One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) - Progress Report
This project was initiated on Dec. 03/2007 following a "60 Minutes" broadcast, where Mr. Nicholas Negroponte outlined his One Laptop Per Child programme. Championed by DAAS members Shirley Allan and IT Specialist, Frazer Jones, a fundraising drive was activated, starting with DAAS members.
Pledges and Donations are $100.00 each to finance one (1) laptop a piece:
- Make your Pledge to the DAAS by Contacting DAAS,
- Cash Donations will be made via DAAS PayPal A/C stating purpose #13 'One Laptop Per Dominican Child'.
There are some of you who will not be willing or able to make the $100.00 contribution for one lap top, but if 4 people contribute $25.00 each this is one lap top more and if two do $50.00 this is yet another one.
We have an initial goal of minimum one hundred (100) of those beauties; so don't be left out of this noble undertaking. We aspire to make this an ongoing project!
From DAAS IT Specialist
The ultimate objective of the project is to foster creativity in the kids so that the new generation can be producers and hold their own in the global economy utilizing cutting edge technology that is readily available and accessible and thus contribute greatly in the development of Dominica.
The XO laptop is an integrated environment that is designed to use the innate curiosity of kids to explore and learn to get them to utilize the global resources that are freely available to develop and produce in all areas - computer programming, arts, music, what ever. The XO utilizes the open source resources for the applications and operating systems.
With the open source concepts millions of programmers and organizations world over are making their applications available for others to not only to use freely but also the source code is made available so that any one can modify it however they wished. This has truly revolutionized computing and has produced and continues to produce cutting edge concepts and innovations, which anyone, anywhere can benefit from. A South African kid is developing games that are distributed commercially for cell phones.
The One Laptop Per Dominican Child initiative will inspire and enable kids to produce solutions to problems that can be used not only in their local immediate environment,but throughout Dominica and Globally. We expect it to encourage others on other computer hardware platforms to embrace open source and use its great resources in the technological education of our kids.
Frazer Jones
DAAS IT Specialist
Chair, Subcommittee