One Laptop per Child on 60 Minutes, Sunday May 20
by The editorial team
Download this video: [ogg]
Download this video: [ogg]
Little green men often make the front pages of supermarket tabloids. Little green laptops? Not so much.
But this Sunday, the XO (which we’ve been talking about for months) will get its mainstream news debut on CBS’s highly regarded program, 60 Minutes. (A far cry from the National Enquirer.)
Faces familiar to our readers have helped make Nicholas Negroponte’s dream a reality. From the earliest concept (remember the hand crank?) to its current working build which has been deployed in several nations for beta testing, this laptop has come a long way. And it would not have been possible without the hard work of folks like Chris Blizzard, Dan Williams, David Woodhouse, Marcelo Tosatti, and John “J5″ Palmieri.
Just as our developers were inspired by Nicolas Negroponte and Walter Bender’s concepts, we hope the millions watching Sunday night’s newscast will see in the project the promise for a worldwide solution to poverty. In a word: education.
And more than that, we hope they’ll get involved, whether it’s donating money, developing code, or simply spreading the good word.
Congratulations to everyone working on the project. We wish you continued good luck and prosperity. And good press.
XOXO
May 18th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/ (link above is broken)
May 18th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Fixed. Thanks for the catch.
May 18th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
AP story distribution of 160 laptops to students in Uruguay:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HUNDRED_DOLLAR_LAPTOP?SITE=FLDAY&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
This is indeed very exciting…..
May 18th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
… Actually, you need the full URL for 60 minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml
A link to the video:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2823501&channel=60Minutes
May 20th, 2007 at 4:21 am
OLPC arriving at Villa Cardal, Uruguay
http://picasaweb.google.es/pflores2/EntregaDeLaptopsEnVillaCardal,
via Pablo Flores
http://olpc-ceibal.blogspot.com/2007/05/villa-cardal-uruguay-world-center-of.html
May 20th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Even with myh volume turned up all the way, I can barely hear the audio in these media clips. Any suggestions? I’m running a full install of Fedora Core 6.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:09 am
Right click on the volume applet (panel) and select “Open volume control”. Adjust Master and PCM to control the volume (it could be too low, and the volume control is limited by the playback defaults for each device.
Uri
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Saw the piece last Sunday, I didn’t know that laptop ran a form of Linux. One thing I did notice is Negroponte’s displeasure with Intel – not surprising, but I wish they had pressed him on the fact that his dream of a laptop in every child’s hands is becoming a reality. It may not be HIS laptop, that goal was to put a laptop there.
May 24th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
donna,
That is a common simplification based on sound bites repeated for ease of understanding. There are a lot of nuances to what Negroponte wants to accomplish that just don’t translate well into 15 minute video clips. What we are trying to accomplish at OLPC is to bring constructionist education to children who might not even go to school, or if they do don’t have the advantages most kids in developing nations have.
The laptop is just the tool and the easiest thing for people and the media to wrap their heads around when talking about the project. If all we wanted to do was give laptops to kids we would have simply stuck a paired down version of Fedora on the box and said ship it (by the way you can install Fedora on it).
Instead we decided to look at the tool to see how we could enable creativity, collaboration and sharing. It requires a lot more thought than just giving a kid a laptop.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:17 am
I would like to purchase one for my child.
Where can i do this?
October 8th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Hi,
Is it possible to purchase one of these laptops ?