One Laptop Per Child
If you have not heard about OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child Program, then you can get more details about it from www.laptop.org. This non profit organisation was founded by Nicholas Negroponte who left MIT, where he was the co-founder and director of MIT media laboritory. This organisation was formed to provide educational opportunity to the world’s poorest children through ownership of a connected, rugged, low-cost laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, creative, joyful and self-empowered learning. To this end, OLPC designed and built the XO laptop.
The new designed laptop scheduled to launch in 2010 will soon have the option of running on Microsoft Windows; previously, the machines only ran on the GNU/Linux operating system, plus a custom interface called Sugar that emphasizes collaboration among children. With the addition of Windows, OLPC hopes to boost sales to countries, such as Egypt, that already use Windows software in schools.
Now for the interesting part. This PC will cost only USD 75$ !!! One can only imagine how this will change the world. Now every child in developing countries like India, China, Brazil etc.. can afford to have a PC. This will change the education system to a large extent and we will definitely have a more tech savy generation in the next few years to come. So essentially what we have here is an awesome project for an awesome cause. Let’s support this in anyway we can.
