Tuesday, December 04, 2007

One laptop per child

I feel like I'd heard about this organization before - but I stumbled upon it again today (nearly ashamed that it was through a website for the tv show Heroes on NBC). One Laptop per Child is a non profit that has literally composed a laptop for $100. It runs linux as it's operating system (free) and has wireless, drawing programs, chat, music programs, 2 programming languages, etc. It's really quite incredible. I really think that the Holiday Spirit has seized me - it's just so the right kind of thing to do. So Amy and I are in talks about getting a laptop for a child in an developing country.

http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

I just read on this website that if you give a laptop before December 31st 2007, they'll send a laptop to a child in a developing nation AND one to you! That's really incredible. I wonder if we'd be able to use laptops like these in Russia to work with kids at the cultural center? Computer literacy is really becoming required in Russia too....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been following the OLPC for quite a while now. Negroponte has an interesting concept behind it.

What I think is really cool is the networking aspect. The machines are designed to share files between themselves, and act as distributed network nodes, that way if one of them has internet access it can create a mesh network that spans a pretty good size limited only by the laptops wireless range. Then if another OLPC laptop is in the area, it can pick up that signal and distribute it further.

Really cool tech behind it.

Anonymous said...

The OLPC people just contacted Kevin a couple days ago. . .they're using CoSign now. :)