The Weekly Squeak

Check out OLPC XO-4.

I would hate to add to the speculation that OLPC is dead because it’s not.  Wayan Wota has been calling OLPC dead for 5 years. This is not news. He has not been involved with the project in a long time. His article is about the XO-1, apparently he doesn’t even know the XO-4 was officially introduced at this year’s CES, alongside the tablet.

If you really want to know what’s going on with current OLPC community projects see Adam Holt’s http://www.unleashkids.org/

Full OLPC Statement (from: http://gizmodo.com/one-laptop-per-child-isnt-quite-dead-yet-1541430670):

OLPC’s mission to empower the world’s children through education is far from over. OLPC is thriving and making more inroads at bringing education to those who can’t easily access it. OLPC recently formed a strategic alliance with the Zamora Teran family through many of their enterprises and their philanthropic foundation, the “Fundación Zamora Teran to deliver XO laptops not only to Central and South America, but also to Africa.

Aside from distributing more laptops in several schools in Costa Rica, Uruguay is receiving its first 50k units of the XO-4 Touch (running Android) in a few weeks’ time. In addition, the XO Tablet is currently available directly through governments and NGOs, as well as in Europe and Canada and through all major retail outlets in the United States including Walmart, Amazon, Toys ‘R Us among the others.

OLPC also has outsourced many of the software and development units because the organization is becoming more hardware and OS agnostic, concentrating on its core values – education. As an example, we’ve partnered with the Smithsonian Museum to bring feature-rich, interactive and more targeted content to our young learners.

We have more exciting things planned in the horizon including the implementation of very large scale projects in several regions of the world, so be sure to stay tuned.

OLPC is a concept, it is a movement, it is a community and it is about helping children.  Sure the grand vision may be delayed, but the benefits of education and technology, of improving the human condition is not dead.  We all knew that it’s not profitable to teach third world children.  Still,  no one thought that companies would compete against OLPC.  Countries opted for different technologies for hardware but never matched the promise or the vision of the software.  Had the world united around this platform children would have benefited and the world today would be a better place as we develop together and stamp out ignorance.  There is nothing like education to improve the world and that mission is not dead.  OLPC is evolving, finding new ways to reach more children, making more with less, and finding ways to make a real difference in the world.

Support OLPC!  Long Live the vision.