Peru
Peru is OLPC's largest deployment country to date.
Related Links
OLPC Peru
Peru Ministry of Education
OLPC Peru Wiki
Peru holds a special place in the progress of the OLPC Foundation, being one of the first countries to pilot the prototype XO and subsequently commit to a nationwide program to put a rugged, low-cost connected laptop into the hands of every young child in the impoverished, developing country.
Encouraged by the success of Uruguay and with a deep experience in the constructionist approach to basic education, Peru began its OLPC adventure in June 2007 in a small remote rural village in the Andes mountains called Arahuay. XO laptops were given to the town's 46 primary school students.
So dramatic was the impact that in December the same year, the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the PerúEduca team began rolling out the first tranche of 40,000 laptops to children in remote and rural one-classroom schools.
"Our decision to work with One Laptop per Child was a relatively easy one," said Oscar Becerra, General Director for Educational Technology at the MOE. "We have been applying the constructionist learning theory for more than 20 years in Peru, and the XO laptop is the perfect tool for children to learn by doing, sharing and expressing themselves. The low cost of the laptop as well as its unique features – the display readable in direct sunlight, the mesh network and the overall ruggedness of the machine – make it a great fit for the remote and rural villages of our country."
In Huancavelica, these students are learning about the environment. Peru's education ministry developed a collection of individual and class projects to guide student learning about nature and their communities, using their laptops. In many rural communities, children spend more time playing and working on their laptops at home, then they do in school - and most of these projects are things that can be explored with the whole family.