It's amazing, when you meet a head of state and you say, "What is your most precious natural resource?" -- they will not say children at first. And then when you say children, they will pretty quickly agree with you.
Fantastično je kad se sastanete sa šefom države i kažete: "Koji vam je najvredniji prirodni izvor?" Neće prvo spomenuti djecu. A kad vi spomenete djecu, vrlo brzo će se složiti s vama.
(Video): We're traveling today with the Minister of Defense of Colombia, head of the army and the head of the police, and we're dropping off 650 laptops today to children who have no television, no telephone and have been in a community cut off from the rest of the world for the past 40 years.
(video): Danas putujemo s kolumbijskim ministrom obrane, zapovjednikom vojske i policije, i dostavljamo 650 prijenosnika djeci koja nemaju televiziju ni telefon i koja žive u zajednici odsječenoj od ostatka svijeta posljednjih 40 godina.
The importance of delivering laptops to this region is connecting kids who have otherwise been unconnected because of the FARC, the guerrillas that started off 40 years ago as a political movement and then became a drug movement. There are one billion children in the world, and 50 percent of them don't have electricity at home or at school. And in some countries -- let me pick Afghanistan -- 75 percent of the little girls don't go to school. And I don't mean that they drop out of school in the third or fourth grade -- they don't go.
Važnost donošenja prijenosnih računala u ovo područje jest u tome što ona povezuju djecu koja inače nisu bila povezana zbog FARC-a, gerilske organizacije koja je nastala prije 40 godina kao politički pokret, a kasnije se počela baviti drogom. Na svijetu ima milijardu djece, a 50 posto njih nema električnu struju ni kod kuće ni u školi. U nekim zemljama -- primjerice Afganistanu -- 75% djevojčica ne ide u školu. I to ne znači da prekinu školovanje u trećem ili četvrtom razredu -- one se uopće ne školuju.
So in the three years since I talked at TED and showed a prototype, it's gone from an idea to a real laptop. We have half a million laptops today in the hands of children. We have about a quarter of a million in transit to those and other children, and then there are another quarter of a million more that are being ordered at this moment. So, in rough numbers, there are a million laptops. That's smaller than I predicted -- I predicted three to 10 million -- but is still a very large number.
U tri godine otkad sam govorio na TED-u i pokazao prototip, više nemamo samo ideju, već i pravo prijenosno računalo. Danas je pola milijuna prijenosnih računala u rukama djece. Oko četvrt milijuna je u transportu do te i druge djece i postoji još četvrt milijuna koja se naručuju u ovom trenutku. U grubo, postoji oko milijun prijenosnika. To je manje nego što sam predvidio -- predvidio sam tri do deset milijuna -- ali to je ipak velik broj.
In Colombia, we have about 3,000 laptops. It's the Minister of Defense with whom we're working, not the Minister of Education, because it is seen as a strategic defense issue in the sense of liberating these zones that had been completely closed off, in which the people who had been causing, if you will, 40 years' worth of bombings and kidnappings and assassinations lived.
U Kolumbiji imamo oko 3.000 prijenosnih računala. Radimo s ministrom obrane, a ne ministrom obrazovanja jer se ovo smatra pitanjem strateške obrane u smislu oslobađanja zona koje su bile potpuno zatvorene, u kojima su živjeli ljudi koji su uzrokovali, da tako kažem, 40 godina bombardiranja, otmica i ubojstava.
And suddenly, the kids have connected laptops. They've leapfrogged. The change is absolutely monumental, because it's not just opening it up, but it's opening it up to the rest of the world. So yes, they're building roads, yes, they're putting in telephone, yes, there will be television. But the kids six to 12 years old are surfing the Internet in Spanish and in local languages, so the children grow up with access to information, with a window into the rest of the world. Before, they were closed off.
I odjednom, djeca imaju umrežene prijenosnike. Iznimno su napredovali. Promjena je nevjerojatna jer ne radi se samo o tome da smo otvorili ta područja, već smo ih otvorili ostatku svijeta. Da, oni grade ceste, da, uvode telefon, da, imat će i televiziju. Ali djeca između 6 i 12 godina surfaju internetom na španjolskom i lokalnim jezicima, što znači da odrastaju s pristupom informacijama, imaju prozor prema ostatku svijeta. Prije su bili zatvoreni.
Interestingly enough, in other countries, it will be the Minister of Finance who sees it as an engine of economic growth. And that engine is going to see the results in 20 years. It's not going to happen, you know, in one year, but it's an important, deeply economic and cultural change that happens through children. Thirty-one countries in total are involved, and in the case of Uruguay, half the children already have them, and by the middle of 2009, every single child in Uruguay will have a laptop -- a little green laptop.
