OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) has been an educational goal for many years now. It is a great idea that hasn’t been realized.. yet! OLPC has as its goal to provide a computer to every child at under $100 per system. The program specifically targets children in third world nations (and those of us who have taught in economically disadvantaged states often feel like we have taught in 3rd world nations!).

In a recent article in THE magazine, the Marvell Mobylize was presented as an answer the the OLPC goal. These tablets support Flash applications and Android, Windows Mobile, or Ubuntu as the Operating System.

This is an exciting opportunity for may reasons:

• A sub $100 tablet
• Flash support
• Multiple operating system support
• Digital textbooks become much more affordable

According to Marvell’s website, the first version (not OLPC) will be available Fall 2010.  The OLPC version has a target release date of 2012.

I did find it interesting that Apple’s iPhone OS is not included as an option. It looks like their strong stance against Flash might have excluded them from this opportunity.