Rising Charities and Funds

Description

Many more families are now using modern technologies to acquire knowledge and skills. Children can now easily participate in the study of global issues while simultaneously using the local context for understanding. They can fully participate as producers of knowledge and not just as consumers of materials produced by others. The explosion of information is being helped by the use of computers, and specifically laptops. This has led to the search of information through different ways as a result of the ever evolving telecommunications technologies, which is impacting greatly on the way of life of the society as ever before. The movement to a purely global information economy is helping in the search for new ideas and knowledge.

Enabler

• Building of low-cost laptops and fine-tuning them to the needs of children's learning
• Increased use in computer applications
• Governments’ supportive by preparing their citizens to become active global players in the new digital economy
• Information as a ‘bread earner’ to families
• Rampant employment opportunities mostly in the information sector.

Inhibitor

• Increasing online security threats
• Only 15% of the world's 6 billion-plus people have Internet access
• For every computing advance, the digital divide widens, pushing already disadvantaged parts of the world further down the opportunity curve.
• Susceptible to information loss due to piracy

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Paradigm

Laptops are the pencils for the digital age. Falling PC prices and rising performance have buoyed businesses and consumers alike, elevating education, productivity, and prosperity. Most governments realize this and are now very interested in getting computers out into their countries. The sooner they provide high quality learning environments for all, the better and the more cohesive their societies will become.

Expert

• Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Labs
• Walter Bender, OLPC's president of software and content

Web Resource

www.answers.com www.answers.com www.laptop.org www.wcit2006.org