IXL Social Enterprise Case Studies Education January 2012 | Page 3

Revolutionizing the way to make education affordable for everyone

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) wants to
provide the world’s poorest children with
education
Bonair Sabamungu is a 13 year old boy from
Rwanda. He has had his XO laptop for a couple of
months and he has already discovered many things.
On the XO screen, you can see him looking at a
map of Africa. He uses his laptop to “see the story
of my country, the story of the presidents of Africa
and America” as he puts it. He was intimidated
by the computer at first but now handles it with
confidence. He and his classmates are now learning
at a faster pace. With the laptop comes hope for a
better future for Bonair and for Rwanda.
A Description of the XO’s Functionality
OLPC’s XO laptop offers a cohesive integrated
software platform. The special features, such as
a built-in video camera, high-resolution screen,
longer battery life, and pull-string charging makes it
enjoyable and easy-to-use for children of all ages.
OLPC’s XO laptop includes a long-lasting nickelmetal hydride battery that allows the XO to operate
between 6 and 20 hours depending on features in
use. When power sockets aren’t available, users
can recharge the battery with a built-in pull-string
charger. The XO laptop also provides network access
with a unique wireless mesh network technology and
includes a built-in microphone and an integrated
camera that can capture video at 30 frames per
second with a resolution of 640x480. The laptop has
a directional pad and game buttons integrated into
the screen bezel in addition to a rubber-membrane
keyboard and a touchpad that supports stylus input.
The laptop-user interface, the software that children
navigate to interact with the computer, is called
Sugar. Based on the Linux operating system,
Sugar is designed to encourage social interaction
and collaboration and is currently offered in 25
languages. It starts with a range of activities, not
programs, and promotes the sharing of these activities
both online and through the physical interaction a
child has with the computer. Nicholas Negroponte
describes it as “active learning.” The system includes
a built-in chat system as well as a web browser
based on Mozilla Firefox, providing opportunities
for communication with and exposure to the global
world.
The next generation of OLPC’s XO, the XO-3 tablet,
has been introduced at the CES 2012 event in Las
Vegas.
Source:
Tablet OLPC for Just $75,” Wired, December 23,
2009, http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/
xo-3-concept-a-crazy-thin-tablet-olpc-for-just-75/,
accessed December 19, 2011 and Ryan Paul,
“A comparison of OLPC’s XO laptop and Intel’s
Classmate PC,” ars technica, March 5, 2007, http://
arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/03/acomparisonof-olpcs-xo-laptop-and-intels-classmate-pc.ars,
accessed December 19, 2011; “Marvell, OLPC
Introduce “One Tablet Per Child”, PCMag.com,
January 7, 2012, accessed January 9, 2012.

A billion children in the developing
world do not get an adequate education
In order to become productive individuals, children
must be equipped with the necessary tools to
function in society, especially the rapidly changing
environment of the 21st century. Education is the
foundation that can provide those tools. However,
over half of the world’s children in developing
countries (56%)—just over one billion children—
are severely deprived. These children suffer from
one or more forms of severe deprivation of basic
human needs, including food, water, shelter and
education. Getting a good standard education has
been a challenge for most children in developing
countries. According to the 2011 UN Millenium
Development Goals Report, about 67 million
children of primary school age were not in school;
this is not counting those children who are e