>> AUSTRIAN-PREMIERE & PRESENTATION + WORKSHOP
@ grüne Akademie -  FR.26.10.2007 starting 11.00 am

In January 2005 the MIT Media Lab launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), was created, which is independent of MIT.

The official project website is located at laptop.org. There is also a comprehensive description of the project in the Wikipedia.

“One laptop per child” is a concept. It is an education project, not a laptop project. It can be implemented in more than one way, by no means limited to the embodiment of the OLPC non-profit association’s so-called “$100 Laptop.” The argument for olpc is simple: many children—especially those in rural parts of developing countries—have so little access to school—in some cases just a tree—that building schools and training teachers is only one way—perhaps the slowest way—to alleviate the situation. While such building programs and teacher education must not stop, another and parallel method advised by OLPC is to leverage the children themselves by engaging them more directly in their own learning. It may sound implausible to equip the poorest children with connected laptops when rich children may not have them, but it is not. Laptops can be affordable and children are more capable than they are given credit for.

www.laptop.org  // www.olpcaustria.org

Participant in the panel discussion on thursday @ Dom im Berg:

Leon Aaron Kaplan (FunkFeuer, OLPC.at / Vienna)

Aaron studied math and computer sciences in Vienna, Austria. He is from the generation when network access was still extremely expensive in Vienna before the big internet boom. He is Unix user and programmer since approx. 4.3BSD-Lite / FreeBSD 1.0. He has been working for major telecoms, IBM, ESA, banks and heavy industries mostly doing Unix consulting/programming since 1997. Aaron is also one of the founders of the FunkFeuer, a wireless community network in Austria. FunkFeuer spread over Vienna, Graz, Weinviertel, Bqd Ischl and other areas which have little or no DSL connectivity in Austria. Since its creation , FunkFeuer has been constantly expanding and innovating. Currently Aaron is working on the OLSR-NG project in order to enhance the possibilites and scalability of the OLSR (RFC 3626) mesh routing protocol.