XO Laptop Overview

Introduction

The XO hardware now in mass production from OLPC is specifically intended to enable children to take their laptop home from school and continue using it in collaboration with other students, even when there is no electricity supply at home.

That design makes it highly relevant to some of the least developed countries, who nevertheless remain unable to afford One Laptop Per Child.

UC proposals here are based on using the same XO hardware to initially provide One Laptop Per School (OLPS) and then One Laptop Per Teacher (OLPT) as essential steps towards One Laptop Per Child.

None of the educational objectives of OLPC can be achieved by these steps since OLPC relies on children actually having their own laptops for constructivist collaboration. However unlike proposals for more limited deployments like computer class labs these ideas are intended to help build up the infrastructure (including teacher familiarization) required for future deployment of OLPC rather than a competing model for use of computers in children's education.

The cost justification for OLPS and OLPT rests not primarily on their preparation for OLPC but on the direct benefits in distance education for teachers etc.

The immediate role of OLPS is simply to provide a relay appliance in a partly postal based podcasting network for audio distance education using Cardpods. The XO happens to be the most suitable hardware for such an appliance, especially when considering the logical development to OLPT where the XO is both the most suitable hardware available for computer based distance education of teachers in areas with no electricity grid and also desirable for familiarizing teachers with the future OLPC deployment.

XOs are available now (January 2009), c.i.f. to major airports in least developed countries for USD $219 each with a minimum order of 100. Quantity 1000 includes some deployment support but that would be primarily for direct deployment to children.

Features of the hardware design that make it the most suitable hardware for these non-OLPC applications and relevant limitations will be discussed in this section. The term XO is used throughout to refer to the hardware and avoid confusion with the educational project of OLPC. The educational goals of OLPT are of course closely related to, though distinct from, those of OLPC so terms like OLPS and OLPT are used to convey that connection.