OLPC Laos

2007 status: yellow
			yellow

Read about the children in the picture

FAQ from Teachers in Lao PDR

• Will this laptop be available in Laos?

We hope that this (or some other laptop designed for children) will be available in Laos. When is in large degree dependent upon the people (and government) of Laos take action to work with us to make it available.

• How will the teachers be trained?

There will undoubtedly be a need for some training programs in regard to making best use of the laptop in school, we are also designing the laptop in such a way that we expect that the path to incorporating it into classroom can be done in a

• Which age of children is the laptop for? (5-10,10-15,15-graduade)?

We are targetting K-12, but our emphasis is on the younger grades.

• My sallary is 20$ in one month and I have 4 children. How can I pay 100$ per kid?

Our model is that laptops will be distributed to the children and their teachers for free from the Minsitry of Education.

• Does it also work with 220V Socket without cranking?

Yes.

• Does the teachers get the PC before the children get one?

This is a local decision; we encourage teachers and children to learn together.

• Is this project only for rich countries like Thailand and China?

We hope that the project is for every child, rich or poor.

• Is there a phone hotline where I can get more infos about this project?

Sorry: no telephone hotline, but we try to answer email (info@laptop.org).

Other questions

• Is there a contact to the Lao PDR government?

No direct contact as of yet (2006-06).

• Who will translate things to Lao language - there is no big open source community?

We will help develop a community. We believe this is something the government should also help with.

• The Lao PDR government does not have much money. To sell wood from primary forests maybe is the only possibility to finance this project. Are there alternatives?

We have been discussing various mechanisms for financing with some of the regional development banks, but as yet we have no specific plans re Laos.

• To build the education infrastruction for OLPC may take a long time - when does this task starts? Isn't that more time critical then the hardware?

It is no clear that a separate educational infrastructure need be built for OLPC. We are hoping that OLPC will have a positive influence on the exisiting educational infrastructure and that the two will become coincident over time. (It may be worth reading David Cavallo's essay, [http://www.media.mit.edu/publications/bttj/Paper11Pages96-112.pdf "Models for growth