Microsoft Donates PC to Ghanaian Teacher after Photo Goes Viral

Megalith

Megalith

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Information and communications technology teachers in Ghana don’t have it easy: many do not even have a computer to teach software with and have to resort to using a chalkboard. Owura Kwadwo Hottish is one such teacher, who shared his experience online and was lucky enough to get the attention of Microsoft, who is providing him with some free hardware.

Could you teach computer class without a computer? For Owura Kwadwo Hottish, 33, an information and communications technology teacher in Ghana, it's his only option. At the middle school where he works, there are no computers. So using colored chalk, he painstakingly draws a version of the computer screen onto the blackboard.
 
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Colored chalk was so expensive that our teachers weren't even allowed to use them in school. They would take them out flaunt them maybe once a school year, like it was some kind of jewelry. And that was at least 20 years ago, I imagine it only got more expensive since then.
 
bigddybn said:
We will equip Owura Kwadwo with a device from one of our partners

A device? As in 1?
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Its a slippery slope, Can't give a billion poor people a free PC. I mean, there isn't even a computer there. At least now he can have the kid huddle around and show them on an ACTUAL screen.
 
Whatever happened to that One Laptop Per Child scam?

Also, if they can afford to hire a teacher to teach Microsoft office on a chalkboard in a school with no computers... maybe the school needs to rethink it's priorities?
 
Well at least one last school will still have a windows pc and office.

Rest of the educational world seems to have made a mass exodus to Chromebooks and Google docs. Hell even my GF wants to switch the nice PC laptop I got her for a Chromebook, because her study groups use them for dead simple collaboration and doc sharing.
 
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odditory said:
Well at least one last school will still have a windows pc and office.

All other schools are on Chromebooks and Google docs. Hell even my college GF wants to switch the nice windows laptop I got her for a Chromebook.
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Maybe in the US; here in the European Wild East, your average Chromebook is just as expensive as those Atom notebooks with 32 GB eMMC storage and Windows 10 Home. Buying a Chromebook just doesn't make any financial sense - I bet it's the same situation in Africa.
 
MrTroy03 said:
Its not a math class, its a COMPUTER class, as in he is teaching the kids how to use a computer... without a computer. Thats like trying to teach shop class with no wood, screws, saws, metal, glue etc.
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People learned orbital mechanics long before we could do it. We teach a lot of subjects in abstract only. There is nothing wrong with this approach, considering his resources. Half of what makes all our tech great is the 'theory' behind it. If the society fell apart, and we could no longer build computers (nuclear apocalypse, etc), we could easily build long distance, packetized information transfer between sites in weeks or months because we learned so much about information theory. Its the knowledge that matters more than the tools.
 
There has to be a lot more to this. There are some obvious holes in the explanation of the school's plight.
 
My Java class at Purdue usually went entire lectures just going over code in the written form with no computer to verify it worked. It can be done, good of Microsoft though.
 
odditory said:
Well at least one last school will still have a windows pc and office.

Rest of the educational world seems to have made a mass exodus to Chromebooks and Google docs. Hell even my GF wants to switch the nice PC laptop I got her for a Chromebook, because her study groups use them for dead simple collaboration and doc sharing.
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At my sons school, they push iPad's like nobody's business, but amazingly all of the computer rooms are wall to wall Windows 7 PCs. I'm kind of amazed.

Anyway, good of Microsoft indeed!
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Whatever happened to that One Laptop Per Child scam?

Also, if they can afford to hire a teacher to teach Microsoft office on a chalkboard in a school with no computers... maybe the school needs to rethink it's priorities?
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makes me wonder what happened to all those EOL free student laptops schemes.....got to be a million devices till now
 
Ultima99 said:
This was my first thought as well.

This is the reality of how things are in a lot of places in Africa.
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make a cringy , emo vid and ask Tesla to donate whatever they want to promote

their PR department can make a dozen feel-good marketing campaign vids out of this
 
That's like giving a cancer patient also HIV. What these people need is a free and open source OS and software, not being enslaved by a global corporation.
 
B00nie said:
That's like giving a cancer patient also HIV. What these people need is a free and open source OS and software, not being enslaved by a global corporation.
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Amen brother. Clearly Linux is what these kids really need.... :rolleyes:

African_children_in_poverty.jpg
 
MrTroy03 said:
Its a slippery slope, Can't give a billion poor people a free PC. I mean, there isn't even a computer there. At least now he can have the kid huddle around and show them on an ACTUAL screen.
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1 Computer and 1 projector so everyone can see would be a huge improvement.
 
wyqtor said:
Maybe in the US; here in the European Wild East, your average Chromebook is just as expensive as those Atom notebooks with 32 GB eMMC storage and Windows 10 Home. Buying a Chromebook just doesn't make any financial sense - I bet it's the same situation in Africa.
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Its the same in the US. The difference here is most schools drank the Apple coolaid, so its not $300 Chromebook vs $300 Windows laptop, its $300 Chromebook vs $1200 Macbook. Also, Chromebooks come with Google management, so you can save even more money by firing the entire IT department and having the computer teacher manage everything. Lastly, since Chromebooks are gimped computers, we don't actually have to teach the kids as much, or anything, really. K-12 education in the US is about daycare, not learning.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Whatever happened to that One Laptop Per Child scam?

Also, if they can afford to hire a teacher to teach Microsoft office on a chalkboard in a school with no computers... maybe the school needs to rethink it's priorities?
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And who took the video? Why didn't they just huddle around whatever device that was and show them Word...???
 
