Bridging the digital divide – "one laptop per child"

A $100 laptop aims to bring equal technology opportunities to children in the developing world. Clint Witchalls investigates

The British charity Citizens Online has an ambitious goal – they would like all schoolchildren in the UK to have their own laptop by 2010. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) boffins Nicholas Negroponte, Seymour Papert and Joseph Jacobson also share the mantra "one laptop per child", but they have a much more ambitious plan: to provide 100m to 200m laptops to schoolchildren in the developing world by the end of 2006. And how do they propose to do this? By making them very cheap – $100 (£53) per laptop, or $90 plus $10 for "contingency or profit".

Negroponte, founder and director of the MIT’s Media Lab, has long had an interest in providing information and communications technology (ICT) to developing countries. He has worked in Senegal, Costa Rica, India and, most recently, Cambodia, where he and his wife Elaine set up a school – the Elaine & Nicholas Negroponte School – to teach English and IT to schoolchildren. Their son also joined them and installed satellite and Wi-Fi links to connect the 25 Panasonic ToughBooks the children had been given.

Full Story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1415713,00.html