One Laptop Per Child Receives 4 USN XO Computers for Haiti

This post is just to announce that the four XO computers USN purchased in 2008 during the "in kind" purchase program (where we bought 12, received 6 of them, and 6 went to a child in a developing nation) have been shipped to Texas in order to be forwarded to Haiti. My dear son Colin, now a USN 8th grader, took the other 2 to leave with orphans at a friend's orphanage in South Africa last summer, so all have now been put to good use.

Here is the email that I received last month announcing the new initiative (thanks to William Gabella for the heads-up!:

Subject: OLPC for Haiti: XO Laptop Recovery Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:13:22 -0500 (EST)

Dear G1G1er,

At the end of 2007 you participated in the Give One Get One program of One Laptop per Child (OLPC). Thanks to you and others like you, 75,000 laptops went to Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Oceania, the West Bank, and Haiti.

An additional 75,000 laptops came into the USA as part of the "get" side of the equation. In some cases those laptops have since been put into closets for one reason or another.

We are gathering additional used XO laptops to send to Haiti. If you or the child to whom you gave the laptop is no longer using it, we appeal again to your generosity and ask you to send it to the address below (even if it is broken).

OLPC FOR HAITI c/o Exel
615 Westport Parkway #500
Grapevine, TX 76051

75% of the schools in Port-au-Prince have been destroyed in the recent earthquake, but by good fortune, none of our Haitian team was hurt. They have spare parts and OLPC technical staff and teachers, and stand prepared to deploy these XOs.

Because of the XO's unique features (sunlight readability, solar powered, water resistant, drop proof), it is also an ideal tool for relief work.

If your XO is in use, please ignore this email. We only want your broken or unused XOs.

Sincerely,


Nicholas Negroponte

And here is the cover letter I included in the box:

University School of Nashville

2000 Edgehill Avenue

Nashville, TN 37212

OLPC FOR HAITI c/o Exel

615 Westport Parkway #500

Grapevine, TX 76051

Dear Folks,

Please accept these four laptops from us for shipment to Haiti. If for some reason you have discontinued this program, please ship them back. Our students can use these, but we have agreed that children and relief workers in Haiti can use them more.

Sincerely,

Scott Merrick

USN Lower School Technology Coordinator

More "Ultracompact" News

The XO take-home project has generated a lot of interest in the category of computers that's come to be called "ultracompact." While the XO is not available for purchase inside the US (save for large district wide initiatives like Birminghams) there is a race to market that may benefit consumers, especially parents who might like their children to have their own computer (how to put a price tag on keeping them off the one you need for work from home?).

From Engadget.com this morning I found an info packed listing of already (or soon-to-be) available ultracompacts. I hope that if you're looking for one this helps you find the one that is right for your child or yourself.

It's XO Laptop Week in the Lab!

NEW NOTE: Three XO laptops will start going home for two nights each with students whose parents choose to "opt in" to the loaner program. Parents click the "Opt In" button in the sidebar to the right and take a minute to fill out the information in the resulting form. From a list of students opted in, completely random selection will be made each time an XO is returned. The loaners start going out on March 10th, take a break over Spring Break, and will resume after the break. Will we make it through the list of interested students and families? That depends on how many "opt in!"

The XO Laptop, Nicholas Negroponte's world-changing "One Laptop Per Child" vision now being implemented more or less successfully throughout the developing countries of our world, aims to put a hardy, inexpensively manufactured, yet functional laptop computer into the hands of every schoolchild in the world.

Sound far-fetched? Consider this:

A table at the OLPC wiki lists purchases to date totalling 697,000 units. These hail from the USA, Peru, Mexico, and that other developing country, Birmingham, Alabama (whose online citizen outrage over the hidden costs involved heralds trouble for the School Board, who purchased 15,000 XOs for public school students). 167,000 of these orders came from the much-heralded "Buy Two Get One" program, which is how we at USN came to be in possession of the three laptops I'm sharing with the Lower School students this week. We bought 8, we received 4, one for each tech coordinator and one for our tech director.

Some others in our community, I'm discovering, also took part in that program. One child each in 4th, 3rd, and 2nd grades the very first day shared that they have one at home. Another family has ordered one but has been informed that it may be a month or more before it can be delivered. Reportedly, the subcontractors OLPC relied upon for distribution have dropped the ball, seriously, and there were other problems.

Delayed delivery is not the only controversy surrounding OLPC, but it's clear that this project is underway and I want our children to at least get a glimpse of how big it is. While the littlest ones in my lab have pretty much seen all that I feel is necessary for them, the 4th graders will be doing a bit of Google searching next week, looking for OLPC resources to share with the world.

Finally, I hope to work out a way to send these devices home beginning next week, for one or two nights, so that I can provide the children with a real chance to experience this technological innovation. We've talked about how the remarkable screen and the open source operating system may provide some motivation for other hardware manufacturers to emulate the low price and ruggedness of the XO laptop.

While the XO Laptop is not currently available for purchase in the U.S., Asus and Intel have teamed to release the Asus eeePC, a low-cost alternative to the traditional laptop that utilizes many of the XO's innovative strategies for hardware and software. Intel's offering, which I can't see is available yet for purchase, is called the Classmate PC, and promises yet more competition in the arena.

Here's a map of current OLPC distributions:


View Larger Map




and here's a link to a video of the first report out!