One Laptop per Child

Alicia Casas de Barran, the Director of Uruguay’s National Archives, speaks today about “what happens when all students and teachers have their own laptops” at the World Bank in DC.  She has set a good standard for countries interested in digitizing national learning and government material, and it is great to see the national libraries and archives joining the public discussion.

Uruguay continues to build on its success, which last month reported a tripling of access to the Internet in the country’s interior, and that 85% of all children were online. Plan Ceibal continues to expand its vision for the program to include older children.

Access to the Internet has tripled in the interior of Uruguay, and 85% of all children use the Internet, according to a recent study by Radar and Antel. 40% of them visit one of the official national educational or informational sites at least once a day. That’s pretty fly.

Fernando da Rosa just published a lovely blog post about the 160,000 children in CEIBAL using Sugar on Linux, and what this means for their community.  A must-read; with a 3-minute video pastiche that says it all without needing any words:  1 year of CEIBAL + OLPC

From his post:

Al momento actual, noviembre de 2008, ya se llevan entregadas a los niños 160.000 XO, todas con LINUX y SUGAR. Creo que más allá de los números, ver las caras y la alegría de los niños da fuerzas para continuar cambiando las cosas, trabajando por una mayor equidad, una mejor educación y profundizar en el uso de las nuevas tecnologías en el aula.

“As of November 2008, 160,000 XOs have been given to children, all with LINUX and SUGAR.  I think that more than the numbers, seeing the faces and joy of the children gives one stregth to continue changing things, working towards a greater equality, a better education and more thoughtfulness in the use of new technology in the classroom.”