One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is an educational project whose goal is to provide resources to children around the world to be able to learn in a self-directed manner using an inexpensive laptop. Earlier this year, I spent six months in Nepal volunteering for the local educational non-profit OLE Nepal, which employs OLPC laptops to provide better educational opportunities in schools that lack resources and governmental support. Kids from elementary schools chosen for the laptop program get to learn with interactive activities that OLE designed based on Nepali curricula.
During my stay, I had a few chances to visit some of these schools and witness XOs (OLPC laptops running the free operating system Sugar) in action in the classroom. I will share my observations about the number of ways in which the laptop program is making a meaningful impact on Nepali children's learning. I have seen that free software is not restricted to the West anymore, but is present even in some of the most remote places of the world. Through sharing my experience, I am hoping to expose participants of the conference to a new context in which free software is being encountered by people who have never used a computer before.