UK Game Dev Creates $25 Linux Computer For Education

A lot of schools in the US and abroad have such a tight budget that things for kids to learn with like computers are hard to come by. When I was a kid, we learned some basic computer programming in school, but today many schools simply tech a child how to use basic things on the computer like word processing and general computer skills. Some schools don't have enough computers for the students to use and having enough machines for each student to take on home to learn on is generally out of the question.

A game developer named David Braben from the UK has been working on an interesting project that is aimed at making a very cheap computer that schools can give to children and allow them to take home for use in learning computer science and how hardware works. Braben thinks that the state of education about computers in school today leaves a lot to be desired and even the little laptops like the XO from the OLPC are more expensive than many schools can afford.

The cool computer that Braben has developed is very small and looks more like a flash drive than a computer. The device uses a stick design with an HDMI port on one end and a USB port on the other. The HDMI port is used to shoot video out to a TV or display and the USB port on the other end is for connecting the computer. The hardware on the stick computer is a 700MHz ARM11 processor coupled with 128MB of RAM. The small stick computer has OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible graphics, and storage is taken care of by a SD card slot. The computer can also have accessories attached to it. In the photo, a 12MP camera is attached and the device runs Linux. The price for the hardware is only about $25 making this very affordable.

[via Geek.com]