One Laptop Meets Big Business
Jun 06, 2008, 13:30 (2 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Steve Hamm, Geri Smith)
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"One by one, the children ran into the school yard, lining up in
a grassy field next to a low-slung building of classrooms topped by
a rusty steel roof. Most of these children in Luquia, a tiny,
impoverished town 13,200 feet above sea level in the Peruvian
Andes, wore ragged navy-blue uniforms, and many had not bathed in
days. Their small adobe homes have dirt floors, no running water,
and no bathrooms. They share sleeping space with dozens of
squeaking guinea pigs, which scamper underfoot before becoming the
family's rare meal of meat. The children, then, were understandably
giddy with excitement in May as principal Pedro Santana handed them
the most valuable thing they had ever owned: a small
green-and-white laptop computer.
"These children are among the first in Peru to receive laptops
from a trove of 140,000 the government plans to distribute to poor
rural students this year in a bold bid to revolutionize the
country's dismal educational system. Yet even as the students
enjoyed one of the biggest thrills of their lives, the organization
behind the computers, One Laptop per Child, was in danger of
cracking..."
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