One Laptop per Child (OLPC)

Last week I heard about the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program which aims "to create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning." Unless you already know about it, here's a short overview of the non-profit project led by Nicholas Negroponte, a Greek-American architect.

The OLPC laptops, known as the "$100 Laptop" or "Children's Machine", are sold to governments, to be distributed through the ministries of education with the goal of distributing "one laptop per child". The laptops are given to students, similar to school uniforms, and ultimately remain the property of the child. The operating system and software is localized to the languages of the participating countries.

When the laptop started mass production in November 2007, the unit price was estimated to be $188 when bought by thousand units. At the same time, the laptop was made available under the "Give 1 Get 1" program at $199 for a single unit, or $399 for 2 units.

In October 2007, Uruguay placed an order for 100,000 laptops. Since then, 200,000 more laptops have been ordered to cover all public school children between 6 and 12 years old. The country reportedly became the first in the world where every primary school child received a free laptop on 13 October 2009 as part of the Plan Ceibal (Education Connect). The South Pacific island nation of Niue also claimed this in August 2008. However, the total number of laptops ordered by now is the biggest in Peru (550,000 laptops, most recently ordered in March 2010).

Other participants in the project include for example Mexico, Haiti, Rwanda, Ghana, Afghanistan and Mongolia. A number of other countries are participting in pilot projects (from a few dozen to a few hundred laptops), including Mozambique, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Nepal, India, and many others.