One Laptop per Child

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One Laptop per Child


Formation January 2005
Type Non-profit
Headquarters Cambridge, MA
Chairman Nicholas Negroponte
Key people Mary Lou Jepsen, Walter Bender, Jim Gettys, Seymour Papert, Alan Kay
Website One Laptop Per Child website

The One Laptop per Child association (OLPC) is a Delaware, USA based, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, set up to oversee The Children's Machine project and the construction of the XO-1 "$100 laptop". Both the project and the organization were announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2005. According to the home page of the project's wiki at laptop.org, "OLPC espouses five core principles: (1) child ownership; (2) low ages; (3) saturation; (4) connection; and (5) free and open source." [1]

OLPC is funded by a number of sponsor organizations, including AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, SES, Nortel Networks, Red Hat, and most recently Intel[2]. Each company has donated two million dollars.[3]

The organization is chaired by Nicholas Negroponte and its CTO is Mary Lou Jepsen. Other principals of the company include former MIT Media Lab director Walter Bender, who is President of OLPC Software and Content, and Jim Gettys, Vice-President of Software Engineering.[4]

Contents

Main article: OLPC XO-1

The goal of the foundation is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. To that end, OLPC is designing a laptop, educational software, manufacturing base, and distribution system to provide children outside of the first-world with otherwise unavailable technological learning opportunities.

OLPC espouses five core principles [11]:

  1. Child ownership
  2. Low ages. The hardware and software are designed for elementary school children aged 6-12.
  3. Saturation
  4. Connection
  5. Free and open source


“ It's an education project, not a laptop project. ”

—Nicholas Negroponte

Mary Lou Jepsen, Alan Kay and Nicholas Negroponte unveil the $100 laptop
Mary Lou Jepsen, Alan Kay and Nicholas Negroponte unveil the $100 laptop

OLPC is based on constructionist learning theories pioneered by Seymour Papert, Alan Kay, and also on the principles expressed in Nicholas Negroponte’s book Being Digital.[5] These three individuals plus the several sponsor organizations are active participants in OLPC.

The organization gained much attention when Nicholas Negroponte and Kofi Annan unveiled a working prototype of the CM1 on November 16, 2005 at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, Tunisia. Negroponte showed two prototypes of the laptop at the second phase of the World Summit: a non working physical model and a tethered version using an external board and separate keyboard. The device shown was a rough prototype using a standard development board. Negroponte estimated that the screen alone required three more months of development. The first working prototype was demonstrated at the project's Country Task Force Meeting on May 23, 2006. The production version is expected to have a larger display screen in the same size package. The laptops were originally scheduled to be available by early 2007, but production actually began in November, 2007.

Children in a remote Cambodian school where a pilot laptop program has been in place since 2001.
Children in a remote Cambodian school where a pilot laptop program has been in place since 2001.

At the 2006 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced it would back the laptop. UNDP released a statement saying they would work with OLPC to deliver “technology and resources to targeted schools in the least developed countries”.[6]

The project originally aimed for a price of 100 United States dollars. In May 2006, Negroponte told the Red Hat's annual user summit: “It is a floating price. We are a nonprofit organization. We have a target of $100 by 2008, but probably it will be $135, maybe $140. That is a start price, but what we have to do is with every release make it cheaper and cheaper— we are promising that the price will go down.”[7]

The OLPC project had stated that a consumer version of the XO laptop was not planned.[8] However, the project has established the xogiving.org website for outright donations and for a "Give 1 Get 1" offer valid from November 12, 2007 for two weeks, but this was extended through December 31, 2007.[9] The "Give 1 Get 1" offer's required donation of $399 has a tax-deductible portion of $200. The fair market value of the XO laptop is placed at $199 by the OLPC Foundation.

 Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (December 2007)
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, with a prototype.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, with a prototype.

The following countries have already “committed” to the project in various ways. However, the commitment is not binding. The laptops will be sold to governments, to be distributed through the ministries of education willing to adopt the policy of “one laptop per child”. The operating system and software will be localized to the languages of the participating countries. As of December 1, 2007, only two countries, Peru and Uruguay, actually purchased the XO laptop[10][11].

The following countries are receiving laptops in the Give One Get One program.

  • Haiti
  • Rwanda
  • Cambodia
  • Afghanistan
  • Mongolia

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney submitted a bill to the legislature to deliver $100 laptops to all children in the state.[17] Nigeria was the first country to order one million laptop computers.[18] However, neither deal has materialized as of November 2007[19].

