Peruvian Teachers Begin OLPC Training 56
eldavojohn writes "Today was the first day that Peruvian teachers from remote villages began training to use the OLPC in their day-to-day activities. From the article: 'Success of OLPC now depends largely on frontline teachers and, of course, parents and kids. Peru's effort, if successful, would be a model for other nations. In the training now under way, teachers must become versed not only in how to operate and maintain the laptops, but also in how to do their jobs within a newly laptop-centric educational model. The laptops will contain some 115 books, including textbooks, novels, and poetry, as well as art and music programs, cameras, and other goodies. What many of these kids won't get is Internet access: about 90 percent of the villages lack it, and may not get it anytime soon.'"
Check out this video on TED... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/41 [ted.com]
Internet would help (Score:4, Insightful)
From the summary:
This is a serious drawback as the internet is a great source of information as well as a way to commercialize the computing efforts of these kids and (potentially) give them some good old capitalist reasons to study hard. Even so, while the lack of internet access is not as big of a drawback as it might be. These laptops will presumably still form their own mesh networks and connect to the school's XO server. I bet a lot of Windows using American kids wish their computers would allow them to network with friends nearly as easily.
Best of luck to these teachers. It is always hard being the guinea pig for a new technology and it will probably take a lot of dedication to alter their teaching methods to really take advantage of this new tool.
Re:OLPC lookin' good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Internet would help (Score:3, Insightful)
The American kid with a Windows PC or a cell phone doesn't seem to having much trouble networking with anyone.