Jul. 29, 2010 (The Hindu Business Line) --
Our Bureau
Hyderabad, July 29
Children in Manipur and Kerala would soon sport a laptop as part of the UN-sponsored ‘One Laptop per Child' (OLPC) programme. Targeted at children in the group of 5-12 years, the low-cost, low-power laptops, would offer a connecting environment for children and teachers.
The children and their teachers will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content. About 1,300 laptops for 13 rural schools have already been distributed in Sri Lanka.
Virtusa Corporation, a IT services company, has joined the UN-sponsored programme by offering its expertise in testing and quality assurance to fine-tune the product.
“Our teams in India and Sri Lanka helped the project administrators provide stability to the laptops at zero cost. They worked on 12 laptops. The testing has resulted in more than 800 test scenarios for the laptops,” Mr Chamindra de Silva, Head (Strategic Initiatives, Global Technology Office) of Virtusa, said here in a press release.
Based on the success of the pilot project, Virtusa will seek to continue to partner and expand the programme and other projects for social benefit, he said.
“The open source platform has enabled us to engage and interact with a global community of OLPC developers. I initially received an extensive on-the-job training where I was able to methodically gather requirements, analyse, and define scope and review testing in open source projects,” a Virtusa staffer working on the project, said.
