Core77

After months--nay years--of anticipation, criticism, setbacks and praise, the One Laptop Per Child program is finally taking the diminutive slab of highly-designed tech to its intended audience in a large way. Peru, one of the earliest and strongest supporters of the OLPC, is beginning to ship them in large numbers to some very poor school districts, and MIT Technology Review has a well-researched tale of how it's all going. The findings are cautiously encouraging.

First and most gladdening, it appears that the laptops are truly ending up in the hands of the students who need them most; several references are made to communities and schools that are poor, but "not poor enough" to participate in the program. Secondly, the point about the raw economic effectiveness of the program is driven home by Oscar Becerra, head educational technologist at Peru's Ministry of Education:

These tools will land in the hands of first through sixth graders who in many cases never even had books--at home or elsewhere--and whose teachers themselves had little education. They will not come cheap; Peru is spending about $80 million on the laptops--nearly a third of the education budget normally available for capital expenditures--plus about $2 million for teacher training. Becerra characterized the sum as a special appropriation meant to bring schools up to date. "To distribute all these books would cost five times the cost of the machines," he estimates. "We are reaching the poorest schools in Peru for the first time in history."

Scrutiny on Peru's program will be high, but if it works the way the Ministry (and the teachers) are hoping, the delays, price hikes, and exasperation over the "give one, get one" program will become footnotes in one of socially-engaged design's great success stories.