Is OLPC the Best of Low-Cost Computers?

[jklunder]

Hi One Laptop Per Child Community,

I hope you are well.

I am a Brown University graduate, looking to help spread online education. Currently, I am trying to link up a few innovative rural schools.

1. Are the One Laptop Per Child computers the best way to get efficient computers to those who can't afford them?

(I do not mean to be forward to suggest OLPC may not; I just want to target the best program to help these children).

2. Are these computers powerful enough to play a video from KhanAcademy.org?

3. If so, how do I write a grant proposal to be able to get these materials?

Thanks,

Joe Klunder
Joe.M.Klunder@gmail.com

[ektoric]

Joe,

Thanks for your interest! I am in no way connected to OLPC organization (other than the fact that I own a little green guy so anything I say is unofficial (and quite potentially wrong even!)

1) "Efficiency" is a hard metric to measure. What are we optimizing for? The OLPC was opimized for low power, low cost, 3rd world country environment with little to no reliable power source. Are these the same or similar conditions for your rural environment? Not to mention their distribution model indenting for the destination governments and school systems to subsidize the program.

2) Those seem to be youtube videos, for which the XO is capable of playing most, in general. I haven't specifically tried to load those pages in my XO yet.

3) The wiki may be able to point you to some resources.

[ncarrol]

Which country ? U.S. ?

They are virtually not for sale in the U.S. except for 3 year old machines for resale on ebay.

The ony source is the OLPC Contributors Program which grants only maximum of 10 for a very, very worthy project. (See ektoric's reference above to wiki.)

If you want to use Sugar, the XO's software (on top of linux), consider Sugarlabs.com Sugar-on-a-Stick (SoaS), which is a Live USB which runs on a laptop (netbook).

You may want to use just linux (plus other software) on a laptop (netbook) like the SWATTEC reading program in southern California ( http://community.saugususd.org/swattec/ )

[ektoric]

Also, if you are interested in getting your hands a little dirty, read up on Raspberry Pi.