atw: Re: One Laptop Per Child, Learning Systems '08 Opens (OT)

Christine Kent wrote,


This is designed for children in Africa – but what are the implications?
Why only third world children?
The laptop isn't limited to third world children, but they are the primary target audience of the OLPC organisation.
Here is what the first page of the OLPC donations website (http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php) says:
"The mission of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child... [we] want to help make education for the world's children a priority, not a privilege... we hope to give many more children the opportunity to grow, explore, learn and express themselves."
The "mission statement" page on that website (http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/vision.php) starts off: 
"It's not a laptop project. It's an education project."
This theme is expanded on the OLPC's main website, for example http://www.laptop.org/vision/mission/
Implications? OLPC is another way to help people lift themselves from ignorance and poverty. I've read some reports of how mobile phones have transformed the lives of third-world people in ways that would never have occurred to me (privileged Westerner that I am). I believe the OLPC can do the same... probably in ways that would never occur to me (as well as the more obvious ways). 

You may guess that I'm an OLPC enthusiast, and you'd be correct!
I think every child in Australia should have a laptop, too (not necessarily this one, but a laptop), and access to cheap or free wireless broadband. But that's an even more off-topic rant for a different thread and another day... 

--Jean
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