Broadband is a human right

The 2011 ALT-C Conference is being held at the University of Leeds on a campus that is as convoluted as the maze of arguments and discussions we are enjoying. This year's event is co-chaired by John Cook and Sugata Mitra, and the programme and as always, is packed with far too many choices, you are bound to miss something you would really like to see. Too much choice is not the only problem we have to face. Just trying to navigate your way around the Leeds campus to find the rooms can be difficult, and there is a lot of walking around outside, up and down many steps and slopes.  The intermittent rain showers don't help either, but as they keep telling me - it's grim up north. Finding your choice of sessions then, certainly requires stamina and tenacity. And we will need these in equal measure throughout the conference, because all of the sessions I have attended so far have sought to go beyond the run-of-the-mill conference papers of old, to challenge preconceptions, problematise old knowledge and generally rattle a few cages along the way.... of which more in later posts from ALT-C 2011.

Miguel Brechner's keynote this morning focused on the CEIBAL one-laptop-per-child project in the schools of Uruguay. Uruguay is only a small South American country, about the size of Wales, and with a small population, and in the past it has not been particularly well known for its educational achievements. But today the spotlight was well and truly on Uruguay. In a gently humourous style, and laced with football analogies (he delighted in reminded his audience that Uruguay had once beaten Brazil to win the Soccer World Cup), Miguel Brechner demonstrated how giving a free laptop to each child has liberated them to learn in their own way and in their own time. Children now really want to go to school he said, and are upset if they miss even a day. He showed how the education landscape has been changed in Uruguay, and how social equality is being achieved among the youth of his country. Clearly very passionate about his cause, Brechner argued that not only is access to broadband absolutely essential for education, in today's connected world, it should also be considered a human right. While many of us had heard these mantras before, given that Negroponte's vision has been in existence for well over a decade, we were all nevertheless impressed by the manner in which this project had been implemented, in humility, with a great sense of purpose and with an eye on the future for Uruguay's youth. 


In some ways, OLPC could be said to run counter to the ideals of Sugata Mitra's Hole in the Wall Project. OLPC is very focused on solo learning, where each child uses his laptop in his own way, and is more or less autonomous, against the Hole in the Wall project where learners work together around a social space which involves a single computer. The minimally invasive education of Mitra's work, when measured against the individualised and personalised learning approach of OLPC leaves a lot of questions open. What is the best way for children to learn? With a communal technology that forces social contact, or with individual technologies where social contact is optional? This has indeed been the subject of discussion throughout the day during the breaks. It would be good to get Sugata Mitra (who is here on Thursday) and Miguel Brechner together to debate this, to hear their respective arguments.


Broadband is a human right by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.