OLPC Israel

From Peres Center for Peace newsletter of Spring 2007:

The Peres Center met with Nicholas Negroponte, head of American NGO “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC), which seeks to extend knowledge and access to Internet in disadvantaged communities by giving children a specially created $100 laptop. The Peres Center is acting as a local coordinator for the program, with Palestinian and Israeli IT professionals providing their feedback on the suitability of the laptop for local youth.

Peres Center for Peace is representing the OLPC initiative in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority. The Peres Center received 30 XOs in [2007] to start exploring a program in a Palestinian village. The original effort was not received well by the adults in the community approached, and did not progress. There were also some independent queries from Israeli official regarding the project.

As of November 2008, Netzach Farbiash and Guy Sheffer met with the PCP and plan to use those machines to develop a new trial among Bedouin children, which they hope to expand early next year.

August 2009 Netzach Farbiash gave a talk about OLPC Israel's pilot during August Penguin. Slides are available here.

[2010] The pilot in the Negev that Netzach Farbiash and Guy Sheffer did has evolved to a full program of about 500 children using commercial Netbooks called "thinking and computing". There is no communication to OLPC at this time, but there is hope to resume it when the XO-1.5 would be available to the region and can be integrated to the existing program.