The silly thing about the whole "no internet so can't distance learn" is that people have been doing correspondence schooling long before the internet was popular. The homeschooling community in the US has quite a few tools even for very hands-off parents and Australia has been doing it over the radio/mail for a long time.

Blaming poor internet availability is just an excuse for failing to look at what's out there and adapt.

My grandfather earned his college degree via mail order around 1900, and liked the idea so much he spent the rest of his career as a salesman for college correspondence courses. He met my grandmother via selling her engineering courses. (I always laugh when people tell me women couldn't be engineers in those days.)

He started his career as a coaler on a steamship, probably one of the worst jobs at the time. Correspondence courses were a way up for people who could not afford attending college.

I’ve always wondered though, online learning today catches a lot of shit. I’ve heard from certain people (most notably tradition engineers) that they would never take seriously someone who got a degree online, even if it were ABET accredited.

Did correspondence courses come with the same sort of negative stigma in their time?

I completely agree. That's why I mainly blamed the education system. I never said these computers are a bad idea. But if they don't properly implement any of this technology, the number of students that benefit from this are smaller. There's always the ones that discover new and interesting things on their own, and maybe even make a carrier out of them, like the music production examples given here, programming, digital art, etc...

This could have been implemented in a better way. That's all I'm saying. It's still good that there students are getting access to computers at home. Even if 25% of them can take advantage of this, that's still a huge number of people.

this kind of thing unfortunately is an old issue, people think they can just dump computers (or musical instruments as another example) on students and it will be enough

as usual, its the hard work to set up the infrastructure, courses, support etc for the students and teachers that is needed and almost never gets done

as they say, the music isnt in the piano, same with computers

> people think they can just dump computers (or musical instruments as another example) on students and it will be enough

It was for many of us, at least in some ways. In the 80's when we got an Amiga 500 our parents had no idea what to do with it, it was up to us to learn and read the books it came with. That meant a lot of games but it also came with plenty of creativity software from music programs to basic. The same was true with music, we had a keyboard in the house and some kid friendly music sheets so I was playing regularly from about the time I could reach the keys. I can only imagine how much joy I would have had from a rasberry pi beginner kit.

You can't dump computers/instruments on kids and expect a full general education, but you can expect the curious ones to pick things up and learn if they have access.

I think like any new technology, there will be an extremely limited number of early-adopters, who figure things out, and then through social-osmosis, help others. It's not until at least the second generation that things really start to pick up. I suspect, had tablets and smart phones not really taken off in the last 5 years (which is a global miracle that should be further examined, although the devices are locked down pretty hard) this netbook program would probably have been all the more impressive. It's hard to look at a 7 year old, dumpy netbook and think it was a good idea, but at the time this was lightyears ahead of what was available to the general public, and put computers in a lot of families hands, that might not otherwise, have used one.

I had both a computer and a piano “dumped on me”. I learnt the computer by reading the book that came with it, going to the library to get more books and occasional buying a magazine.

The piano I started off with by trying to play along to TV theme tunes and songs i heard on the radio, then I started making my own music up. That was 40 years ago and I still make music just about every week if not everyday.

I’ve had this idea about using IPFS via buses and bus stops to disseminate data around.

Probably impractical, India 4G connections seem to have been very succeful.

This gave me a flashback to pre-web days, when I was in a developing country as a kid, and:

- used "FTP via email"

- connected via a national call ($$) to a shell account

- used pine to copy+paste email text into local files and vice-versa

- assembled segmented files by hand, then decoded and decompressed

- all on a Mac Portable

You might be interested in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal

Does IPFS do a good job of intermittently-online mostly-offline nodes with potentially non-linear updates?

Been spitballing the same concepts but with mobile phones (on a person or stashed on aircraft doing their weekly freight/mail run) where unused space is the bandwidth. Can move hundreds of gbs at zero cost but meh latency, as you’re imagining.

Not by default. You need to figure out how to connect to the network, which works great if you know how to reach other nodes - but in the small cell scenario? I don't believe they have a reliable local network discovery.

I haven't seen anything IPFS does better than bittorent.

