According to
engadget, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation has been
selling quite a few of their XO laptops. Which means many more
children will have internet access, and therefore access to more
educational opportunities. Three cheers. The first real,
non-pilot roll-out of laptops happened recently too - read about it
here. Besides selling directly to countries for distribution
for free, one of their initiatives was their get-one-give-one where
people in the US & Canada could purchase a laptop for double
the price and receive one laptop (the other going to a needy child
somewhere in the world). I participated in this and expect to see
my laptop sometime in early 2008 (if you were quicker on the draw,
and in the US, you'd get yours for Christmas). I'm a fan of things
that help spread education and I think both this OLPC initiative
and especially some of the people helping (the
engadget report states that the world's richest man, Carlos
Slim, has bought 50,000 for children in Mexico). For those of you
that may ask: "So they all get laptops... then they break.. then
what?" Well, I believe I read that the official answer for
maintenance is to get the owners (the kids) to repair them. I think
that is a great idea. Here's a video of a couple
of Quebec children doing just that. Of course,
hacking the system (creating games, apps, or just extending the OS)
is likely part of the learning and maintenance as well. (This
project just meshes with my sensibilities in so many ways: techie,
educational, empowering, helping without preaching....) I may see
what games or other apps I can whip up on my XO (I'm also hoping to
find a way into a larger project with it before giving it away). My
previous post about OLPC is here. A few YouTube videos about
the OLPC: a
guy that is part of the OLPC effort in Peru unwraps an updated
model, Hakom Lie (Opera
founder and W3C guy)
Search YouTube for videos on the OLPC