[Chicago] OLPC vs Classmate
Ian Bicking
ianb at colorstudy.com
Wed Apr 25 22:23:02 CEST 2007
Atul Varma wrote:
> Is the Classmate actually being marketed to the U.S. or to the
> third-world? I could see it being fairly cool if it was actually
> intended for U.S. audiences, which have better access to power and
> such, but as far as the whole third-world thing goes, it does appear
> as though the OLPC has the upper hand.
I think Classmate is marketed to both first and third world. The XO is
also marketed very specifically to governments. Not schools, or
parents, or anyone with less than a million orders with equitable
distribution. The XO's software is also considerably more opinionated.
Children won't learn Word. Technically Windows probably will run on
the laptop (I know MS has tried, I don't recall seeing what the outcome
was). But I can't imagine it would be a reasonable platform for
learning Office.
I think Classmate's real selling point is there are less strings
attached, you don't have to buy into any Big Idea, it more easily fits
in with existing infrastructure, and it doesn't try to buck the system.
For example, the presentation system they have for it (which projects
the teacher's laptop onto all the students screens) fits with normal
class models. It doesn't fit at all with what OLPC wants to accomplish
in education. No one is going to stop you from doing it on the XO, but
what you *can possibly* do on the laptop isn't going to mean much to the
decision makers compared to what is actually implemented (or for which
there is a firm commitment for implementation). Once the XO is a
deployed platform that can and probably will/should change -- but for
now the idea, the implementation, and the platform are all collapsed
into one thing.
--
Ian Bicking | ianb at colorstudy.com | http://blog.ianbicking.org
| Write code, do good | http://topp.openplans.org/careers
More information about the Chicago
mailing list