One Laptop Per Child - 3 Resources

After streamlining the focus of my research project to only the impacts of the One Laptop Per Child program, I decided to explore three questions. These are:

• What were the initial goals of OLPC?
• Does research into the initial proliferation of laptops indicate the program was successful?
• How will the OLPC organization adapt its mission for the future? 

The listed resources serve to address these questions, respectively.

1. Kane, C. (2012). Learning to change the world : the social impact of one laptop per child. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kane's work offers a general overview of the origins of the OLPC program, with brief assessments of the impact of the movement up to the time the book was published. The book provides a valuable complement to the OLPC website, as it serves to explain the initial goals of the program.

2. Kraemer, K.L., Dedrick, J., Sharma, P. (2009) One laptop per child: vision vs. reality. Communications of the ACM, Vol.52(6), pp.66-73. 

This often cited study examines the difference between the theory and practice of OLPC, as well as the response of other hardware manufacturers to the goals of the program. This article is accompanied by many pictures and helpful infographics to support its findings.

3. Nosowitz, D. (2013). Has One Laptop Per Child totally lost its way? Popular Science http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2013-07/one-laptop-childs-de-evolution. 

Comparing the original goals of the OLPC hardware with the newly announced tablet, this article examines if the upcoming products are even intended for the target audience of children in developing countries.