Imphal, July 06 2010: Manipur has been added to the global project One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a mission to empower the children learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child with the commencement of distribution of the laptop to four schools today.

Speaking at the distribution function held at the Directorate of Education (School), Lamphel, Education Minister, L Jayentakumar said that teachers should treat the advent of new scientific teaching method as a challenge in their profession.

The Minister attended as chief guest at the laptops distribution function to four schools�two each from Imphal East and West districts.

He handed over the specially designed OLPC to headmasters and headmistress of the four beneficiary schools, Wangkhei High School and Sophia High School from Imphal east district and Keishampat High School and Sisu Nishtha Nitekan School.

Two of the schools, Sophia High School and Sisu Nishtha Nitekan School are private school while the rest two are government run school.

Two-hundred laptops were distributed on the occasion.

State government is trying its best to uplift the education system in the state, said the education minister adding that the scheme has been introduced as part of the effort of the government.

Around 1000 more laptops are arriving soon and as soon as it arrived the same will be distributed to other schools.

The laptops will be distributed to nine non-residential schools.

Each school will be given 90 laptops each.

Among the selected school, Kangpokpi Ideal School is one, he said.

State government had earmarked Rs 155 lakh set to get these laptops designed for learning and teaching students in state.

The amount was earmarked out of Rs 5951 lakh allocated for the school education approved as sectoral and sub-sectoral allocation of the plan size for the annual plan 2009-10 .

Mention may be made that the OLPC project was introduced in India in 2007, when students of Khairat village near Karjat received OLPC-designed XO laptops.

Along with the hardware, the laptops have its own operating system Sugar developed on Python language.

The scheme was implemented by OLPC Inc, a non-profit organisation funded by multinational companies.

Manipur government had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the implementing agency in the first week of April this year, the minister added.

The initiative is basically for effective education, teaching and self-learning by students.

The financer of the project has to bear the cost of laptops only.

Other expenses like software designing, upgradation and maintenance will be handled by the OLPC free of cost.

The laptops cost the Indian government around Rs 11,000 a unit, which is equivalent to less than �140.With features designed specifically to meet the needs of Indian school children, it is hoped the laptops will be a huge success.

These laptops draw just one watt of power, have screens that are fully visible in direct sunlight, are deemed virtually 'unbreakable' and are waterproof to ensure longevity.

The OLPC laptops have been tailored in such a way that course content and certain text books can be made available in local languages, so they should prove invaluable to the Indian school children.

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