Inside the digital society: lessons from little laptops

Once again, children are trying to learn from home, often on an inadequate device and with hard-pressed and under-supporting parents struggling to cope. Even for families lucky enough to get a government laptop, is this enough? What can we learn from previous efforts to drop tech into homes and expect children to keep up with their education? In this blog, David Souter discusses evidence from a much-publicised initiative in developing countries to explore the value of technologies for education and how pitfalls such as technological determinism and lack of sustainability might limit their real-life development potential.