[Grassroots-l] Access to A One Laptop Per Child "XO" machine in low income areas of the US.

Edward Cherlin echerlin at gmail.com
Sat May 17 05:08:02 EDT 2008


On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 4:07 AM, The Battle Family
<thebattlefamily at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> To whom it may concern,
>
> I am a teacher working in a very poor neighbor & urban school and many
> of the students need/or could benefit from this same program. How can I
> get access to "A One Laptop Per Child "XO"" machine in low income areas
> of the US?

It depends in part on circumstances. Where is your school? How many
students? How many computers currently? Are the teachers, students,
and parents interested in the XO program? Do you have funding to buy
XOs, or can you get funding?

I have heard that several US states are considering plans to purchase
XO laptops for the children in their schools. I am working with OLPC
Chicago on Illinois HB5000, The Children's Low-Cost Laptop Act, which
has passed the Illinois House and gone on to the Senate. Birmingham,
Alabama is getting 15,000 XOs for its schools.

It is otherwise very difficult to buy smaller quantities of laptops
through the GiveMany program. You would have to order at least 100
units, pay cash in advance, and then wait up to ten months for
delivery.

On the other hand, some of the software for the XO is available in
standard packages for Fedora (Red Hat), Debian, and Ubuntu Linux, so
you could run it from a Live CD or install it on any conventional PC.
I am copying this to a friend who organizes Installfests to put Linux
on used computers so that they can be donated to schools in need.

> Mrs. Battle
> Urban Teacher
> _______________________________________________
> Grassroots mailing list
> Grassroots at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/grassroots
>



-- 
Edward Cherlin
End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business
http://www.EarthTreasury.org/
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."--Alan Kay


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