Give One, Get One: One Laptop Per Child ....

 

DC Metblogger Flickr Photo

Almost exactly two years ago,  the One Laptop Per Child launched.  I blogged it and was initially very excited!  But when I realized it would take a long time before a small NGO working in a country, like say, Cambodia, might be able to purchase a small number of them (less than 100) to outfit a school,  I was disappointed. 

Tharum was disappointed too.

So, the Sharing Foundation has continued to use our method of getting donated laptops in the US, refurbishing them, and getting them to Cambodia.  (And,  we can even load them up with KhmerOS!)

So, I was hopeful when I heard about The One Laptop Per Child - XO Giving  on NPR yesterday morning and it also reported in the New York Times and ABC news.  I was really happy because I immediately thought this would be terrific personal fundraising campaign to get a couple of laptops for the Sharing Foundation college students (like Leng Sopharath) and for the computer school.   Even better, the green laptops would match the video blogging kits that Ryanne Hodson and Jay Dedman brought over the month before I brought the same kits to the Cambodian Bloggers Summit.

The press release  does not mention whether it is going to be possible to designate the recipient!  So, it makes very difficult to get motivated to do a fundraising campaign for some unknown recipient.  Good fundraisers also know that fundraising campaigns are more effective when you can put a face to the cause, according to recent research. 

You can sign up on the page to get an email notification for more details when the campaign launches in November.  So, maybe they will make it easier for people who want to support specific schools and children.

Virginia Debolt who covers the technology beat at BlogHer has a great roundup of the reactions.  TechSoup Blog also reports.

Update

Some other opinions
Ethan Zukerman
Amy Gahran

Comments

[Javier SOLA]

I am afraid that we would not be able to use in the OLPC the software that KhmerOS is using in schools... for one, SuSE Linux would not fit in the memory, and then the applications would not be usable in such a small screen (you would not see the characters in the menus). In order to use computers to improve the quality of education, it is necessary to understand the requirements for the schools, and they are quite different from the ones of the OLPC, which was designed to solve a problem that does not really exist, instead of solving a real problem that countries like Cambodia have. Our choice are low-power-consumption desktops with regular size screens... and of course, Khmer language Free and Open Source Software. We would not know what to do with OLPCs if they gave them to us.

[Wayan]

And OLPC News has continuous coverage of the One Laptop Per Child program, including analysis of what G1G1 really means to the XO laptop program.

[phil shapiro]

I'm a supporter of the OLPC laptop, but I'm equally intrigued by the Asus Eee PC laptop, a low-cost Linux laptop coming to market.

These laptops serve two different constituents. The OLPC laptop was designed for children. The Asus Eee PC could potentially be used by a child, but it was mostly designed to be used by adults.

The OLPC laptop has many innovations that go far beyond the Eee PC laptop -- the monochrome screen that can be read in the sun, the pull string charger that can recharge the laptop without accessing AC current, etc.

I've been doing some blogging about the Eee PC laptop on PCWorld.com at
http://tinyurl.com/yw46wm

Best I can tell these laptops are complementary. I see room for both of them in this world.