This is a great story that 60 Minutes picked up on. Some really innovative thinking, exceptional design and for a very good cause.

Please take the time to read all the details on the site www.laptop.org.

Here are some highlights for you:

“It’s an education project, not a laptop project.” — Nicholas Negroponte

Hardware

The XO is a potent learning tool created expressly for the world’s poorest children, living in its most remote environments. The laptop was designed collaboratively by experts from both academia and industry, bringing to bear both extraordinary talent and many decades of collective field experience for every aspect of this nonprofit humanitarian project. The result is a unique harmony of form and function; a flexible, ultra-low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development—immediately transforming the content and quality of their children’s learning.

Our goal: To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

Software

XO is built from free and open-source software. Our commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptop computers on their own terms. While we do not expect every child to become a programmer, we do not want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines. We are using open-document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children—and their teachers—will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.

Video from Yahoo/60 Minutes, worth watching.

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