[OLPC-Chicago] Children's Low Cost Laptop Bill

[Jason Rock]

Hey everyone,
Here is some stuff that we have to get done to effectively lobby for HB5000.
All of these questions need adequate answers.  This is the type of stuff we
need to give the congressmen and women to prove that this bill is
viable.(some are stolen from Larry)

What evidence is there that providing every child with a laptop is
beneficial?
What benefit do the children derive from owning/having one?
Won't the laptops get broken a lot?
Can we really get laptops that will be useful and fully functional for under
$400?
   In addition to the price of the laptop, what are the other costs?
How are the teachers going to learn how to use this new tool?
What infrastructure is required to support every child having a laptop?
How will purchasing laptops help increase student test scores?

Specific OLPC/XO questions

Why Linux?
What specific infrastructure does the XO need?
Won't the XO get broken a lot?
How will teachers learn the XO?
What other costs(non infrastructure and not included with the original
hardware costs) should we expect?

Other thoughts
We need to look at the other options and make a table of costs that would
contribute to a total cost.  Things like laptop cost, power consumption,
infrastructure cost, training for use.  Another thing to do would be to make
a table of hardware/software specs for the low cost laptops along with price
per unit and other measurables.  Things to include would be price per unit,
price per unit based on the other spread sheet, OS, bundled software(like a
notepad, picture editor, IDE, web browser, etc), training included with
purchase.  Then get into the technical hardware like wifi capabilities, hdd
capacity, ram, processor, etc.  I'm sure other people can think of more.


We should probably try to have answers to all of the problems/questions
raised in this
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/competition/teachermate_adoption_chicago.html

I copied most of this to wiki form so if you have answers or ideas feel
free.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Children%27s_low_cost_laptop_fund_data

Thanks,
Jason
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