In Uruguay, One Laptop Per Child

6/9/10
Uruguay is home to an impressive educational initiative called El Plan Ceibal, which gives a free laptop to every child enrolled in public school. The laptop, officially called the XO-1 but referred to in Spanish as the equis-o, sells for US $188. The idea came from the United States, where Nicholas Negroponte had proposed the One Laptop per Child Initiative (OLPC). His mission statement?

To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

Uruguay is, in effect, the first country in the world to actually implement Negroponte's big idea. El Plan Ceibal, whose name is a reference to Uruguay's national tree (the ceibo), has been supported by no less a figure than singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, whose song A la Sombra del Ceibal ("In the Shade of the Ceibo Tree") is featured in this short promotional clip: