OLPC

Draft

One laptop per child (OLPC).

“Our goal: To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.” laptop.org, retrieved 19:46, 14 November 2007 (MET).

A related issue: Open educational resources (OER)

Goals and software

“Tools for writing, composing, simulating, expressing, constructing, designing, modeling, imagining, creating, critiquing, debugging, and collaborating enable children to become positive, contributing members of their communities.” (Expressing).

“The XO laptop was designed to provide the most engaging wireless network possible. The children can connect, chat, share information on the Web, gather by videoconference, make music together, edit texts, read e-books, and enjoy the use of collaborative games online.” (Social and sharing, retrieved 19:46, 14 November 2007 (MET)).

Policy implementation

This initiative seems to have trouble getting of the ground for various reasons (BBC).

• The usual "being afraid of change" syndrom
• Companies not happy with free software based scheme
• Companies planning to earn money in this market segment (e.g. Intel0s Eee PC and Classmate)

Hardware and OS

The first version is called OLPC_XO-1, so instead of OLPC people also refer to the "XO"

• See the specs.
  • CPU: x86-compatible processor
  • RAM: 256
  • 1200x900 TFT - both color and sunlight-readable monochrome mode
  • Wireless
• The XO laptop runs on Linux with the Sugar learning platform (Sugar is written in Python)

Links

• One.Laptop.org Homepage of the OLPC project.
• Ted Kaehler's page has a nice picture and explanation of Etoys which is installed.
• The OLPC Wiki
• OLPC_XO_1 (Wikipedia)
• A child's view of the $100 laptop
• Sugar-on-a-Stick Linux