"Some inventions are ahead of their time. Others are perfectly of their time. Still others seem so obvious and natural that once people hear about them, they wonder why it took so long for them to come into being. It is a rare invention indeed that manages to be all those things at once," remarked Kofi Annan while lauding MIT's One Laptop Per Child initative at WSIS.
When they start reaching the hands of the world's children, these robust and versatile machines will enable kids to become more active in their own learning," Mr. Annan said. "Children will be able to learn by doing, not just through instruction or rote memorization. And they will be able to open a new front in their education: peer-to-peer learning."
The low-energy green laptops, powered by a windup crank, are the key to the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative introduced by Mr. Annan and Professor Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab.
The laptops are to be financed through domestic resources, donors and possibly other arrangements, at no cost to the recipients themselves. They are to be distributed through education ministries using established textbook channels, Mr. Annan said.
Links: UN News, UN.
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