June 2006 demonstration of a working prototype of the OLPC laptop, with Red Hat engineer and Mozilla Corporation board member Christopher Blizzard
This 1/8/2006 report states that Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have all tendered commitments to purchase one million "100$ Linux Laptops" being developed under the One Laptop Per Child initiative.
The One Laptop Per Child Wiki is well worth browsing. Though currently the wiki seems rather stronger on technology than on curriculum and methods of use - "While ultimately, the work on curricula will be done by the ministries of education who buy this, there are several efforts underway to explore some of the education potential from this project" sounded ominously unrealistic - there are several interesting pages on the wiki about educational content ideas. The emphasis is on "not imitating mainstream ideas". Personally I'd have thought there would be at least some mileage in repurposing existing web and CD-based educational content - when and if it is any good - much of which has been produced in the developed world, with funding from the public purse. Also relevant is this longish piece by Ian Limbach in the 26/3/2006 Financial Times, about the place of ICT infrastructure in development, with a particular emphasis on Ethiopia's decision to flood the whole country with broadband connectivity.
Amended 7/8/2006 to substitute video of working demonstration for photo of mock-up.
Comments