Zanimljivo je da će u drugim zemljama uglavnom ministar financija ovaj projekt smatrati pokretačem gospodarskog rasta. Taj će pokretač imati rezultate za 20 godina. Neće se to dogoditi, znate, za godinu dana, ali radi se o važnoj, duboko gospodarskoj i kulturnoj promjeni koja se događa kroz djecu. Uključena je ukupno 31 zemlja, a u slučaju Urugvaja, polovica djece već ima prijenosna računala, a do sredine 2009. svako dijete u Urugvaju imat će prijenosno računalo -- mali zeleni prijenosnik.
Now what are some of the results? Some of the results that go across every single country include teachers saying they have never loved teaching so much, and reading comprehension measured by third parties -- not by us -- skyrockets. Probably the most important thing we see is children teaching parents. They own the laptops. They take them home. And so when I met with three children from the schools, who had traveled all day to come to Bogota, one of the three children brought her mother. And the reason she brought her mother is that this six-year-old child had been teaching her mother how to read and write. Her mother had not gone to primary school. And this is such an inversion, and such a wonderful example of children being the agents of change.
Kakvi su rezultati? Neki od rezultata koji postoje u svakoj zemlji jest da učitelji kažu da nikad nisu toliko uživali u poučavanju, te da se razumijevanje u čitanju, što je mjerila treća strana, ne mi, nevjerojatno poboljšalo. Vjerojatno najvažnija stvar koju vidimo jest da djeca poučavaju roditelje. Oni su vlasnici prijenosnika i nose ih kući. Kad sam se sastao s troje djece iz tih škola, koja su putovala cijeli dan da bi došla u Bogotu, jedna je djevojčica dovela svoju majku. A razlog zašto je dovela svoju majku jest taj da je ta šestogodišnja djevojčica učila svoju majku čitati i pisati. Njena majka nije išla u osnovnu školu. To je takva inverzija i tako predivan primjer kako djeca donose promjene.
So now, in closing, people say, now why laptops? Laptops are a luxury; it's like giving them iPods. No. The reason you want laptops is that the word is education, not laptop. This is an education project, not a laptop project. They need to learn learning. And then, just think -- they can have, let's say, 100 books. In a village, you have 100 laptops, each with a different set of 100 books, and so that village suddenly has 10,000 books. You and I didn't have 10,000 books when we went to primary school.
Sad, na kraju, ljudi kažu: "Zašto prijenosna računala? Prijenosnici su luksuz, to je kao da im dajete iPod." Ne. Razlog zašto želimo prijenosna računala jest taj što se tu radi o obrazovanju, ne o prijenosnicima. Ovo je obrazovni projekt, ne projekt za prijenosna računala. Morate naučiti učiti. A tada, samo zamislite -- mogu imati, recimo, 100 knjiga. U selu, ako imate 100 prijenosnika, a na svakome imate drugih 100 knjiga, znači da to selo odjednom ima 10.000 knjiga. Vi i ja nismo imali 10.000 knjiga kad smo išli u osnovnu školu.
Sometimes school is under a tree, or in many cases, the teacher has only a fifth-grade education, so you need a collaborative model of learning, not just building more schools and training more teachers, which you have to do anyway. So we're once again doing "Give One, Get One." Last year, we ran a "Give One, Get One" program, and it generated over 100,000 laptops that we were then able to give free. And by being a zero-dollar laptop, we can go to countries that can't afford it at all. And that's what we did. We went to Haiti, we went to Rwanda, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Mongolia. Places that are not markets, seeding it with the principles of saturation, connectivity, low ages, etc. And then we can actually roll out large numbers.
Ponekad se škola nalazi pod drvetom, ili, u mnogim slučajevima, učitelj ima završenih samo 5 razreda škole, tako da je potreban model suradnje u učenju, a ne samo gradnja više škola i obrazovanje više učitelja, što u svakom slučaju morate činiti. Zato smo opet pokrenuli program "Daj jedan, primi jedan". Lani smo imali taj program i donio je više od 100.000 prijenosnih računala koje smo uspjeli dati besplatno. A budući da se radi o besplatnim prijenosnicima, možemo ići u zemlje koje si ih uopće ne mogu priuštiti. I upravo smo to i učinili. Otišli smo na Haiti, bili smo u Ruandi, Afganistanu, Etiopiji, Mongoliji. Mjesta koja nemaju tržište, upoznali smo ih s principima zasićenja, povezanosti, manje starosti i tako dalje. I tada stvarno dobivamo velike brojeve.
So think of it this way: think of it as inoculating children against ignorance. And think of the laptop as a vaccine. You don't vaccinate a few children. You vaccinate all the children in an area.
Gledajte to ovako: to je kao cijepljenje djece protiv neznanja. A prijenosno računalo smatrajte cjepivom. Ne cijepite samo nekoliko djece. Cijepite svu djecu u nekom području.