Photo:http://laptop.org
“Underneath this toy is the most sophisticated laptop in the world, whose primary goal is to transform education in the world.”
Matt Keller can’t hide his enthusiasm when he talks about this gadget - a little green laptop that looks like a Mattel product labelled with a distinctive X and O.
Part toy, part educational revolution, the “Green Machine” as it’s affectionately known, is the embodiment of what could be one of the most ambitious educational projects to have emerged in the technological age.
Matt Keller is part of an extraordinary project called One Laptop Per Child which is setting out to tackle the global problems of poor education, poverty and conflict in a whole new way.
There are nearly two million of these laptops in circulation around the world - from Rwanda to Argentina, as well as conflict zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. OLPC works with governments and the ultimate goal is to try to equip every primary school age child living in a developing country with a rugged, low cost, low powered laptop that they can claim as their own. The laptops cost around US$100, are designed to withstand dust, rough treatment and handling by children who’ve never seen anything more sophisticated than a pencil before.
“Since a lot of our kids don’t really have a school and they are outside or under a tree, we designed it, so you can read this laptop like a book in the direct sunlight – the only computer in the world that can do that. It can be charged with solar energy or a hand crank, and it has a mesh system that allows children to connect to each other without access to the internet. So they can work on projects together and learn collectively.”
Photo:http://laptop.org
Keller works on the OLPC project in Afghanistan where 5000 laptops have been distributed. He hopes that within the next two to three years, that number will rise to four million.
Afghanistan has its own unique problems stemming from a war that’s spanned three generations, where girls are devalued, and where poverty, corruption, inefficient government rule the day. But Keller believes that their little laptop could be the key to change all that.
Photo:http://laptop.org
“In most parts of the world, children are just not being taught well – they’re rote learning, not thinking for themselves.”
The laptop has been especially designed for children and encourages them to play games, make stories, invent code to solve problems – in short, it teaches them to think and to problem-solve on their own steam.
According to Keller, this little machine could accomplish what billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and foreign personnel haven’t managed to do – make a real, long lasting change in a country that’s in dire need of it.
Interview with Matt Keller
