Sugar Labs/Background: Difference between revisions

The past two-to-three years has seen the advent of a number of efforts to bring about a global transformation of education through the provision of connected '''“ultra-low-cost” laptop computers''', notably the OLPC XO-1 laptop, the Intel Classmate, the ASUS EEE; the One2OneMate StudentMate, and, most recently, the HP Mini-Note and Elonex ONE. While there are distinctions between these various hardware offerings in terms of display quality, MIPS, power consumption, etc., each provides an agency through which positively impact learning, and consequently, everything that learning impacts, in particular, economic development.

'''How big an opportunity is this?''' In just its first six months of mass production, One Laptop per Child Association shipped 0.5 million laptops. Other vendors are claiming sales at a similar volume. Unequivocally, a market for an ultra-low-cost laptop computer is only just emerging and with it comes an opportunity to impact learning. The challenge now is to engage more people in participating in this '''global learning initiative''' and to shape the initiative such that it has not just maximum reach, but also maximum impact.