Group+4A

=﻿One Laptop Per Child=

=Introduction= by David Volkmann

One Laptop Per Child is an international good cause program with the mission to supply children in developing countries with electronic educational learning devices. It is run by the U.S. non-profit organization **One Laptop per Child Association, Inc.** (OLPC) which has been founded in 2005 and is backed and funded by several global companies such as AMD, eBay, Google, News Corporation, Red Hat, and Marvell. Their mission, as stated on the official project website www.laptop.org, is "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. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future."

The program is developing its own inexpensive, durable, networked laptops starting with the first version called "XO-1", which has also been referred to as the "$100 Laptop" by the media because of its projected low price-point of only $100. In reality though the price point has been a little higher than that at $188 when buying in thousands. Retail prices as part of the "Give One Get One" initiative are $199 for a single unit or $399 for two units.

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= = = = =**History**= by Sandra De La Torre

While the One Laptop Per Child Foundation is a fairly new organization, the ideas and the people that helped establish it began years before there was even a discussion of creating this type of association. Nicolas Negroponte is the founder of the OLPC organization and its main goal is to provide children who are living in underdeveloped countries a laptop to use as an educational tool. According to the OLPC’s website, there are many important dates that made an impact in the establishment of the organization. It all began with the work of Seymour Papert who in 1967 came up with a computer programming language that was made for children. In 1980 Papert also wrote a piece titled Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, in which he expressed his theories of constructionism. Also in the year 2000 Negroponte decided to travel to Cambodia and instead of giving the children food, shelter or medicine he actually gave them laptops which marked the beginning of the burgeoning organization. Another important date for the OLPC was in December 2005 when Quanta Computer became involved in the project. In the year 2006 the organization began completing tasks that would lay down the foundation for the organization, which included setting up and launching their website, setting up offices in Massachusetts as well as developing numerous features of the XO laptop. In the year 2007, it was all about refining the prototype of the laptop as well as the programming and in November mass production was initiated and the outcome was incredible, there were more than 150,000 laptops sold. Finally, there was a change in leadership in April of 2008 when Chuck Lane was named the new president of the organization and plans were also set to develop another laptop called the X0-2 which is an improved version of the original laptop.("One Laptop per," )



=Participating countries= by David Volkmann

Participating countries can either place orders for laptops or benefit from the "Give One Get One" initiative. The latter allows regular consumers in certain countries to obtain a XO-1 laptop for the price of two devices: While they are allowed to keep one, the other one gets sent to a child in need in a developing nation.

Since the succesful pilot in 2007 when Uruguay was the first country to order 100,000 laptops, more and more countries have started to participate in the program. Most of them are from Middle- and South America (most orders: Peru 550,000, Uruguay 420,000), Africa and the Middle East (Rwanda 120,000) and Asia (Mongolia 10,100). Furthermore, countries from Oceania (Australia & smaller islands) and Europe (Greece) are already part of the program and have placed small orders (called "pilots") or are showing interest respectively.

Although the US was originally not considered to be part of the receiving end of the program, the city of Birmingham, Alabama recently ordered the first batch of 15,000 laptops.

The following interactive map shows every particapting country since the start of the program (a click on the markers reveals the name of the participating country and the number of laptops received):

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Detailed numbers on orders and deliveries as well as a list of all participating countries can be found on the official OLPC "Deployment" wiki page.

= Technology = by Samantha Cortes

 "A small machine with a big mission." This XO laptop is a powerful tool designed and built for children in developing countries, with harsh conditions. It’s the size of a small textbook and weighs as much as a lunch box. It has a built-in wireless and a screen that is readable under direct sunlight for children who go to school outside. It’s durable and energy-efficient. It was made in mind to go through extreme environmental conditions like heat, humidity, dust, and rain. It supports international languages such as Thai, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, West African, Urdu, Mongolian, Cyrillic, Amharic.

"Design factor was a priority from the start: the laptop could not be big, heavy, fragile, ugly, dangerous, or dull." the laptop easily assumes several configurations standard laptop use, e-book reading, and gaming. It is made with no hazardous materials. The wireless antennas,doubles as an external covers for the USB ports. The lifetime is at least five years. To help ensure such durability, the machines are being subjected to factory testing to destruction, as well as field testing by children.