On October 11, 2006 The New York Times reported that OLPC had reached an agreement with the government of Libya to supply laptops to all of its 1.2 million school children. The $250 million deal includes satellite Internet access, one XS (school server)[20][21] per school and technical support.[22][23] Muammar al-Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi has talked of turning the country into the first E-democracy, with citizens participating electronically in government decision-making.[24] However, this deal was never materialized as of November 2007[25].

India has rejected the initiative, saying “it would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents”.[26]

Thailand under prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra had committed to the project, however after the 2006 coup d'état the new education minister called the project "not urgent and not in my education reform plan".[27] According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, the laptop will be evaluated with pilot projects before proceeding cautiously.[28]

On December 1, 2007, Boston Globe reported that the government of Peru purchases 260,000, and the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has purchased 50,000 of XO Laptop[29].

In the United States, the city of Birmingham (Ala) has purchased more than 15,000 laptops to let students use them at city schools [30].

Year of purchase Confirmed number (approximate) Date confirmed Purchaser
2007 100,000 (5,000 delivered in 2007) 2007 Uruguay
15,000 November 14, 2007 City of Birmingham (Ala)[31]
260,000 December 1, 2007 Peru[32]
50,000 December 1, 2007 Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim[33]
~190,000 2007 "Give One, Get One" program[34]
Total ~ 615,000    

Fourth generation, the XO-1
Fourth generation, the XO-1

Though generally well received at early stages, the project has been criticized on several fronts.

On November 10, 2005, Lee Felsenstein criticized the centralized, top-down, “imperialistic” design and distribution of the OLPC. Felsenstein, currently of the Fonly Institute, draws upon his previous experience with distributed collaboration and open source hardware in the Homebrew Computer Club.[35]

The project has received criticism due to concerns over environmental and health impacts of hazardous materials found in other computers.[36] Many nations and organizations are working towards the development of “Green Electronics” (e.g. European Union with Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive).[37]

In the case of the OLPC XO, these concerns were premature. While any project on this scale will have environmental impact, OLPC has asserted that it is aiming to use as many environmentally friendly materials as it can; that the laptop and all OLPC-supplied accessories will be fully compliant with the EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS); and that the laptop will use an order of magnitude less power than the typical consumer notebooks available as of 2007, minimizing the environmental burden of power generation.[38] Use of renewable power (solar, wind, water, ethanol, biodiesel, animal, child) is strongly encouraged.

  • The original design provided a hand crank for charging the battery. The production design has a nominal 12 volt power socket (usable range of 10-15 volts) that functions with any power generation system that can charge a 12 volt car battery.
  • The screen backlight uses LEDs rather than fluorescents, and so contains no mercury.
  • The XO can be dismantled with a #1 Phillips screwdriver for recycling.
  • The plastic parts can be completely separated by color for recycling rather than downcycling.
  • The XO is one of eight computers to receive EPEAT's Gold rating for environmental performance. [39]

At the UN conference in Tunisia, several African officials, most notably Marthe Dansokho of Cameroon and Mohammed Diop of Mali, were suspicious of the motives of the project and claimed that the project was using an overly American mindset that presented solutions not applicable to specifically African problems. Dansokho said the project demonstrated misplaced priorities, stating that clean water and schools were more important for African women, who, he stated, would not have time to use the computers to research new crops to grow. Diop specifically attacked the project as an attempt to exploit the governments of poor nations by making them pay for hundreds of millions of machines.[40] Additionally, the price of $188/unit does not include the cost of setup, maintenance, training of teachers, or Internet access. Countries adopting the XO-1 must budget for these costs as well.

One criticism has been that the money for purchasing laptops could be more favorably spent on libraries and schools. John Wood, founder of Room to Read, emphasizes affordability and scalability over high-tech solutions. While in favor of the One Laptop per Child initiative for providing education to children in the developing world at a cheaper rate, he has pointed out that a $2,000 library can serve 400 children, costing just $5 a child to bring access to a wide range of books in the local languages (such as Khmer or Nepali) and English; also, a $10,000 school can serve 400–500 children ($20–$25 a child). According to Wood, these are more appropriate solutions for education in the dense forests of Vietnam or rural Cambodia.[41]

The Ministry of Human Resource Development of India has rejected Nicholas Negroponte's offer of $100 laptops for schoolchildren. The Ministry has stated plans to make laptops at $10 for schoolchildren. Two designs submitted to the ministry from a final year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology and a researcher from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore reportedly describe a laptop that could be produced for "$47 per laptop" for even small volumes.[42] No technical specifications or development timelines have been released.

