One Laptop Per Child

I think that one of the best ways to help people is to provide them with the ability to help themselves. When people are motivated to do something to better their lives, and they have the ability to do so, they feel empowered and in control. In developing countries, one of the best things that you can do to build a good foundation for the future is education.

In this blog post I’m going to talk about change that’s not going to happen overnight. This change is going to take a while, but it is irreversible change in the right direction.

Education is expensive. It takes a lot of resources, such as different books for different subjects, materials to write and draw with, and buildings in which to house it all. These are just a few of the things that kids need in order to learn.

In order for these kids to learn as much as possible, they need access to a lot of information that traditionally wouldn’t be available to them. These kids don’t travel or watch TV. They don’t have access to all the fancy electronics that even the poor kids in first world countries have access to. How, then, are they going to learn about the rest of the world? I think that the XO laptop is one answer to this question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM33EEAszHA

One of the things that they didn’t mention in the video is that the holes in the laptop are meant to attach a strap to. This makes the laptop easy to carry around. It’s a light laptop too, weighing just 3.5 pounds. A laptop this light is not going to be a burden for the child to carry around with them.

This laptop has built-in wireless for easy internet access. It also has a painting program, and another art program that the child uses by programming commands into the computer. The computer takes these commands and creates complex and colorful art while the child watches. Each time the child changes a command, the artwork comes out differently.

The children can also chat with other laptop users in the area and play games with and against each other. There are educational programs and a program that tracks RSS feeds for the child. There are two music programs on the computer, one that allows the child to play music and the other for editing music.

When these kids grow up, hopefully they will know things that their parents didn’t have the chance to learn. They will have the ability to think in such a way that they are able to change the world around them for the better. It is my opinion that when it comes to education, the more someone knows, the more they can think for themselves. If you give someone the tools to learn, you also give them tools to start thinking about the world. They question things around them, and since they know what else is out there, they might be able to bring about change to their own world. Educating the children in third world countries helps them develop skills for the future.

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12-01-08

This homework was done for How to produces get there meaning?, but related to the next weeks homework, Humanitarian Designs and Real Needs.

I would like to add to this that in Humanitarian Designs and Real Needs, Dr. Bruce Becker talked about a lot of these themas. He talked about the fact that people in third world contraries need to be empowered. Becker said that one of the best ways to help people is to give them the tools they need to help themselves. It was interesting to hear that a lot of my thoughts on this are correct. I will take away from this a lesson that if you really sit down and think about things, you can come up with solutions to problems that seem too big to be solved.

I have here a real world example of someone who thought that in order to help impoverished people, we have to help their children.

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=364

This is an episode of This American Life. The first part of this show is about a man who went about changing the way that impoverished children in Harlem are taught. It is already having amazing results and is a vary moving story if you have the time to listen to it.