OLPC: The fun of learning without books

TO DO away with everyday cumbersome activities of the children carrying heavy text books to school in a bag, plans are afoot for introduction of the 'One Laptop per Child (OLPC)' scheme in Manipur through which every school going child would be able to carry just one solar power generated laptop to the school.

According to sources from the School Education Department of the state government, discussion on introduction of OLPC scheme for the first time in Manipur from the next academic session at the primary level is already underway and the green signal of the state cabinet in this connection is only being awaited to go ahead with the plan.

To be taken up initially as a pilot project, there is also plan for expanding the scheme to all over the state in due course of time, the source said, while pointing out that the scheme has already been implemented successfully in other states like Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.

With the help of the solar power generated laptop manufactured by a Taiwanese company, students can download their lessons/books and learn them instead of carrying the books along with them to school in a bag. Moreover, the size and weight of these laptops would be halved of the typical laptops being used by the people.

The life span of the battery used in these solar powered laptop is five years and only one watt of energy is required to run them apart from being water, dust and fire resistant.

These new laptop models are also not breakable and have already in-built wi-fi gadget for Internet connectivity and networking without the need of a common server.

It is said that among the countries of the world, OLPC scheme has already been successfully implemented in Uruguay, Peru, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Haiti, Mongolia and Rawanda.