Thursday 25 September 2008

OLPC's Pilot Project Near Karjat

Solar system drawn for the kidsKhairat SchoolIn October 2007 Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group has joined hands with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation to help kick start the OLPC India project to help bridge the divide between the people who have access to information and technology.

The first of the XO laptop series was distributed in Khairat village, Khairat School is just around 3KMs from Karjat Chowk as you drive in the direction of Matheran. The school has 25 children and since it is a very small school, children from Class 1to 4 all study in the same room, the teacher has to multi-task and shifting his attention from one class to another.

Rahul with his XO Laptop Rahul proudly showing off his OLPC XO Laptop, the horizontal bands on the XO screen show the kids who have logged into the chat using the XO's mesh network. Rahul is one of the brightest kids at the Khairat School and he is quite passionate about his laptop. He does not let anyone touch it or even give him a demo on his own laptop, you have to give him a demo on another machine and he will follow.

Sandeep Surve teacher at Khairat schoolSandeep Surve, the teacher of the Khairat School, his enthusiasm and passion for learning the OLPC have made a major difference to the project. The entire OLPC India, Khairat Chronicle has been documented online by Carla Gomez Monroy who works with them.

In recent times there’s been a number of new developments which all indicate that OLPC is gaining significant momentum in India. First in mid-July it was announced that XOs bundled with CDMA modems are expected to hit retail stores later in the year. Additionally OLPC India’s page on wiki.laptop.org now mentions an additional 5 deployments going on at the moment.

Kudos to everyone involved in making this a successful initiative, equal opportunity for everybody that is the future along with socially responsible corporations!
Happy Children with their laptops

No comments:

Post a Comment