It can reference separate files and repackage existing files into new directories. For some kinds of usage, that's a massive benefit.

In my experience, IPFS doesn't even do a good job of fully-online updates. Maybe my setup was bad, but I couldn't get it to reliably and quickly discover content on other nodes that were definitely online.

I would say lack of home internet could even be an advantage. Because the moment new demographics go online en masse, big internet corporations start salivating.

Without home internet no distractions, no dopamine hijacks, no content control issues, most importantly no imperative for parents to gain technological familiarity if they want to protect their kids. Kids could simply use school internet for research, download the relevant content, do the deep dive at home like they would do with any book from a library.

And this is why Argentina is an economic wonder.

They used to be (around the 20s maybe?)

At this point I'm not at all sure what people do or make there except they eat a lot of beef.

I get what you are saying, but we have to learn to live meaningfully, with the internet being now an inalienable part of our lives.

Why? The Amish are the extreme example, but you can minimize or even cut out the internet from your life if you want to.

In addition to what the other responder said (the Amish generally have some tech stashed away for use when necessary), a part of being Amish is being part of a community of other Amish people. Just like in a Orthodox Jewish community you will see Sabbath mode elevators on Saturday, Amish communities have access to services that bridge the internet and their moral code. There are services that will print stuff from the internet and have it sent to you, or an outsider accountant that manage your internet-accessible financial services. They are not really cutting the internet or its consequences from their life but rather in some cases cutting out their direct interaction with the internet.

In Europe, more and more banks have been slashing opening hours and the number of clerks at physical locations, or even closing locations outright, because customers are expected to do nearly everything through online banking. Many forms of interaction with the state require using their online portal, and even if you visit the government office, they may just show you how to do what you need through the online portal instead of helping you directly. Programs to assist people who do not have a phone and internet, now focus on giving those people a phone and internet; there simply isn’t willingness to make technology optional for that tiny demographic that eschews internet use.

Yes, the Amish have managed in the USA so far, but I think that even those days are numbered. Just as many Amish already own mobile phones, though they limit their use and keep them stashed away most of the time, they will be forced to do online things, too.

Much like the Amish will probably have a community mobile phone rather than a personal one a good middle ground for the rest of us could be public libraries. Government services and banking typically don't need frequent access so you don't need a personal internet connection just for them.

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't think of this earlier recently when I needed some printing/scanning done. I went and bought a cheap hp cloud printing (they don't even come with cables anymore) abomination. After trying to get that to work, screwing around with HP accounts, configuring a cloud printer from a linux desktop, installing an app on my phone, etc I ended up going to the local library and got it all done in 30 minutes It was cheaper, easier and better option for something I need to do a few times a year.

The problem with recommending public libraries is that government and banking services may require specifically a mobile app on one’s phone, not a website that can be used from any library computer.

>Programs to assist people who do not have a phone and internet, now focus on giving those people a phone and internet

This is smart though, since it costs very little to give someone a smartphone with internet these days (ALDI talk in Germany is 8€ a month with a bit of data, a cheap smartphone maybe 100€).

Trying to keep up a service that <0.1% of the population uses costs a lot more.

Having grown up here I think a lot of people would freak out if you had to use computers for services. The town I grew up in doesn't even let you pay taxes online in 2021.

Also not a lot of old people is computer savy in Europe.

And by old I mean > 55-60.

I saw some article suggesting that actual computer savviness is on the decline among people under 18 as well due to the growth of iPads and phones as the primary compute platform for the younger generations.

> we have to learn to live meaningfully, with the internet being now an inalienable part of our lives.

The Internet isn't what gives meaning to life.

What's the name of the Australian radio/mail distance learning program?

Something like that existed in the Canary Islands (Spain) so people could get a GED or a College diploma (pre-University/post-High School).

The internet makes the process a lot easier because of the fast feedback loop.

In reference to COVID... nobody was prepared for distance learning because why would they?

Indeed. OLPC built mesh networking to increase the efficiency of sneakernet data dissemination kind of

The idea behind OLPC was in fact that students would be able to gain a lot of insights on their own just by being in contact with their own computer… it was never a requirement that they had to be used effectively in the classroom.

