Nigeria | olpc.tv

“We think that change has to be dramatic. You’ve got to be big, you’ve got to be bold. And what has happened is that there has been an effort to say ‘don’t take any risks - just do something small, something incremental’. It feels safe but by definition what you are ensuring is that nothing happens” says Walter Bender on the BBC.

Professor Bender said there was still an “aggressive” effort to undermine the charity. “There is still a concerted misinformation campaign out there,” he said. Mr Bender said he would not speculate on who was behind the alleged campaign. “Wherever it is coming from, it exists,” he told BBC News. But he said the main problem for OLPC was dealing with conservative politicians. “Change equals risk especially for politicians. And we are certainly advocating change because the [education] system is failing these children,” he said. “It has not been that processor versus that processor or that operating system versus that operating system - it’s been small thinking versus big thinking. That’s really the issue,” he said.

“Uruguay is first then it will be Peru, Mexico, Ethiopia then we are going to be doing stuff in Haiti, Rwanda and Mongolia,” said Mr Bender. In addition, he said, OLPC had done a deal with Birmingham, Alabama, in the US, to provide the laptop for schools in the city. “The numbers of countries where we have trials set up is also increasing,” he said. Tests were also going on in the Solomon Islands, Nepal and India.

Watch the video in WMV

Posted at BBC.co.uk

See also more coverage by someone on the BBC crew using his mobile phone camera at the Galadima primary school here.

Comments (0)

November 23, 2007

OLPC in Galadima Nigeria - BBC visit

Filed under: Children, Nigeria — Charbax @ 9:23 pm

A short film - all shot on a mobile phone - giving an impression of the One Laptop Per Child pilot in Galadima, Abuja, Nigeria. Shot during a BBC filming trip.