1-to-1 educational computing initiatives around the world

The One Laptop Per Child program has brought much attention to issues related to '1-to-1 computing' (each child has her/his own personal computing device).  While perhaps the most prominent initiative of this sort in public consciousness, OLPC is just one of many such programs around the world.  At a recent event in Vienna, the OECD, the Inter-american Development Bank and the World Bank brought together representatives from these programs, the first such face-to-face global gathering of leaders in this area to share information and insights about their experiences. 

In putting together this event, it was clear that there was no consolidated list of leading '1-to-1 educational computing initiatives'.  Here's a first attempt at such a list, based on participants in this event (links are meant as pointers to more related information; not all lead to the specific project sites):

• Argentina: San Luis Digital
• Australia: Anytime, Anywhere
• Austria: Netbooks in Education
• Brazil: Piraí Digital
• Canada: Eastern Townships (Quebec)
• Canada: New Brunswick
• Colombia: OLPC Colombia (Fundación Pies Descalzos)
• European Schoolnet: EUN-Acer Netbook Project
• Israel: Time To Know
• Nepal: OLE Nepal
• Paraguay: Paraguay Educa
• Peru: OLPC-Peru
• Portugal: e-escolinha, e-escola
• Rwanda: OLPC Rwanda
• South Korea: Digital Textbook & u-Learning (KERIS)
• Spain: Junta de Aragón, Catalunya
• United Kingdom: Becta Home Access
• United States: Maine Laptop Technology Initiative (related blog post)
• Uruguay: Plan Ceibal (related blog post)

 
All presentations and videos from these (and other) initiatives are now being being uploaded to the Vienna event web site, and the complementary sites maintained by the OECD, Inter-american Development Bank and the World Bank; all should be available by the end of the first week of March.  Until then, you may wish to consult the daily summaries posted by OLPCnews.com (day one, day two, day three) or on the IDB ICT/education blog (day one, day two, day three).

This list, with its emphasis on geographic diversity and large scale programs, is meant to be both representative and reasonably comprehensive.  There are of course many small school- and district-level initiatives, especially in North America and Europe, that are not listed here -- please feel free to add to this list in the comments below.

For more information on this topic in general, from a largely American (USA) perspective (the site of most such initiatives to date), here are a few places to get started:

• The Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment recently published six papers on this topic in a special edition on Educational Outcomes and Research from 1:1 Computing Settings. eSchool News provides its take on the highlights from this edition of the JTLA in "One-to-one computing programs only as effective as their teachers".
• A list of papers from Mark Warschauer, one of the leading American scholars on this topic. See also here and here (link to PDF).
  
• The always insightful Larry Cuban has provided a useful reality check on the claims of some of the biggest proponents of '1-to1 computing'.

 
Please note: The image used at the top of this blog post of a young gymnast comes courtesy of Wikipedian Nevit Dilmen via Wikimedia Commons and is used according to the terms of its  Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.