Making Uruguays' 300,000 XO [Linux] Laptops Count

As I described in an earlier article, the first two years of the OLPC deployment in Uruguay "have been characterized by implementation and incubation. The laptops have been deployed to schools, manuals have been created, tech savvy volunteer groups have been formed, wireless internet connections have been established, teachers have slowly learned how to implement the laptops into their curricula and classrooms, and, as Rezwan has covered previously, a community of open source programmers has developed educational applications for the laptops."

Last week I visited Uruguay myself to witness how teachers and students were incorporating laptops and wi-fi connections (now in over 1,000 schools) into the classroom environment. My first gray blistery morning in Montevideo I joined a van full of professors and students from the Universidad de la República who were headed to Santa Lucía, a small town in the department of Canelones just an hour's drive from the capital.

Uruguayan XO gang sign

After a few accidental detours and several thermoses of mate tea, we pulled up to Santa Lucía's one and only primary school. Dozens of primary school students in white frocks were sitting on steps and tree trunks with their XO laptops, pecking away as if they were in a wi-fi café in Tokyo or New York City.