OLPC in Rwanda

in Kagugu school in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, just about every one of more than 3000 pupils is getting access to a laptop. The One Laptop Per Child project is struggling elsewhere - but seems to be thriving here.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• OLPC
• Rwanda
• laptops

[latentforce]

Footnote - the question was "Can OLPC laptops go online?" and is in the comment below, not above (new comments are posted above old ones).

[latentforce]

OLPCs will bypass slow education programmes and allow a generation of children to educate themselves out of poverty. That shot of Neil Armstrong may not have impressed you when you watched it but it is a very significant shot.

[latentforce]

Most OLPC films show the laptops being delivered so all the potential is yet to happen.

I like this film because it shows the children using them freely.

I have yet to see a film showing the potential realised . . . BUT the shot of Neil Armstrong hints at it. That child may not yet know who Armstrong is or what he did but the OLPC gives him access to the knowledge - and also the ability to share and discuss with his classmates and the wider world.

[latentforce]

The answer to the question above is yes. These OLPCs are brilliant. They are powered by sun, hand, pretty well anything and when two are near each other they automatically detect and set up a peer-to-peer network. If just ONE of them can access the internet, it automatically shares the connection with all the others. The potential is fantastic.

[wennetvideo]

Excellent. just wondering if they can go online with them? We couldn't do this in the UK, many remote communities can't get broadband here thanks to obsolete copper limitations. Nice to see that in some countries government realises the importance of ICT.