I’m from Argentina and saw kids using their computers while sitting in front of a house, hanging (like kids do) and thought that was beautiful. Also saw a girl using hers in the park while her father pushed her little sister in the swing. Those kind of images are inspiring and it’s a shame the program was cut.

Would you know if there are any efforts to create a similar effort?

Did you read the full article? They've already restarted the program.

> Conectar Igualdad was supposed to end definitively in 2018, but the next year saw a new government come to power. The netbook program has since experienced a rebirth as a part of a bigger project. “Last year, we released the Juana Manso Federal Plan,” said Marés Serra, the general manager at Educ.ar. “And even though we do not have enough funds to cover every grade for now, we have returned to the model where the student owns the computer.”

The lack of internet is a huge problem still, especially considering they call them netbook.

Oh sorry I was a bit unclear I was referring to the OLPC program.

The "one laptop per child" program put some thought into the connectivity problem. They actually designed their machines around the idea of distributing content via meshing and intermittent "sneakernet" deliveries.

Sadly, the price/performance wasn't quite there in the mid-2000s, but it seemed like they had some good ideas:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop...

Maybe the mesh networking could have worked better if it were used exclusively for distributing small files, like a P2P Whispernet.

> The "one laptop per child" program put some thought into the connectivity problem.

OLPC was also ruggedised, had replaceable parts and had things like crank charging for areas with no/little power, it was a well thought out machine all around. Even in developed countries there are many that can't afford the internet, electricity and repairs required so it's a shame to see schools go with regular lapotops or even worse, premium tablets. One of my nephews had an optional programming class that required an Ipad, it's the worst option in just about every way.

> OLPC was also ruggedised, had replaceable parts and had things like crank charging for areas with no/little power, it was a well thought out machine all around

No, it did not. The crank charger was never supplied commercially, it was purely a marketing tactic. Same as the Potenco Pull-cord generator http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/Hand_Crank , http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Peripherals/YoYo

Both were ideas which even basic calculations tell you aren't viable.

In addition, your other claims like "ruggedised", "replaceable parts" contradict what I saw with OLPC XO. I would say the product was a one-off that had almost no consideration for long term reuse. Things like the wifi bunny ears prove that the product was driven more by marketing tacticians rather than reality and cost. Honestly, my opinion is that OLPC was a huge scam to take money from unwitting unsophisticated developing country funders who didn't know any better and waste it in swanky offices in One Cambridge. It was one of the worst options about how to expend public funds.

At the moment though this would be way easier with a plethora of ARM boards that are both low cost and powerful. Also with star link there would be a way to solve spotty internet access in remote areas. What is needed I suppose is a way to integrate this with preexisting organisations in the area.

I was working a project where the BOM was to be at most 50 bucks. It is kind of difficult to hit that number. Ironically while the board was cheap it was all the additions to make it a full computer that ended up ruining the idea. That was even before we add in any profit margin. Add in a screen, keyboard, mouse, power supply, and so on. It adds up quickly. What was a 15-20 dollar computer is now 70-80 or more plus paying someone to put it together.

Could it be kept fairly close to $50 if it was simply a "box" with a few relatively high speed USB ports and an HDMI connector?

I know this wouldn't be a "laptop", but with a cheap-ish monitor, keyboard and mouse... it's a small PC. Perhaps with a slightly older CPU which doesn't need super fast RAM, there could be... 2Gb of RAM or more?

Of course the newer RaspberryPi boards are pretty close (and in terms of RAM, even better) to this....

Oh we got 'close'. But the issue was it felt like 'oh yeah we need X' that X would be 2-3 more dollars, and so on. Really at this point the board is the 'meh' part of it. When you are at this price point. Something like an extra USB port becomes a larger portion of the bill. Also at this price point something odd happens. Your support costs also grow much faster. As you will attract more people to the platform at a lower cost. So your margin is not there. Also when you build 1 or 2 you can do that in an afternoon. But when you want 10k of them it becomes a bigger issue of simple things like 'how do I get these into the cardboard boxes', or 'where do I source 10k power cables that are not garbage'.