Mugato said:
And who took the video? Why didn't they just huddle around whatever device that was and show them Word...???
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REALLY? So they're supposed to huddle around a camcorder? Maybe a cellphone? You didn't put much thought into that post before you submitted it, did you?
 
I was about to engage into my usual drivel and say something along the lines of how for MS that's less than me giving a breath. But no, I've read the tweet.

They'll set him up.

Smart man. I'd like to think that's what I would do in his position. Swallow your pride, be honest and ask the people who can actually help you. At least some would gladly do you much good because even if they don't truly care about you and your cause, they'd be fools to miss such opportunity because it's literally their job to do public service while representing the company.

The system works.
 
B00nie said:
Windows costs them their years salary FYI.
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They're getting Windows free...

Not to mention Windows is more likely to benefit these kids on the chance one of them is able to land a job using a computer which WILL help feed them, but go ahead lets pile some Linux on those empty plates!
 
Ultima99 said:
They're getting Windows free...

Not to mention Windows is more likely to benefit these kids on the chance one of them is able to land a job using a computer which WILL help feed them, but go ahead lets pile some Linux on those empty plates!
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Duh, they get Windows for free just like a drug dealer is giving your a free sample. Once you're hooked (being taught to use Windows instead of free and open source alternatives) you're poisoned by being limited to Windows. The next Windows they get is most likely pirated so 'free' but the damage is already done when you get yet another generation that's limited to Microsoft ecosystem.
 
The local school system here bought into the Macbook shenanigans. Now they are using Chromebooks. I still think they should be using Windows machines for the simple fact that Google Apps is garbage and hardly anyone uses it in the real world. Office is king and so far no one has managed to even approach the throne let alone take the crown.
 
B00nie said:
Duh, they get Windows for free just like a drug dealer is giving your a free sample. Once you're hooked (being taught to use Windows instead of free and open source alternatives) you're poisoned by being limited to Windows. The next Windows they get is most likely pirated so 'free' but the damage is already done when you get yet another generation that's limited to Microsoft ecosystem.
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Clearly you want to keep these African kids as disadvantaged as possible.

Btw, where is the news of Ubuntu donating computers to this school?
 
EODetroit said:
My Java class at Purdue usually went entire lectures just going over code in the written form with no computer to verify it worked. It can be done, good of Microsoft though.
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We had a small class in elementary school in the latter part of the 1970s that did that with BASIC programming. Every week or two we would have access to a TRS-80 with an expansion base and accessories (it seems like it was not even called the Model I at that time...maybe called Model 1 after another model was introduced) for a for a few minutes each to try out our code on a real machine. Those were classes I really looked forward to.
 
B00nie said:
Duh, they get Windows for free just like a drug dealer is giving your a free sample. Once you're hooked (being taught to use Windows instead of free and open source alternatives) you're poisoned by being limited to Windows. The next Windows they get is most likely pirated so 'free' but the damage is already done when you get yet another generation that's limited to Microsoft ecosystem.
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And yet MS is the ONLY one offering to help here. Where are the pure and good Linux developers to fight off the "evil" Microsoft? Why haven't they offered to help? Funny how every single company developing Linux variants says nothing about this, not even offering words of support or promoting funding campaigns to help.
 
Derangel said:
And yet MS is the ONLY one offering to help here. Where are the pure and good Linux developers to fight off the "evil" Microsoft? Why haven't they offered to help? Funny how every single company developing Linux variants says nothing about this, not even offering words of support or promoting funding campaigns to help.
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Microsoft, being the dominant provider in the business with literally billions of dollars of yearly income can pull off marketing stunts like this - and force OEMs to drop offerings from the competition through shady business practices such as penalties in pricing. It's a very unhealthy situation when a market has an ecosystem where the majority of providers are focused on one system. In any other business except IT this would be generally considered seriously skewed and bad for consumers.

When ever a corporation has no competition (and yes, all corporations try to achieve that status) it generally means higher prices and worse products for consumers. The corporation doesn't need to care, it owns the consumers.

Even though there would be perfectly fine and free replacements for Windows today, the damage is already done through 3rd party suppliers concentrating their offerings to the God of the monopoly and thereby denying any new suppliers access to the market. It's a sad situation and concious consumers should react on it.
 
Ultima99 said:
Clearly you want to keep these African kids as disadvantaged as possible.

Btw, where is the news of Ubuntu donating computers to this school?
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Clearly the African kids can achieve much more through open source without being enslaved to Microsoft in the process. You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day. You can teach him to fish and he'll feed his family for the rest of his life.

Btw, have you checked the difference in turnover for Ubuntu and Microsoft? Have you checked yourself?
 
B00nie said:
Clearly the African kids can achieve much more through open source without being enslaved to Microsoft in the process. You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day. You can teach him to fish and he'll feed his family for the rest of his life.

Btw, have you checked the difference in turnover for Ubuntu and Microsoft? Have you checked yourself?
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No they can't. You're trying to corral them into your hopeless dreams and worthless promises. Don't handicap them and let them learn the knowledge of the most widely used and powerful business software in the world. Burdening them as you suggest would be cruel.

Turnover? I know Germany realized their folly and abandoned Linux. I also know Cannonical only had $2 million in profits in 2017, a mere 2.74% of their debt. Keep swimming guys, you'll make it!
 
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