Peru’s extraordinary Una Laptop por Niño program continues to lead the way for deployments around the world. Most recently, they expanded their program to 100% of Peru’s public primary schools (roughly 20,000 in all), the largest OLPC project  in the world.  On Friday Oscar Becerra, head of ULPN in Peru, reported:
Today at noon President Alan GarcÃa formally inaugurated the new Ministry of Education building in Lima. The building features a monument sign at the front, crowned by an XO computer in its original green and white colors. We hope it will be a lasting memory of the outstanding contribution of OLPC to Peruvian education improvement.
Three cheers for that, and for expansion to a new building! And congratulations to Oscar and President GarcÃa for leading the way in supporting education at all ages with technology and creativity, under a wide variety of conditions. Â I can only hope for similar education reform to reach my own country one day soon.
Hi sj, when students graduate they go on to secondary school where the program is not implemented (and as I know is not planned to be implemented). The XOs go to the new students starting with grade 1.
@JZA: My information is that the school keeps the laptops. Pupils of the last grade (fourth or sixth grade depending on the school) leave their primary school and with it the XO. The principle of child ownership is not respected in this case.
@sj: I visited some of the rural schools in July 2008 in Ancash where the program was just implemented, and already after 2 weeks, the XOs remained in schools and pupils were not allowed to take them home anymore because of broken parts, dirty keyboards etc. Another school let pupils take the XO home, but only when they were picked up by their parents so XOs do not get lost on the way home. But there are also schools that still let pupils take the XOs home.
Hi Tanja, thanks for sharing. In the schools where the XO stays at the school when students graduate, do they still take them home during school months?
hi, can i pruchase the laptops for my 150 childeren from the slums of Gazipur, delhi India.
If so how, where and what is the best price pls
Do you know if and when these might me available for purchase by general public. Obviously if they can sell them at a profit, that money could then be used to advance their primary objective.
Question, does the laptops stay with the kids in Peru. I’ve heard the laptops are kept by the school. I wonder if that has changed yet?
In some of the urban schools, each kid only gets to take a laptop home on some days; some laptops are shared by 5-7 kids. That’s how they managed to reach all of their primary schools with just over 1M XOs. In the rural schools where there is one laptop for each teacher and child, the kids generally take them home [though it varies by community].