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Teacher-centric approach

While this philosophy is essential to the mission of OLPC, it's also a source of tension. Current educational leaders in Peru embrace Constructionism, but most countries base their education systems on the idea that teachers pass their knowledge to receptive students.

That was a problem for OLPC in China as well as India. India's education department, for instance, calls the idea of giving each child a laptop "pedagogically suspect," and, when asked about it recently, Education Secretary Arun Kumar Rath barked: "Our primary-school children need reading and writing habits, not expensive laptops."

• Easily accessible technical support: Although designed to be robust, its very likely that kids are going to do use it in weirdest possible ways. Lack of easily accessible local technical support can dampen curiosity and interest.
• Native (non-English) language support: Kids (and teachers) in underprivileged communities will need something that they understand better or can learn quickly.
• Backbone infrastructure: Underdeveloped regions are most likely to lack any backbone telephone or internet infrastructure. And without that, information flow and peer-to-peer communication can be hindered to great extent.
• Gray/black market problems: For highly underdeveloped communities which are still struggling to survive without sufficient food and other basic facilities, it is certainly not a solution. If they are offered this laptop, more probably it’s going to be sold in gray market to fulfill their today’s needs. Hungry stomachs do not understand philosophy, however great it may be. They should be provided with what they need first and funds allocated for that purpose should not be diverted towards any other project.

Furthermore, the Sugar user interface allows for greater control over what can be done with the system. The programs being created for it (with the possible exception of Doom) are designed to help children create, explore, wonder, strategize, and learn.

This is why I fear that some the unique educational potential of OLPC will be lost with the conversion to Windows. The platform, and, at least as important, development community, would no longer be so focused on programs that were created for learning and thereby lose the strongest advantage the OLPC had. For all its issues, Sugar is an amazing endeavor.