The folks at NTEN have already begun planning for their Nonprofit Technology Conference 2009, and they’re asking the nonprofit community to vote for the sessions they like the most.
This year, we’ve submitted 8 sessions that we want to lead. Click on our session titles below and give them 5 stars (or as NTEN puts it, “I’m already there in my mind”) if you like what you see.
I have been following the OLPC project since it started and I am surprised when I run across people who haven’t heard about it. My daughter took the OLPC laptop we just received to school to show it off and only a few of her teachers had heard of the project. Without the background on what it is, the laptop looks and feels like a toy. (In fact, it’s an amazing set of technological and operational breakthroughs.)
One argument against this project has been that many of these kids need basics — food, clean water, jobs, teachers who get paid, etc. And so we shouldn’t spend money on laptops. No doubt kids have basic needs. But I have come to believe that in this flat world of ours knowledge is the solution to these problems. Kids who can participate in the global economy will have a way out of their circumstances as they become citizens of the interconnected world.