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=Criticisms and Controversies of OLPC = ** by RaeAnne Dutto **

 ** The main criticism people have for the One Laptop Per Child project is that it focuses more on technology rather than actually improving education. Its mission is to "to ensure that all school-aged children in the developing world are able to engage effectively with their own personal laptop, networked to the world, so that they, their families and their communities can openly learn and learn about learning” (Cohen, 2009). People question the program’s belief that the more children who have laptops will lead to more progress in education (Cohen, 2009). While it may contribute to it, resources such as teachers, pencils, and textbooks are more important to learning and without these essentials first, education cannot be advanced and laptops are then less valuable (Cohen, 2009). It is also criticized because because it gives laptops to children who are more in need of food and shelter.  **

While the laptops are extremely cheap compared to normal laptops, they are still expensive for poor countries. Some criticize this program because they believe it facilitates market for computers and makes life difficult for the poor who can’t afford to buy computers for their kids (Sisay, 2009). For example, in Ethiopia, the program may not continue simply because of the lack of funding in the country (Sisay, 2009). In addition, the OLPC has had an issue actually keeping the cost of its laptop and it actually costs more than $100 but are trying to still lower the price (Cohen, 2009).

OLPC is also currently feuding with the company Intel in developing cheap laptops. Intel has created their own version of the “$100 laptop” called the Classmate, which will have its own chip inside while OLPC has its competitor AMD’s chip (Controversy: One Laptop Per Child Vs Intel, 2007). The problem is that Intel is targeting the same countries that OLPCare going to and trying to take away the funding of OLPC (Controversy: One Laptop Per Child Vs Intel, 2007).

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=Recent News and Future Program Plans = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">by Tony Lavdiotis

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As recently as November of 2010, the OLPC has expanded its program to several new countries, as well as increasing its number of low-cost laptops distributed. On November 7th, 2010, the OLPC website announced that Peru’s “Una laptop por niño” program will distribute over 800,000 laptops in schools by July of 2011, making it the world’s largest OLPC program with Uruguay’s “Plan Ceibal” program which will have about 500,000 laptops in the hands of students next year. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Recently, OLPC has discussed expanding its program to begin including tablet PCs at $75 each. This initiative was originally supposed to launch in December of 2010, however it has now been delayed until February of 2011. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Recent projections estimate that over 2 million students worldwide have benefitted from the OLPC program with most of them receiving the “XO” laptops. The tablet PCs will be referred to as “XO-3’s” and will be provided by Marvell Technology Group. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">OLPC’s founder Nicholas Negroponte recently appeared on the October 25th, 2010 edition of “The Colbert Report” to discuss the One Laptop Per Child program and exactly how it works, who the program is benefitting, and how much the program’s computers cost. Negroponte stressed that in the immediate future, his program needs money to ship the computers not just to “poor” countries like Peru and Uruguay, but “really poor” countries such as Afghanistan and smaller African countries.

=**References**= <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. Cohen, B. (2009, January 6). The Problems with One Laptop Per Child. In Science Blogs. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from []

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. Controversy: One Laptop Per Child vs Intel (2007, May 21). In White African. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from @http://whiteafrican.com/2007/05/21/controversy-one-laptop-per-child-vs-intel/

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. Sisay, A. (2009, March 4). Ethiopia: Lack of funding collapsing OLPC. In Africa News. Retrieved November 23, 2010, from @http://www.africanews.com/site/Ethiopia_Lack_of_funding_collapsing_OLPC/list_messages/23495

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4. One laptop per child delays $75 tablet launch. (2010, November 4). Retrieved from @http://www.drivershq.com/News/Device-Manufacturers/One-Laptop-Per-Child-delays-75-tablet-launch/105/883.aspx

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5.Nicholas negroponte - the colbert report. (2010, October 25). Retrieved from @http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/363111/october-25-2010/nicholas-negroponte

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">6. Peru's una laptop por niño to reach 810,000 xos by july 2011. (2010, November 7). Retrieved from http://www.olpcnews.com/countries/peru/perus_una_laptop_por_nino_to_reach_810000_xos_by_july_2011.html

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">7. Some statistics taken from: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">@http://www.marvell.com/ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">@http://laptop.org/en/index.shtml

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">8.History: //One laptop per child:(olpc)project//. (n.d.). Retrieved from @http://laptop.org/en/vision/project/index.shtml

9. Introduction: One Laptop per Child (OLPC). Various Pages. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2010, from @http://www.laptop.org

10. Introduction: One Laptop per Child. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2010, from @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

10. Participating countries: The OLPC Wiki. Various Pages (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2010, from @http://wiki.laptop.org/go/The_OLPC_Wiki.