Equipping the child from the developing countries with tools for learning is the foremost aim of the OLPC. These children lack opportunities but not the capacity to learn. To quote the OLPC wiki," The argument for OLPC is simple: many children—especially those in rural parts of developing countries—have so little access to school—in some cases just a tree—that building schools and training teachers is only one way—perhaps the slowest way—to alleviate the situation. While such building programs and teacher education must not stop, another and parallel method advised by OLPC is to leverage the children themselves by engaging them more directly in their own learning."

By having access to technology the child has a guide in exploring his/her latent potential for learning that has been deprived because of poverty. Again to quote the OLPC wiki: "Learning about things that are personally meaningful while constructing knowledge—especially where children realize that they had to extend themselves beyond what they believed they were capable of doing—is both natural and liberating. "

Mesh networking is the type of networking that has been designed for the OLPC project to create a vigorous and economical infrastructure. A mesh network allows continuous connection and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths by hopping from node to node until the destination is reached. When the nodes are linked to each other a fully connected network is achieved. The OLPC project claims that the instantaneous connections made by the laptops can reduce the need for an external infrastructure such as the internet to reach all areas, because a connected node could share the connection with nodes nearby.

David Pogue wrote in his New York Times column about the features of the XO programs in relation to the mesh network and I quote:

"Most of the XO’s programs are shareable on the mesh network, which is another ingenious twist. Any time you’re word processing, making music, taking pictures, playing games or reading an e-book, you can click a Share button. Your document shows up next to your icon on the mesh-network map, so that other people can see what you’re doing, or work with you. Teachers can supervise your writing, buddies can collaborate on a document, friends can play you in Connect 4, or someone across the room can add a melody to your drum beat in the music program."

The value of collaboration being emphasized by the OLPC is a laudable move to achieve solidarity among its users. Learning is not a solitary effort anymore it has become a community undertaking.

The One Laptop Per Child project, no matter how noble the intentions, has yet to take off and the road ahead is full of challenges and barriers. It has been criticized as not being "grounded" on the realities of the market. The implementation has been delayed and the target price of $ 100 per laptop can’t be achieved yet. Government officials of some developing countries would rather have clean water and food rather than investing in laptops.

Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the MIT Lab and chairperson of the OLPC, has this to say when interviewed by Riz Khan on Al Jazeera about the priorities of the developing countries:

"….when you look at it as a laptop project, and we’re giving a child a laptop like a gadget, like a cell phone, a Game Boy then, yes, the priorities are, perhaps, totally wrong. But if you think of it as a school in the box, a way for a child who doesn’t even come close to being able to go to school, because there isn’t a school, or, maybe, in some cases where the teachers aren’t as qualified maybe as you would like, and you’re really thirsty. We provide water.

This is, in fact, an inoculation against ignorance….."

The OLPC is evolving. It is a trailblazing initiative which can help a lot in bridging the digital divide. Let’s hope our government officials see the potential of this project.