One Laptop Per Child is an nonprofit organization founded by Nicholas Negroponte that has created an inexpensive laptop for children in developing countries (see my write-up from last year). Today OLPC launched their Give One Get One program in North America, where if you pay $400, you can buy one of their new OX laptops for your child at home and a second on for a child in a developing country. The program runs through November 26th. You can also donate to the program by buying one or more laptops that will be shipped directly to children around the world.
Our mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have insufficient resources to devote to education—sometimes less than $20 a year per child. Imagine the potential that could be unlocked by giving every child in the world the tools they need to learn, no matter who they are, no matter where they live, no matter how little they may have.
This weekend I was able to spend some time with one of the OX laptops and they are really great little devices. The laptop is very durable and weather resistant, has low power consumption and inludes a pair of rabbit ears to help it connect to a mesh network (here are the hardware specs). The software it uses is 100% open source, running Red Hat’s Fedora Linux operating system with “Sugar”, a really nice, child friendly graphical user interface (GUI). The laptop also includes access to a terminal in case children might want to learn how to program by modifying their own machine.
Laughing Squid is proud to participating in the Give One Get One program. Who knows, in the future maybe they will work out a way that the recipient of your donation will be able to send you email, maybe event photos and video through the laptop.
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I just ordered one as well. What are you going to do with the one that comes to you?
(I’d probably like to play with the OLPC box for a little while, but I’ve already got access to all the computers I need…)
After I was through checking it out, I think it would be a shame not to give it to someone who could use it…
Maybe we should get together a bunch of people who are getting these in the area, and donate en-masse to a school in need, or something like that?
My boyfriend and I just bought one as a xmas present for his mum. Already feeling gift envy. Must… resist… urge to …. degift…
you know, i’ve been following this story via engadget since it first surfaced as the ‘100 dollar pc’ and i can honestly say that i’m a little disappointed that the price is still higher than 150 per unit. although, i’ve read the reviews of the OLPC and i am pretty impressed with what they’ll be using.
are these only being sent overseas? how many inner-city US schools are underfunded and could use these? and with the ‘no child left behind’ act raising the bar in so many schools, how many high school students are in fact being left behind?
i know my HS had a full up-to-date computer lab, but a lot of schools in downtown cincinnati don’t have any technology whatsoever.
oh well. i guess maybe that’s irrelevant; these pcs definitely have a real market right now, and hopefully a lot of people with the resources chip in. it’ll make the world better if countries that are now unable to educate their children are able to, and then those countries are better equipped to contribute to the world, no matter how it changes.
For those of you who want to give the other laptop to someone at “home”, perhaps consider shelters for women and children, or something along those lines. For example, I am thinking about doing this and donating the other computer to the Glide Church in San Francisco, which provides many services for homeless families.
Hey folks,
If you’re interested in winning one of these laptops, check out Razoo’s “Good Travels” contest, which is giving away 10 of the XO laptops (5 to contest winners, and 5 to children in developing nations).
By the way, the grand prize of the contest is a trip for two anywhere in the world to put good into action (via ResponsibleTravel.com).
You can learn more about it and enter here: http://beta.razoo.com/good_travels
Cheers,
rebecca
Razoo. Come Together, Change Your World.
http://blog.razoo.com
Dear westworld technophiles,
There’s been a wide range of critique regarding OLPC since it was announced in Tunisia in 2005 by N. Negroponte ( whose brother John has been involved in foreign service of Urinating States under Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes… in other words: more fun than can ever be told on wikipedia bios! ).
But that certainly shouldn’t color your views of OLPC as a cultural export from the founder of MIT’s Media Lab … because it may just be a misadventure for purely technical, pedagogical, social, and economic reasons.
The XL Terrestrials have been working on an analysis of this topic from a variety of perspectives, one being that “One Anything Per Everyone” is a backward concept that erases the progress made by Benjamin Franklin’s invention of libraries, for example. Futhermore, might OLPC incorporate 1st world agendas that are detrimental to any civil society/culture that attempts to cultivate shared resources, sustainability and non-hegemonic horizontal communication flows??
From that angle, the Negropontes may be seen as late-capital corporate primates who believe in hunter/ gatherer, shopper /colonizer versions of society. NO Thanks!
…
But that’s just one socio-political take, if you’d like to read further critiques… The Institute for Distributed Creativity
http://distributedcreativity.org/
has a discussion thread about OLPC:
[iDC] One Laptop Per Child – MIT/Negroponte Initiative
see IDC archives:
https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
Btw, If you Are intrigued by the socio-political view, be sure to read the post from David Golumbia at Virginia Tech.
My frend’s child has refused to use it, since he can’t load Microsoft programs on it. So I expect we can find a worthy young donee if it gets too frustrating.
I got mine today!!
It’s cool, but I don’t (yet) have time to play with it too much… However, I set it up on the desk next to mine, and there’ve been programmers puttering around it all afternoon.
YAY!!
I finally saw a billboard advert on the freeway for this. I absolutely love the idea, but in our current economic state, I can’t fork out the $400. Hope others who can afford it will jump on this.
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