Negroponte: You really can give a kid a laptop

CNET   
August 10th, 2010

by Ina Fried

One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte said that in two years the company has managed to rebuff one of the biggest critiques of his effort–the idea that you can’t just give a kid a laptop connected to the Internet and walk away.

“You can, you actually can,” Negroponte said, speaking on a panel at the Techonomy conference. “Kids in the remotest places,” he said, “not only teach themselves how to read and write, but most importantly–and we found this in Peru–teach their parents to read or write.”

Negroponte said that is the point of his program. “I don’t have a better story.”

Story continues at CNET

Photo: “Fuse-Project”

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One Response to “Negroponte: You really can give a kid a laptop”

• yamaplos says:

  August 22, 2010 at 9:01 pm

  Any real teacher has gone through this many times, trying to get children to know when to use “can”, and “may”, and “should”, each in its proper circumstance.

  Dr. Negroponte is 100% correct in asserting that, indeed, you *can* give a kid a laptop and walk away.

  Alas, that you can do something does not mean you should do something – that is also an important lesson, too seldom learned.

  The evidence about giving kids laptops and walking away is overwhelmingly clear. It does not work.

  Even were it to work in most extraordinary circumstances just so to give Dr. Negroponte a couple real-life anecdotes and the benefit of the doubt, it is not reliable, reproducible, or so far noticed by anyone who has cared to report on objective data in the field.

  The role of good planning and teachers is so well established as an element for success, in the very few XO deployments that have cared to share objective results, Peru not being one of them, that Dr. Negroponte may not pretend otherwise.

  Of course he can, but then, he shouldn’t.

  Reply