IT Breathes!

So I’ve been re-reading a favorite book of mine by Neal Stephenson, Diamond Age, or better known as “A Young Ladies Illustrated Primer” and as always I got the feeling to look up the OLPC. When I first heard about the OLPC I was very excited about the project. Having watched the project fall behind, cost twice as much as it was supposed to, pander to countries who want Windows XP for cheap and watch Intel come in and undermine the whole project I was delighted to hear about the $12 Computer for education. I heard about it over the summer and and promptly forgot about it. That was until recently I started thinking about the project again.

Yes that’s an NES

The project is called Playpower.org. The idea being that a Victor-70 (an NES with a keyboard and mouse) could be used to teach people at a fraction of the cost. The unit itself costs $12 USD. Since you can purchase a TV for $27 in idea (and most families already have one) it makes a lot more sense than giving kids a laptop for them lose, sell etc. It also harkens back to the days when your dad brought home the C64 and youlearned everything the hard way. I honestly feel this can succeed where OLPC has failed.

I’m not a programmer any longer, though I use to be; nor am I a hardware hacker, though I’d love to be. That’s the reason I’m posting here, to raise awareness for this project. The more people that are aware of this project and can help with it the better.

Since there’s no History section on their site I’ll thrown one together here (from what I’ve been able to gather on the internet, might not be correct at all): Back in the summer of ’08 Derek Lomas (See whole team here and others participated in what is known as the International Design for Development Summit. Dereks team posited that you could use the pirated Famiclones (Legal Pirate copies of the original Famicon with keyboard) to help teach children. Couple it with an internet connection (or a wireless connection) and they have access to a wealth of information and access. They wrote a lengthily article about the idea.

From their site:

Overview
The Playpower Foundation is creating a platform for 8-bit learning games in order to improve education for millions of children worldwide. We are using radically affordable TV-connected computers – public domain hardware clones of the Nintendo Entertainment System®/Famicom®, which are packaged with a keyboard and mouse for $12. Our goal is to create original 8-bit learning software and distribute it through low-cost hardware.

A Global Problem
There are millions of children around the world who are unable to afford the most basic education. This dampens economic growth, reduces political freedom, increases disease, and propagates ignorance and war. Computer-Aided Learning (CAL) is one solution that has been demonstrated to be an effective way of improving education in developing countries. However, even the most inexpensive computers cost more than US$100, making them unaffordable to the billions of people around the world who could most benefit from CAL.

An 8-Bit Solution
Playpower is creating an ultra-affordable educational computer using a 25-year old computer chip technology (currently in production for video games). “The $12 computer,” as the press has appropriately labeled it, is a keyboard, mouse, and processor that connects to a TV screen and takes 1980′s era 8-bit cartridges. Playpower’s goal is to discover and develop effective learning games for these $12 computers—games that help build the basic skills that can dramatically enhance a person’s economic opportunities. We have found that in countries like Ghana, skills as elementary as learning to type can mean the difference between making $1 per day to $1 per hour. And a child who learns computer programming skills—from any background and in any country—stands to have a world of opportunities available to them.

Our initial research shows that an 8-bit computer is powerful enough to be engaging and effective at building basic skills in reading, writing, mathematics, science and other subjects such as computer programming. With clever puzzles, traditional video games, and text-based simulations, 8-bit computers can additionally teach skills such as creative problem solving, critical thinking, logic, and entrepreneurship. So let’s go 8-bit!

Who We Are
Playpower is a non-profit organization composed of individuals from India, Ghana, Brazil, Canada and the USA. Our largest working group is based in San Diego, at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology, at UC San Diego. Playpower received substantial support at MIT, during the International Development Design Summit (IDDS) in the summer of 2008.

More About the $12 Computer
The Playpower platform is based on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), a 25-year old technology that now occupies the public domain (hardware patents expire after 20 years). Dozens of manufacturers are actively producing clones of the NES that come with a mouse, game controllers and a full keyboard.

These computers are commonly packaged with educational content such as BASIC programming as well as typing, math, and english language learning games. Cartridges often contain hundreds of software titles and plug directly into the keyboard (a self-enclosed unit which contains the processor and video card).

One of the major advantages of this platform is that it utilizes a TV as a monitor. This dramatically reduces costs for families whom already own a TV. Television sets are increasingly common in developing countries. Interestingly, in spite of the fact that two-thirds of India lives on less than a $1 per day, more than half own a set. Utilizing a TV for learning games also creates the potential for social learning experiences that are centered around groups of friends and family.

Why?
At Playpower, we know that education is vitally important for a prosperous and peaceful global society. Computer-aided learning holds a great deal of promise as a supplement to traditional teacher-based education. In many countries, public schools are in a very poor state. For instance, researchers have found that the teacher attendance rate averages seventy-five percent in India. This means that teachers often fail to show up to school! A a result, those families who can afford it are forced to pay for public schools or tutors but so many cannot. And in spite of great efforts to improve public schools, these efforts take enormous amounts of funding and the schools have often been resistant to change.

Computer-Aided Learning demonstrates the promise of supplemental education because it scales more effectively than training quality teachers. And since there is already a significant market for supplemental education, we intend to introduce a better product that will assist parents and ensure their children receives quality instruction.

Affordable, educational computers could provide significant value to millions of people around the world who currently have insufficient access to education.

A different unit hooked in to a TV

Someone who works on this project has said that the intent of the project is to get at the very least a machine with an included/built-in keyboard that can be used to teach basic (BASIC) programming to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access for one reason or another. From there it will be used as a platform for educational software by creating a relatively straight-forward tool-chain to create and publish content for the machine. Ideally the content would eventually be created primarily by and for communities that wouldn’t otherwise have access to a platform for software publishing.

Some questions that have come up was distribution of software. In the short term they’re talking about using flash drives. The first thought that comes to mind is the recently released PowerPak. It allows you to add NES software which can then be played using the NES/Famiclones.

There is one problem with using this item. It is prohibitvely expensive. At last check they wanted $135.00 USD for the unit plus shipping. Which is a little bit over board.

So, if you’re interested you can read more at their website: http://playpower.org

They have a wiki setup at: http://dev.playpower.org/tiki-index.php and a google groups setup.

How can you help? You can help by contributing in the following areas:

• Work on some aspect of our Current Task Breakdown
• Coding 8-bit games
• Making 8-bit Music
• Making 8-bit Graphics
• Designing 8-bit Learning Games (interaction design)
• Developing Reusable Game Frameworks
• Contributing to our Open-Source Development Environment
• Helping to Make this easy!

Honestly I hope this works out better than the OLPC project did. At least you can’t install windows xp on an 8bit machine (though you can install Lunix, yes Lunix not Linux) so this project won’t be bogged down by requests to ‘make it run windows’.