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OLPC Summer of Content
I haven’t yet written here about the One Laptop Per Child project, or the “$100 laptop” as it is more widely known. The project seeks to provide a laptop designed for use in developing regions to every child on the planet:
Any nation’s most precious natural resource is its children. We believe the emerging world must leverage this resource by tapping into the children’s innate capacities to learn, share, and create on their own. Our answer to that challenge is the XO laptop, a children’s machine designed for “learning learning.”
The laptop itself is an infectiously enchanting machine for adults and children alike. But the project knows full well that hardware itself is not enough. For this reason, they are kicking off their Summer of Content:
The Summer of Content (SoCon) program offers budding creators mentorship and stipends to develop open content and run free culture events throughout the world. Inspired by Google’s Summer of Code program, our goal is to support a self-sustaining ecosystem of open content by encouraging growth of contributor communities, and attention to communication and accessibility around projects, where they’re most needed.
A lot of criticisms, fair and unfair, have been made of the project, but having seen the laptop in action and seeing this level of commitment to content, I suspect the project will be causing controversy for years to come.