I'm from Argentina as well and I believe this attitude is exactly what's wrong when people critiqued this program.

Yes, we _know_ it's not going to fix a flawed education system. There's not a person in this entire country who has ever believed otherwise, and using it as a critique of the program has been nothing but a strawman.

We live a in a world where everything is done online. If the only objective this achieved is that kids are now familiar with a computer without having learned anything else, it's still fantastically successful. They know how to load a spreadsheet. They know basic UI paradigms that allow them to navigate crappy government or banking web pages. They come of age using social networks that they will be able to leverage for work and productive connections in the future.

The issue of connectivity is related but ultimately a distraction too, as a single poor wi-fi or 3G connection is still good for watching low-quality Youtube videos or reading tutorials.

It's a middle-of-the-road country with inadequate distribution of services. The resources devoted to this program can't be put to infrastructure. And imperfectly devised program where teachers can't use computers doesn't change the fact that computers are so damn useful that you don't depend on a teacher to learn how to use it, especially with naturally resourceful children.

I'm also from Argentina, and about 6 years ago I worked in a public school.

I think giving computers to children is good only if the quality of education they receive is good. I saw many children using their government-given computers to play GTA san andreas and Counter Strike while they were in the middle of a class, and the teachers didn't do anything about it because the government forbids them to take reasonable disciplinary measures (A teacher wants a child to pay attention during a class? Good luck, there's not much he/she can do) and also the goverments forces the teachers to make everyone pass every exam because "it is stigmatizing" for the children to get a bad mark on a test.

What I comment sounds absurd, but I have no reason to lie about it.

So, even if I consider it can be benefical to give computers to students in some conditions, in Argentina it's not well implemented.

> I think giving computers to children is good only if the quality of education they receive is good.

This is 100% false.

A computer allows them to watch YouTube and see tutorials on everything they may want to learn. It _forces_ them to learn to how read and read quickly to digest all the information they get on social networks. It allows them to know that there are such things as spreadsheets and document editors.

This is so much more important than many classes that it can't be understated how critical this is. If these children instead had to go to private computer literacy classes when they turn 21 because they need to write a CV or access a government website, they will have wasted away a ton of potential.

All the children mentioned in the article did not have a good education, but they had a tool that enabled them to make do without it.

Yes, I agree, there are many advantages. Still I saw various high school level children who were able to get a torrent and launch GTA San Andreas in their computers, but at the same time they were unable to read in a fluent way and of comprehending texts.

I mean, autonomous children, and children with certain interests can learn a lot just by having a computers, while others won't learn much. But still, the exposure to a computer is helfpul for all of them.

I was too extreme in what I expressed. Both having computers and good education are positives.

Sure, but it's worth wasting 99 laptops if even we manage to enable one child to get a better education, and that's even before considering that the other 99 laptops are probably not going to be wasted either.

The problem is more than half of the children live in poverty. Maybe making sure they can eat is a better first step.

Good point. There's a hierarchy of priorities. First prevent children from starving, then give them computers. It's true that in Argentina more than half of children live in poverty https://chequeado.com/hilando-fino/casi-6-de-cada-10-chicos-...

Yes, and the way you do that is by increasing their chances of being able to integrate productively into the rest of the economy. How do you think a person who knows how to send emails and open Google Docs stacks up against a person who doesn't?

I understand your point and share it. Still, I believe you have no idea about what happens in Argentina's educational system. I share what a teacher explains about her experience in Argentina's schools. It's in spanish, but I believe that twitter has a translate function. The thread starts here https://twitter.com/sonripink/status/1407088057778647053

> the sad truth is that many times cases like this are rare exceptions.

Well, giving a computer to someone doesn't turn them into a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs just because they own it. Depends on the attitude of whom receive it.

You could say that most of the people will use it for fun and you entertainment.

On the other side there are people who will use to uplift themselves and that's something that has to be appreciated.

The truth is that these young man, without a computer wouldn't be in this situation today. So even if is an exception is still good to see that.

