[More reflections from the Media Lab]

I’m trying to think of other times in my life when I was sitting in a room, listening to people and thinking, "These people will change the world." There have been a few, but they are few and far between.

Sitting in a room, listening to Nicholas Negroponte, Mary Lou Jepsen and Walter Bender talk about the One Laptop Per Child project (also known as the $100 laptop), that was the only conclusion I could come to. This project is going to change the way we look at our world — suddenly, the digital divide can be overcome for all. Suddenly, every hardware and software company is going to have to reexamine the way they do business.

And schools will have to change. There’s a longer post behind all of this… and I’m going to sound a lot like Will or David… about how schools must adapt, and I’m not ready to write that yet, but we cannot continue to work under the current assumptions around schools that we have in America if children all over the world are bringing their laptops to school to, in the words of Dr. Negroponte, "Share and Create."

The folks on the OLPC project understand a fundament concept — internet / communication technology, as embodied by laptops, is not an additive innovation, it is transformative. Our society is changing, and our schools must change with it.

The work of the OLPC project will change schools and lives all over the world — we in America need to understand that we must change with it or be left far behind.

I’m at MIT today and tomorrow for Sponsors’ Week at the Media Lab.

I’m sort of at a loss. I’ve got 20 pages of notes from about five hours of presentations.

I got to meet Nicholas Negroponte and talk to him about 1:1 computing and the $100 laptop. (Much, much more on this later.)

I’ll be writing about what I saw today (and what I get to see tomorrow) for weeks probably.

There were so many things I wrote down.

Here’s one:

In 1986, it was about the processor.
In 2006, it’s about the network.
In 2026, it will be about the people.

Over and over again today, folks were talking about how the new technologies allow us to tell new stories.

Even at the Media Lab… it is about the stories we tell.

SLA has a powerful story to tell about how we believe that there is a new world that our students will have to navigate and shape. We believe that the style of education — the questions we ask, the ways we learn, the tools we use — will help our students to become fully realized 21st Century thinkers and citizens.

The folks at the Media Lab are a few iterations past the work we’re doing, but they are asking the same questions… and they are willing to share their answers.

Amazing.

Just found this article on the SchoolCIO website about Indiana’s Open Source experiment. Indiana has gone to a linux desktop model for their computers to increase the number of computers they can put in schools. OpenOffice, Moodle, CMAP and other open source solutions are now all being used.

Allow me to quote:

Perhaps the most impressive impact of the new system has been cost savings. Previously, the state of Indiana was spending $100 per year per machine to license software from vendors such as Microsoft or Apple. Today, the school is paying no more than $10 per year. With 18,000 computers, this is a savings of more than $16,000 per year. And when amortized over 300,000 computers, this annual savings jumps to $27 million.

The district is experiencing a similar savings with hardware, reducing total cost of ownership per machine from $1,000 to about $290.

They aren’t at laptops yet, but they are looking that way… and I can’t imagine it’s far off…

Rock on, Indiana.