Sunday, December 16, 2012

One Laptop Per Child

OLPC initiative in Afghanistan
OLPC initiative in Afghanistan, From OLPC website

I live in Egypt, which is considered one of the world's developing countries. We have  problems with education. We have a high percentage of illiteracy around 28% according to Wikipedia. I read years ago about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. It's a modest laptop for children that helps in revolutionising the educational sectors in developing countries.  It's a laptop that was targeted to be less than $100 and it's resistent to destructive behaviours like pouring water, falling on the floor, filling with dust. It's amazing. Watch this short video by David Pogue demoing the laptop back in 2007.




OLPC has developed a lot in the previous years, even the name became XO, and now they even announced a tablet under development. A tablet designed for kids and will be sold for less than $100. They promised that this tablet will see the light in 2012 and we hope to see it.

Simply this is amazing. But why didn't our governments adopt such great initiatives to improve education?! .. I believe they're paid to improve the country and make it better every single day but unfortunately I didn't touch this in the past few years.

I wish that someday we will have many geeks/developers/scientists from developing countries and I believe education, specially for kids, is the way to achieve this goal.

In your opinion, what does this laptop/tablet need to offer to be able to shift the education from its miserable state today to the state that we're dreaming of ? 

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