> giving a computer to someone doesn't turn them into a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs just because they own it.

The point isn't to make every one of these kids a Bill Gates, it's to prevent the Bill Gates among them from living a life of poverty because they couldn't get a computer early enough.

That's your point, my point is the one of the comment.

And I guess the government didn't give the PC to everyone because "oh we need to stop our Bill Gates to run out of the country". But rather, their interest was to give equal opportunity to those in need.

>Well, giving a computer to someone doesn't turn them into a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs just because they own it.

I read this comment, I read the article and can't stop thinking what if Zuck were among these kids them maybe we could admire him as a musical talent like L-GANTE (link from the article) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SacHyFb_j1o

Well I learned to program and how UNIX systems worked from having a computer and a library. Today you wouldn't really need the library if you have an internet connection.

What's the point? Indeed that's your attitude and is ok.

At my age when I was in school the whole class had a computer (like 25 of us). Today of that class only 3 work using computer everyday.

The second part of my comment explain that if you've the right attitude and interest then a computer can help you, if you don't is just another tool like your fridge

Yeah but what's wrong with trying to provide as many tool as possible to people with the right attitude?

The question is what would have been the result of giving each kid 500U$S instead, which is what the computers cost.

That their family would use it for daily needs instead of a computer.

Poor people can't think in long terms as they're struggling with their daily needs thus it makes sense for them to solve these rather than think what if my kid would turn into a rich man thanks to it.

> Poor people can't think in long terms as they're struggling with their daily needs

Good thing we have people like you that understand poor people and can make decisions in their name and all. Where would they be without you.

It was a good program that felt like it was made for one part of the country without thinking of the rest. I've heard stories of people in Jujuy receiving a computer that didn't have electricity at their house

The amount of people who don't have access to electricity in Argentina is minuscule compared to the total number of children who are aided by computer literacy. This is just nitpicky.

The amount of kids living below the poverty line is not a small one.

More than half. And now it got worse because lots of child used to eat once a day in school but schools are closed.

It's a netbook. It'll work a few hours after charging. Go to school -> charge -> return home and do your homework.

Solutions that only involve spending someone else's money and don't involve doing any actual work are always going to be popular.

Welcome to the Argentinian government

You are entirely right, even to the last point, but I think the first half of it needs some more support.

The truth is that most of the average or privileged people in the developed and developing world won't do anything extraordinary with their computers either.

If giving at least one tool to the disadvantaged, that others can pretty much take for granted, allows the few among them that would pursue their talents with it is already a step up from the status quo.

They absolutely will. And I'm sure many kids, when introduced to computers took full advantage of them. Learning new skills and being able to integrate themselves better into this digitally dependent world. These cases more than make up for the ones that only used their machines to play CS 1.6

The government announced that they will be reopening this program and begin distributing computers again. I really wish them the best of luck even with a global semiconductor shortage because, especially nowadays, those that don't have access to a computer get severely limited in their possibilities. I was only ranting about how this program could have been better implemented at the schools.

I think a lot of comments here are seriously undervaluing the humanities and arts. These machines lead to the creation of some very popular music, allowed many more to find an outlet for personal expression and that's a huge success on its own, regardless of other formal learning outcomes.

But where in the article is being stated that a computer would replace quality education? The article is just describing an unexpected artistic scene development.

Budgeting for equipment is easy. In the US because of how funding works budgeting / getting one off grants / short term taxes for equipment is often one of the easier (relatively) things to do. Meanwhile maintenance, training go by the way side.

Training humans is hard, that always is the hard part.

> this group of students effectively couldn't receive an education for the better almost a whole year

I suspect most students who learned remotely got a lot less out of it. It'll be interesting to see what standardized tests show.

What's the mobile phone situation like for poor families? When I was in Myanmar a few years ago, the phone was the way to get internet access. No computer in the home but a smartphone was.

I think it makes sense even if 1 out of 100 will find it to be a deal breaker in their education. The returns you can get from that 1% migth pay for the 99% waste.

This is why internet needs to be treated as a utility