the point of including the wikipedia is more of a hypertext than narrative, more of a writing tool than a reading device, more of a learning tool than a teaching tool.
Knowing the inclinations of the constructivist approach of the project instigators (Negroponte, Papert, 2b1.org, etc), the impact will be "disruptive."
Image, OLPC Wiki, 7 August 2006. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Green_and_white_machine.jpg
OLPC Is Now Green (Again), Unnofficial One Laptop Per Child Website, 10 August 2006. http://www.olpcnews.com/photos/prototypes/olpc_is_now_green_ag.html
Nicholas Negroponte, 2B1, Being Digital Message 48. Message: 48, 6.1.97. http://web.media.mit.edu/~nicholas/Wired/WIRED5-06.html
Nicholas Negroponte, Hard Fun, Playing to Learn, Being Digital Book, Chapter 16. http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/ch16c03.htm
Seymour Papert, Constructivism vs. Instruction. Teaching vs. Learning. Video presentation, 1980s. http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html. [Video].
Posted by sjc at 2:11 PM