The One Laptop Per Child project is working to make available millions of inexpensive (around $100) laptops to the world’s children in order to decrease the digital divide and increase the quality of education. Now, more than 500 children in Thailand will be getting their hands on the first batch for quality testing and debugging.
Thailand’s government is expected to buy 1 million in the first year.
But Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced in a nationwide radio broadcast that “if this project is completed” it would reach all Thai elementary students. He said each student would get a free computer “instead of books, because books will be found and can be read on computers.”
The creator of the laptop program, Nicholas Negroponte, has set a goal of making the laptops for about $100 each, though he expects the initial figure to be slightly higher and the long-term cost slightly lower.
The machines will use the free Linux operating system, include flash memory instead of a hard drive and run on electricity created by a hand or foot pump.
We’ve been following this story for awhile on Short-Media (recent posts: 1, 2), and it’s good to see the program move to the distribution phase.
You can find hardware specs and other details on the program at the OLPC Wiki.
Source: CNN
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