On July 20, 2007, Reuters reported on a minor scandal when the News Agency of Nigeria claimed that several units seen by its reporters had been used to view pornographic websites. In response, the OLPC program laid out filtering options.[43]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Laptop page
School server page
Related projects
Similar projects
  • Digital Textbook a South Korean Project that intends to distribute tablet notebooks to elementary school students.
  • OpenBook Project, a meta-project functionally similar to XO-1 that aims to create and maintain open hardware and software specifications to enable production of convenient "tablet" in high volumes
  • Simputer, an earlier project to construct cheap handheld computers in India
  • VIA pc-1 Initiative, VIA Technologies digital divide program
Popular culture
  • The Diamond Age a Science Fiction story about an educational and interactive electronic book getting into the hands of under privileged children around the world, instead of the rich minority it was intended for.

  1. ^ The OLPC Wiki, laptop.org
  2. ^ Gardiner, Bryan. "Intel Joins OLPC Initiative", PC Magazine, 2007-07-13. Retrieved on 2007-07-14. 
  3. ^ "Taiwan's Quanta to make 100-US-dollar laptops for poor kids". Retrieved on 2007-04-05.
  4. ^ OLPC Principals and Staff List Retrieved February 13, 2006
  5. ^ Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. ISBN 0-679-43919-6. 
  6. ^ U.N. Lends Backing to the $100 Laptop. Associated Press (January 26, 2006). Retrieved on 2006-01-27.
  7. ^ Donoghue, Andrew. "$100 laptop 'will boost desktop Linux'", CNET News.com, 2006-06-02. Retrieved on 2006-08-19. 
  8. ^ One Laptop per Child Has No Plans to Commercialize XO Computer. Business Wire. Retrieved on 2007-01-16.
  9. ^ One Laptop Per Child -- XO Giving. OLPC project (2007-09-23).
  10. ^ [1] "One Laptop Per Child orders surge" Boston Globe, December 1, 2007
  11. ^ [2] “A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions: How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants” Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2007; Page A1
  12. ^ Govt studying independent US$100 laptop project. TMCnet (March 10, 2006). Retrieved on 2006-03-10.
  13. ^ [3] "One Laptop Per Child orders surge" Boston Globe, December 1, 2007
  14. ^ http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2007010902326NWHWEV Linux Today Notes From a Senior Editor: A Close Look at the OLPC
  15. ^ http://www.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/11/12/daily23.html
  16. ^ http://radian.org/notebook/first-deployment
  17. ^ http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/laptops-1005.html
  18. ^ Nigeria orders 1 million $100 laptops. The Inquirer (July 26, 2006).
  19. ^ [4] “A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions: How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants” Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2007; Page A1
  20. ^ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Server_Specification
  21. ^ http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Server_Services
  22. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/africa/11laptop.html
  23. ^ All Libyan pupils to get laptop and web access
  24. ^ All Libyan pupils to get laptop and web access
  25. ^ [5] “A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions: How a Computer for the Poor Got Stomped by Tech Giants” Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2007; Page A1
  26. ^ HRD rubbishes MIT's laptop scheme for kids. The Times of India (July 3, 2006).
  27. ^ Bangkok Post, Education Ministry axes 3 schemes, 28 November 2006
  28. ^ Rural Thai students to get R700 laptops, 25 December 2006
  29. ^ [6] "One Laptop Per Child orders surge" Boston Globe, December 1, 2007
  30. ^ http://www.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/11/12/daily23.html
  31. ^ http://www.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/11/12/daily23.html
  32. ^ [7] "One Laptop Per Child orders surge" Boston Globe, December 1, 2007
  33. ^ [8] "One Laptop Per Child orders surge" Boston Globe, December 1, 2007
  34. ^ [9] "Peru, Mexico billionaire agree to buy $188 laptops" Betanews, December 3, 2007
  35. ^ Problems with the $100 laptop by Lee Felsenstein
  36. ^ How Much E-Waste Per Child?, WorldChanging, December 19, 2005
  37. ^ Era of Green Electronics, JimTrade, August 20, 2005
  38. ^ OLPC Frequently Asked Questions, OLPC Wiki, accessed April 25, 2006
  39. ^ EPEAT laptop ratings, Fall 2007
  40. ^ “The $100 laptop — is it a wind-up?” CNN, December 1, 2005. Accessed December 1, 2005.
  41. ^ Software 2006 conference, Scaling Organizations Panel [10] (32:40)
  42. ^ The Times of India: HRD hopes to make $10 laptops a reality
  43. ^ Pupils browse porn on donated laptops.

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