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Task 17

Laptop for world’s poor children

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has unveiled plans to produce a laptop computer for under $100 that will revolutionize computer accessibility to children in developing countries. Nicholas Negroponte, head of MIT’s Media Lab, has set up a new initiative called One Laptop Per Child. It is a non-profit organization that will distribute the new machines en masse and ensure the world’s poor don't end up on the wrong side of a digital divide. Mr. Negroponte stumbled across the idea after observing how children in a Cambodian village learned from a laptop. He decided to design a computer that was cheap and robust enough to be used anywhere in the world and that did not need electricity or batteries.

The laptops are powered by clockwork. One minute of winding up a hand crank produces ten minutes of power. They are foldable in more ways than a conventional laptop and are encased in rubber to increase their sturdiness. They will be able to do almost everything a $1,000 model can do except store huge amounts of data. The machines have color screens, 1GB of memory and four USB ports. Negroponte is aiming at one laptop per child rather than per community as he wants computers to be personal learning tools. He said: “One does not think of community pencils. ” He explained: “They are a wonderful way for all children to ‘learn learning’ through independent interaction and exploration.” Plans are now in place to distribute 15 million of the devices over the next five years.