Portugal offers One Laptop Per Half a Child
WITH THE BEGINNING of the new school year the Portuguese PM, José Socrates, and a posse of ministers-in-waiting handed out 3,000 new Classmate PCs to eagerly waiting kiddies. This is the first batch of the 500,000 machines expected to be delivered over a three-year period.
Delivering on a promise made just a couple of months ago, first- through fourth-graders throughout Portugal received yesterday the new lappies for next to nothing (€50) or for free in the case of low-income families.
The Magalhães is a second generation Classmate PC, based on the Celeron 900 unit, rather than the recently launched Atom-based Classmate PC. The machine comes chock-full of privacy protection tools as well as a “pay-as-you-go” internet access and a rather original games module that is unlocked *if* the student has done his homework.
The Mistress of Education, Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, claims that the current PC-to-Student ratio is 5:1, and plans are on course to reduce that to 2:1, putting it ahead of the rest of Europe. Well, one laptop per half-a-child is better than none, right?
The cunning plan to boost computer literacy and school achievement levels has no specific agenda except raising the bar on education. There is a secondary target in mind, which the Portuguese government is working on: providing cheaper internet access at home. Details on this are vague, pretty vague, but according to Mrs. Rodrigues, it will be up to local government to take care of this.
The machine will also retail at local shops like Fnac, this week, at the cost of €285. Of course, you can buy an EeePC or WindPC for about the same price.
There are also plans to take this particular PC abroad to other Portuguese-speaking countries and, Chavez-willing, to Venezuela. µ
Share this:
Business Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
Hang on...

"the current PC-to-Student ratio is 5:1"
So every student has 5 PCs? How does this even work, one laptop per limb and a spare [laptop, not limb] incase they break down.

At least they're doing the responsible thing and reducing it to 2:1 so that every child only has to figure out how to use 2 PCs at a time.

"Well, one laptop per half-a-child is better than none, right?"
One laptop per 1/2 child, so 2 laptops per child.

Ohhhh, you meant half-a-laptop per child? Now it all makes much more sense.

Okay, the horse is dead and I'll stop being a pedant.
Hold on, but one laptop per half child is more computers than kids- and equates to two laptops per child..

Surely our esteemed correspondent wasn't skipping homework when fractions were covered..

PS: Oh bugger, someone else made this fairly obvious point, too :-)
Duncan, I suspect that the Inq is in fact performing something of a high wire act with its humour here, and did in fact intend to say exactly what was written - including the quote from an education minister with a slight lack of mathematical instinct.
Ya I read this article and was like wtf all of this makes no sense. You gotta fix that stuff lol.
Oh that's funny, I actually clicked back on the article after i had read it, to read the comments, as the math hit me a couple seconds after i was done reading it.
We can produce more laptops and make an arrangement with the UK, like we did with Chavez, so the future Inquirer writer (now a child) doesn't make fractions mistakes.

just kidding ;-)
Whether Duncan's being pedantic or not, this IS a technology site. I think the general idea is understood but the details do matter.

Put it in a 'high-level' report and then you can start writing this way.
I think it's half laptop per child because it's using M$ software inside, so that every citizen pays the M$ TAX and not only the child.
...that would be the correct fraction if we take in consideration the "M$" comment.

really you have to hand it to the Portuguese Governement this time. "Info-inclusion" they say for kiddies 6-10 yo. It enables but not necessarily achieves the intended objective, we will have to wait and see.

But... there's an agenda indeed. Populist measure this is, parallel to well conducted PR campaign. Lets just hope kids will actually learn how to take advantage of the new "priviledge", the door is open for some of them now.

this is good, very good, but still it does not go over the whitewash this is next to remaining policies in education and others...

I give a fifth of a clap to Socrates.
Very funny article, with some tongue-in-cheek details, in the usual INQUIRER style.

BTW, these computers will be largely paid by a fund created by the telecoms that have won the 3G licenses in Portugal, some years ago. And did you all know that these machines are dual-boot?

Reading this article and a previous from the same author (http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/07/29/portuguese-classmate-pc) It's obvious that for some reason the author simply doesn't like Portugal and the Portuguese people in some kind of xenophobic sentiment or some neo-imperialist complex. It's simply not credible the way he misstate the facts. Nevertheless, here what the Minister said:
"In 2005 we had an indicator of 16 students per computer. This year we hit five pupils by computer, in 2010 we want to be in two students per computer, with one of the best indicators for the EU and most advanced of any country. It is an ambitious project." 
Now I think there are some issues with this process that worth some thinking and discussion, but clearly this is not the place to do it.
well, you all got it totally wrong I think.. 5:1 means 5 kids to use 1 computer, plan is to have 2:1, in which there would be 2 kids per computer, which is better than before..