I just completed my panel, Science and Innovation For Sustainable Growth, at the Progressive Governance down here in Chile and want to quickly report in on an inspirational presentation which helped kick off the panel. Miguel Brechner, President of the Technology Laboratory of Uruguay, made a presentation about a wildly ambitious program in Uruguary to provide all school children, aged 6-12, with the Negroponte one laptop per child wireless computer. As a co-author, with Alec Ross, of a paper calling for similar committment here in the US, I of course was thrilled.
The results so far, a year into the program, have been amazing. Here is a link to more dated powerpoint presentation Miguel gave last year. I will be providing links to more when Miguel gets me them. He is traveling to DC in June and I hope to build an event where he can talk of this program's early and very encouraging success.
With President Obama's budget calling for a $100 billion new investment in education, I hope he and his team will see fit to at launch least a serious demonstration project of this idea. It would be tragic if countries like Libya and Uruguay put a laptop in the hands of all their kids before the United States.
More soon from this terrific conference.
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