25 March 2008

One Laptop Per Child

One Laptop Per Child is one of the coolest projects I have ever seen. The mission of the One Laptop per Child association is to develop a low-cost laptop—the "XO Laptop"—to revolutionize how we educate the world's children.

Nicholas Negroponte says on the website:

It's an education project, not a laptop project.

Well, my reaction is:
Did somebody say laptop?

Anyway, it's really an awesome project and I've been thinking of participating for a month now, but school has been keeping me very busy all the time. I've actually been thinking of volunteering somewhere for a very long time. I even did it a bit in high school (with elder people, I'm a good listener). However, in college, I could never make time for that. When I'm already overwhelmed by my classes (this two-majors thing ain't easy) and exhausted by all the travelling (it takes me an hour to get to school), I'm not really eager to do some more travelling. I'm also not really able to make some commitments right now with everything that goes on at school: the operating systems lab is not yet over for me, the team is already kicking my pretty little but about the team project...

Anyway, OLPC seems like the best opportunity ever for me. I could contribute form home, evening, whenever I have time. Also, what is really important for me, I could make a good use of my skills. I know that the most important kind of help is not technical and doesn't often look impressive from the outside, but geek volunteers are needed too. So you won't see me walking homeless dogs or something when I can use my tech and lingo skills to do something great.

So, now that OLPC has been accepted for the Google Summer of Code, it' on absolute top of my whishlist. I'm just a bit afraid that this project is really popular (quite a few project ideashave already been taken!) and that I might not be selected (which would mean plan B: get a normal job for the summer ). I only have a week to pick one and write an awesome proposal. Wish me luck!

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