Interview / Report
Digital Learning – One Laptop per Child (OLPC) for only $100
Nicholas Negroponte interviewed by Erwin Rigo, originally published in ELT Journal | Oxford Academic, November 18th, 2005
On Friday, November 18th, 2005, Erwin Rigo (accompanied by one student, Simon Mayr), who had been invited to present their e-learning project carried out at the HTL Rankweil / Austria, seized the opportunity to interview Nicholas Negroponte at the WORLD SUMMIT in Tunis.
Undoubtedly the highlight at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis was the first official presentation of the recently developed laptop with a crank. With this crank electricity can be generated, each minute of turning provides ten minutes of operating without a power cord. The swivelling seven-inch screen can be used for basic word processing, Internet and communications. It has no hard drive, instead using flash memory like that in a digital camera. This breathtaking technical innovation might improve education, reaching the remotest corners of this world within less than five years!
Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Media Lab at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where this brainwave has been developed, proudly presented a prototype laptop designed for children to enable them to learn every sort of subject without teachers. His message has a seductive simplicity. As he puts it in the interview: “Children are your most precious resource, and they can do a lot of self-learning and peer-to-peer teaching. Bingo. End of story.”
Negroponte’s non-profit project has already raised a total of $10 million (Rupert Murdoch 2, Google 2, etc.), technology tycoons like Bill Gates, Michael Dell etc. are talking to him about his plan to distribute this device in the third world, as they want to be involved too. The battle will be between using Microsoft software or free open-source alternatives that Negroponte favours. The question that remains to be answered is: How can countries where most schools don’t even have textbooks, afford Internet access? Will shareware be the solution to it?
Negroponte’s answer to it was: “We hope that by the end of 2007 five to ten million units will be sold and the profit made will be passed on to the consumers. We expect it will be available for maybe $60 by then. So far, the Brazilian President has agreed to buy a million, others are lining up.”
When the question of censorship of unwanted information on the Internet was discussed, he said: “This won’t pose a problem as the customers won’t be parents, but governments. They can install filters that make viewing and downloading of what they consider dangerous material impossible.”
This however means that every society can make intelligent use of it and apply this technological advancement to their own benefit, to increase the standard of education of all, providing this is what they want. Will this technological gadget eventually pave the way for democracy in cultures without any tradition in this respect?
Erwin Rigo, English teacher at the HTL Rankweil, invited to the summit by the Austrian Government with his project: “Bridging the Digital Gap”, portrayed by one student.