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The latest iteration of the One Laptop per Child project was unveiled at CES this week, and it’s fully focused on ways to integrate with off-grid clean power, both solar and human power. Many of the kids that could be using the laptop, which has now morphed into a simple tablet, won’t have access to grid power.

The OLPC XO-3 has an optional 4-watt solar cover (photo above) combined with a battery, so when the case is placed in the sun for 2 hours, it can provide 4 hours of computing time. There are 4 screws placed on the outside of the tablet, and along with providing a way to open the tablet to make repairs, the screws act as electrical connections with the battery.

There’s also an optional hand crank customers can buy that can charge the tablet with human power. I remember the original OLPC project was working on a hand crank, but it didn’t end up using one back then. The tablet was designed by Yves Behar’s Fuse Project. See the video below for an interesting demo and interview with the OLPC XO-3:

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The One Laptop Per Child group has talked about launching such a device for a while, but has finally created a prototype that will grace the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center this week. Tablets are a natural expansion point for the group’s efforts to bring low-cost computing to those on the other side of the digital divide, especially given how much more lightweight tablet computing can be on a young child.

Spec-wise, you won’t be blown away by the XO-3, but it wasn’t designed with specs in mind. Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) designed the processor inside the device, which also features hooks for charging the device by either a hand crank or by solar panel.

Educational tablet opportunities are something we’re going to be following closely this week and over the course of the year as a potential opportunity for hardware and software companies inside schools where students lug around half their body weight in books.

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“I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn’t even taught as standard in U.K. schools,” Schmidt told the audience in Edinburgh, Scotland. “Your IT curriculum focuses on teaching how to use software, but it doesn’t teach people how it’s made. It risks throwing away your great computing heritage.”

The heritage he refers to is rich, but often ignored today, since West coast companies dominate. But Britain did play its part in the development of the industry: the U.K. was the home of the first computer that could store programs, The Baby; the place where computer science pioneer Alan Turing lived and died; and the site of the first commercial business computer, LEO.

It wasn’t just stiff upper-lipped boffins meddling around with machines during the war, either. Britain was also the place where huge and unlikely institutions helped fire the home computer revolution of the 1980s.

Take a look at what the BBC did when it took on a mission to help educate and inform people about this coming revolution, for example, by embarking on what was known as the “Computer Literacy Project”. In 1981 one of the world’s foremost broadcasters produced a regular TV show about programming (yes, really) and at the same time threw its lot in with a local computer firm, Acorn, to produce a range of machines that could get people coding, and ended up in homes and schools across the country.

It was a move that brought massive dividends, helping breed at least two generations of bedroom coders, hackers and programmers and boosting a series of companies and technologies that ended up resulting what we know as chip maker ARM.

Now, 30 years on from that move, it seems the BBC is considering whether it should try again — by embarking on a new digital literacy initiative that could spark another revolution and help Britain respond to Schmidt’s criticisms.

The corporation is apparently undertaking a consultation to work out if it should back a ‘new BBC Micro’ scheme — and how it might do so.

The project, which is not yet live, is being led by academics at Manchester Metropolitan University. The group has been contacting people in the industry to ask them for ideas and contributions, according to this email reproduced on the Teach Computing blog.

If you were to make hardware available to schools in the same way as the BBC Micro in 1981, what sorts of hardware would you think was essential to develop the skills and understanding needed?

If you were designing a tv programme today that sought to have the same effect as The Computer Programme in stimulating interest in the most important new area of technological development, what area would you expect it to address and what topics would you expect it to cover? Would it still be in the field of computer science? What areas?

The ambition is fairly clear: “developing a project with the specific purpose of encouraging an interest in computers, computer science and computer programming amongst young people”. But the mail makes it obvious that the process is still incredibly early on — and, as a consultation, there’s clearly no guarantee it will end up with any tangible result.

But it does hint that some of Britain’s biggest institutions are trying to fix a serious issue. Indeed, on Twitter, Professor Keri Facer, who is leading the project, suggested the government and private companies may get heavily involved too. She was sure that partnership would be important, she said — “after all, the govt paid for the last BBC Micro project”.

Whatever happens, the scheme does tap into a wider movement trying to improve computer education — not just in Britain, but worldwide. One Cambridge-based consortium is already developing a low-cost computer known as Raspberry Pi, which is intended to help children learn to code. There is also, famously, the One Laptop Per Child scheme that span out of MIT.

It also chimes with a number of media critics and academics who suggest that not only are open technology systems vital to a healthy democracy — but that we need to make sure the next generation of computer users can really get inside those systems. As Douglas Rushkoff says: “Program or be programmed”.

BBC Micro photo used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Soupmeister

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Reading comfortably in bed isn’t the only benefit of the tablet. There’s also “transparency of usage,” Negroponte said, comparing the way people can have friendly interactions around a tablet versus a teacher in a classroom facing “an army of backs of laptops.” Negroponte of course is mostly concerned with educational uses of tablets, as founder of the One Laptop Per Child. His non-profit has distributed 2 million laptops in 40 countries so far and announced it would transition to a tablet last December.

Negroponte spoke of the potential to make a tablet more than a consumption experience. “An interesting consequence comes from a level of creativity that can happen in places where it didn’t happen before,” he said, adding, “I think India is relatively overrated. I think China is underrated. And Africa isn’t even rated.”

Where Apple’s business might be described as “building peripherals for iTunes,” tablets should inspire and enable students to create things, said Negroponte. “We can’t turn these kids into couch potatoes. Just because you interact doesn’t mean you construct. [We need] learning by doing and learning by making. Learning by being told is only one way.”

OLPC’s tablet has now been prototyped, and includes things like a “transflective” screen that’s visible both during the day and at night. But Negroponte, appearing on stage with Weili Dai, the co-founder of OLPC tablet design partner Marvell, was vague about how and when this thing will actually be manufactured and released. “All we have to do is threaten to build the tablet and that may be enough because in the end, we are not hardware makers,” said Negroponte, calling that strategy “a new regime of trying to make things people will copy rather than doing it ourselves.” He said Marvell is helping OLPC with designing things like haptics to vibrate when a user types on the tablet’s virtual keyboard, but that it’s possible that children may not even care about getting feedback from the device when they touch it.

Negroponte described his motivation as such: “When I wake up in the morning I ask myself, ‘Will normal market forces do what I’m doing today?’ — and if the answer is yes, then stop.”

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