Tonight on the news Vicky and I were watching a clip on the news about the deployment of the OLPC XO laptop into a school in Abuja, Nigeria (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7115348.stm ). Whilst I think this is a great social scheme run by the UN, Vicky pointed out that we don’t even have that level of technology adoption in the UK. That got me thinking about why we can’t provide a £100 OLPC type device to every schoolkid in the UK. I undestand that lots of kids do have laptops, and indeed at Vicky’s school their adoption level of Tablet PCs is 80%, but there are plenty of schools where kids only have access to a PC at home, if at all.
The great thing about the OLPC is that its robust and has some good basic features like a 1200 x 900 sunlight readable display, a webcam, 256MB RAM, 1GB NAND storage (no disk) and WiFi. This is ideal for schoolkids as it can do basic office tasks like word processing, presentaions and spreadsheet and of course internet connectivity.
In this country we should really be able to provide an OLPC for every schoolkid for universal access to basic services and capabilities. I wish I could think of some way I could help make this happen, but I don’t have any way to influence a way forward. One intersting scheme run only in the US is a buy one - give one program where wealthier people can pay double and give one free to a needy child. Bizarrely this scheme is only running for 3 weeks, how short sighted is that? Perhaps we could do a similar scheme in the UK?
