One Laptop per Child (OLPC), an ambitious project begun in 2006, aims to build an inexpensive laptop (XO) to be sold in the developing world and make it available to children in those countries. By 2009 about 2,000 XO laptops were delivered to three schools in indigenous communities in Australia (article) and students were able to begin to close the education gap, according to their blog posted in 2011. In 2010, twelve First Nation schools in Canada announced the use of the XO laptop in their classrooms.
But the OLPC project has also come under criticism. In 2012, some articles pointed out that the project was a failure because the XO laptop costs twice the originally intended price. And then in July of this year OLPC announced a very different product—a $150 Android-based tablet, not only for kids in developing nations, but also for sale in Wal-Mart in the US. It seems like the OLPC project is now a little lost but still hoping to find the best way to pursue their original goals.
This OLPC project not only affords Indigenous children an equal opportunity to learn, but also provides methods to facilitate their learning. It enables children to surmount the first and perhaps greatest obstacle to their educational experience.
But it is not enough to just spend a lot of money providing XO laptops or tablets; the project would also be viewed as a big success if were to improve local infrastructure, update software, provide technical support over the long term, and so forth.
I assume that many people knew from the beginning that just providing laptops would not be enough to improve the educational situation. OLPC cannot, unfortunately, fix everything; they are mainly responsible for developing/providing affordable laptops, not for the improvement of local infrastructure. That should be someone else’s responsibility (e.g., government, other NGO groups, etc.).
