The XO, access, and the availability of the means of production.

I haven't posted on this blog in a while but my recent resurgent interest in discourse analysis and the means of production have lead me to topic in question again.  Hopefully this line of questioning will lean me to a conference proposal or paper.  

I have reflected many times on the Ceibal project in Uruguay.  One of the fundamental efforts of the project was to create a system of blogs that created a network for school children to communicate and collaborate.  I have done some work that considers blogging to be a Euro-American, western conception, which reinforces colonial ideals of communication, rhetoric, discourse, memoria (or the way in which information/knowledge and stored and retrieved), genre, and collaboration.  These notebooks, while giving access and connectivity to these underprivileged children, are made to adapt to a colonial discourse.  

But these laptops allow for users to write their own applications.  The Ceibal project actually wanted to create a blogging application that would be suitable for the users after failed attempts with blogger.  There has been no reports on the headway with that project (I actually created this blog on the XO).  There has been much debate over how effective blogging is as platform of education.  So this issue may be a question of who is controlling the means of production.  Why is the blogging genre being produced in this context?  Is there a more effective, anti-colonial genre that can serve the needs of this discourse community?    

I see this as possibly a usability study (or part of one).  Analyzing the context and coming up with product or a means of production that leads to efficient communication and accomplishment of discursive goals.