OLPC for Pakistan? November 29, 2006
Posted by telecompak in Education, IT, Wireless.trackback
Govt to consider for making low-cost laptop computers available to school going children: PM
ISLAMABAD, Nov 29 (APP): Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said Wednesday the government will consider the feasibility for making low-cost laptop computers available to school going children in Pakistan.
He was talking to Nicholas Negroponte, who is the head of the MIT Media Laboratory and Chairman of a non-profit organization called One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC), which promotes the production of laptops for children at low rates.
The Prime Minister asked the Ministry of IT and Telecom to form a committee to look into the feasibility of such an initiative.
He said if found feasible the selling of these laptops would be encouraged in Pakistan. “We offered Pakistan for the pilot project so that our children can take advantage of the digital age”, he added.
Negroponte told the Prime Minister that OLPC plans to run pilot projects in several countries next year.
He said that under the project children from ages 6 up to 16 would be given a laptop each. These computers can be used for listening music, reading books as well as surfing the Internet.
He said the machine has been designed to work without electricity and makes its own communication network.
Minister for IT and Telecom, Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari, Minister of State for IT, Ishaq Khan Khakwani and Secretary IT also attended the meeting.
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Links:
The OLPC homepage
olpc news is a hysterical and incoherent voice against the OLPC project.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Urdu: note the OLPC runs Redhat Linux and the revolutionary Sugar user interface
Is Pakistan Really “Participating” in One Laptop Per Child?
How many countries are really participating in One Laptop Per Child? Do you know? Does Nicholas Negroponte know? I only know that the definition of “participation” is rather loose right about now.
On one end of the spectrum, we have Australia, wh…