$100 Laptop for Every Kid?
I bookmarked an article in delicious titled
"Can $100 Laptops Save the World?" and will like to follow up with a short comment. The article reports that Nick Negroponte's idea of helping to bridge the digital divide is to give $100 laptops to poor kids around the globe. I see this as a great idea, especially as these laptops will not ran on electricity (which is unavailable in most parts of the world).
The only problem I have with interventions of this nature is that we often think that the issue of the digital divide is only about access to digital resources. There are a lot more deep seated socio-economic factors that all culminate in making and keeping this divide, and not until all these issues are addressed, adhoc measures will only probably widen the divide further. I can bet that currently, there are some schools in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa now that have well-equipped computer labs and internet connections, but are not being patronized by the kids. Why? Over 80% of the kids are out in the streets and markets working to earn a living as well as support their families. What such kids will do with a laptop is anybody's guess.
So whilst we wish that Negroponte realizes his ambition, it is my prayer that this venture does not go exacerbate the divide by making the few comfortable kids benefit whilst the majority are left behind.
Still on Issue Entrepreneurship
For my Issue Entrepreneurship, I had this huge ambition of creating an online community that will bring science teachers and other educators together to share ideas, but having realized that it will not be very feasible, I opted for joining an appropriate community which is already in existence. One community I found interesting is MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
http://www.merlot.org.
MERLOT is as a collaborative effort of a consortium of higher education institutions and its strategic goal is to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by increasing the quantity and quality of peer reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed courses. Disciplines covered include The Arts, Business, Education, Humanities, Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology and the Social Sciences.
Membership of MERLOT allows one to:
- Contribute learning materials.
- Make comments about a learning resource you've used.
- Add an assignment to a learning material.
- Develop a personal profile to help others in your community know more about you.
- Create your own personal collection of learning resources.
- Become a peer reviewer of the learning materials in your discipline
- Get access to great ideas to help you in both online and classroom teaching
I have since become a member of MERLOT. In the meantime I am starting a wiki in which I will catalogue all my activities within this online community. I hope to contact as many science educators as possible and urge them to let us form a community within (and ultimately outside) MERLOT. I just want to see how far I can go with this.
