Page | 3
Could Participatory Design have saved the One Laptopper Child project?
Abstract
This review discusses the One Laptop per Child project and its XO laptop. On the 8
th
of January2008, OLPC reduced their annual budget of $12million to a mere $5 million due partly tocompetition, and the decline of the dollar. In this report, questions are raised into possible othercauses for OLPC’s losses. Earlier user evaluation and participatory design with potential users ofthe XO would have enabled the OLPC to produce realistic XO cost and volume predictions savingunnecessary criticism and expenditure. Despite this, the XO is revealed as a high tech machineproduced to a low price, which is not only playful but excels itself as a learning tool for children.
1.0 Mission of One Laptop per Child
The OLPC is a charity set up with the aim
“To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children”
. They intend to do this by designing and selling the XO laptop, a children’scomputer designed for
“learning learning.”
[18]
1.1 Background
“The solution to poverty, peace, environment is education”
[35] Nicholas Negroponte
This bold statement portrays the idea that education is vital to countries’ development.Currently in most less-economically developed countries, children are taught to read and write in aPedagogical
“teacher led”
fashion. Although effective, this method may not work with all students.Some find it boring and see no need for learning to read and write other than the perceivedindoctrinated belief that in the future it will be useful. [34] After all, children learn to walk and talkfrom a very early age with little help. They gain this knowledge through interaction and feedback.[18] This theory of
“constructivism”
led to studies into whether the system could be re-createdvirtually with computers, helping children with
“thinking about thinking”
. [35, 37]To begin with, these studies were in the form of computer programming. The child wouldwrite a computer programme, using simple commands, from this; they would receive feedbackcreating an interest, and a want to learn. [20, 37]
Leave a Comment