The One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) XO laptop is on sale in the U.S. by way of their “Give One Get One” program. Sales kicked off on Monday (November 12th) and will be running until November 26th. As if getting your hands on the XO to kick the tires isn’t enough, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary WiFi access at their HotSpots for all donors. From the OLPC site:
This is the first time the revolutionary XO laptop has been made available to the general public. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).
It was also announced last that Maxis (Electronic Arts) has donated the original SimCity game to the project, allowing for free distribution of the addictive classic which was originally developed for the Commodore 64.
Don Hopkins created a UNIX variant of the game in the past and has been advocating the use of SimCity for educational purposes for years. Hopkins commented on a Slashdot article earlier this year:
“The goal is to enable the open-source community to renovate SimCity and take it in new educational directions, by applying Seymour Papert’s ideas about constructionist education, Alan Kay’s ideas about interactive user interfaces and object-oriented programming, Ben Shneiderman’s ideas about direct manipulation and info visualization, and many exciting ideas about multiplayer games, blogging, storytelling, game mods, player created content, and lessons learned from World of WarCraft, The Sims, Spore, etc,”
The cause sounds noble. One way or the other games will make it to the OLPC. Let’s hope the educational angle triumphs.More about SimCity on the OLPC XO from Don Hopkins:
- SimCity for OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): Applying Papert’s Ideas About Constructionist Education and Teaching Kids to Program
- History and Future of OLPC SimCity/Micropolis
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