Re: One Laptop Per Child pledge

[Tom Buskey]

Before anyone submits another message, please read about the OLPC.  Most of the thread comments against it don't seem to have read about it.

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/
http://www.laptop.org/

Or JFGI using the term OLPC.

On a similar note on the usefulness of PCs in the classroom, some interesting things have been done with Palm devices. 

For example, give every kid in the class a Palm.  One of 'em is "infected".  You go around infrared beaming everyone else and track infections.  Now you have to find the original.  It's a model illustrating infectous desiease that can't easily be done on paper.

Those Palms have 2-8MB ram, 160x160 bw to 320x320 color, removable CF/SD/MS storage, a 68000 or ARM chip, a serial port and infrared.

The original Macintosh had 128k, 512x384 (?) bw graphics, 400k floppy, a 68000 chip and 2 serial ports.

The Apple //e had 128k, 140k floppies, 320x200 color (IIRC) and a 6502.  And a joystick port for button & A/D input.

I originally learned word processing, spreadsheet and programming on an Apple ][+.  The Palm m130 I carry around has much more capability and can do all of that.  Newer Palms can network too.  Add a keyboard and it's *way* better for BASIC programming, spreadsheet and maybe word processing then the Apple ever was.