Internet access in developing countries can be prohibitively expensive and
cumbersome (e.g., thousands of dollars per month for speeds that often are less than dial-up).
Now imagine if someone identified a wealth of high-quality educational materials
on the Internet, downloaded them using web site ‘scraping’
software, and then made them available on an inexpensive hard drive that could
be plugged into an existing server network. All of a sudden, individuals could
access many of the incredible resources on the Web quickly, easily, and cheaply,
without consuming expensive bandwidth. Can you imagine how empowering that would
be?

‘The Internet
in a Box.’ That’s the idea behind the University of Iowa eGranary Digital Library
project, which is making web sites, books, journals, and educational software
available to universities, schools, clinics, and libraries in the developing
world. This is a pretty nifty idea (and I’m not just saying this because I’m a
U. Iowa alum). I encourage
you to check out the eGranary fact
sheet, content
catalog, list of
subscribers, and other
materials.

I wonder how this could intersect with the One Laptop per Child initiative. Also, wouldn’t it be a great school project to raise money to buy these for some institutions in other countries?