I traveled to Nicaragua this June to report a piece on the One Laptop Per Child project, which is published in the current issue of Fast Company.
I also gave a presentation on what I found at Jon Kolko’s/ Austin Center For Design’s “Design Extravaganza” a really fun little conference a couple of weeks ago.
The case study of OLPC really intrigues me and even after months of research, talking to all the principals in the organization and seeing it in action, I still don’t completely know what to think. ON the one hand, it’s a cautionary tale about overpromising and underdelivering on the role of technology in education. On the other hand, it’s an inspirational achievement. You have to admire Negroponte and his team for sticking to their principles of open source IT tools without fixed curricula which in the best of scenarios, allow for true self-directed learning and exploration. It’s such an intuitively appealing idea, even if it doesn’t always work.
<iframe src=”http://player.vimeo.com/video/51355807?title=1&byline=1&portrait=1″ width=”500″ height=”375″ frameborder=”0″ webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe> <p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/51355807″>AC4D – Design Extravaganza – Anya Kamenetz</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/ac4d”>AC4D</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
