One Laptop per Child or Cloud Top?

There are green, red, orange and blue ones. The concept came from the Media laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Nicholas Negroponte, professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT envisioned a laptop that is inexpensive, rugged, low-power and connected. The purpose was to provide education to children who have no access to resources and teachers. The green design seemed to have won the battle and one can actually buy one of these laptops from Amazon:

It is almost 100 dollars, the price target of the One Laptop Per Child organization of Negroponte. This is no ordinary laptop, however, since it is is packed with educational applications developed at MIT's Media Lab. It comes with lessons and it is bilingual.

This weekend, Philippines' secretary of budget and management Florencio Abad continued to justify the 10-billion Philippine-California Advanced Research Institute (PCARI) program. Abad was enumerating the projects that are going to be funded under this program. The following is an excerpt from the Manila Standard article by Christine Herrera, published on October 5, 2013, entitled "Ched US Project Abad Dared: Show Legal Basis for It":

This should then explain the title of this article on this blog, "One Laptop per Child or Cloud Top?". Is the above simply a bad case of journalism or is the budget secretary really walking in La La land? Part of the 10-billion fund is going to be spent on research that aims to develop a $100 laptop computer - in Berkeley? A used one from Amazon is already down to $115.

I am not sure though if this is waterproof. Otherwise, the children from Pegalongan Elementary School may not be able to use it (Please read a previous article, "Bridges Without Rivers and Rivers Without Bridges"). And we likewise have to remind ourselves that the One Laptop per Child project is really meant to provide education to children who have no access to resources and teachers.