One Telescope Per Child

An anonymous reader writes "It seems one-<object>-per-child goes beyond laptops. A project from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has designed a high-quality, $20 telescope they're calling the Galileoscope, hoping to spark interest in astronomy among kids and make good scopes available to many who otherwise could not afford one. But as OLPC learned, it's not that easy; they are struggling to get enough volume to get production ramped up and costs down, resorting to tricks like auctioning off a few autographed ones, and trying Give-One-Get-One."

Comments

A direct link

[dakameleon]

A direct link to the Galileoscope project site would be great, wouldn't you think?

I've used one

[abarrow]

A buddy brought one of these on our last backpacking trip. Nice an light, and surprisingly good for something with plastic optics. A couple of words of warning: the images are inverted, so they are great for looking at the sky but not as good for spying on your fellow backpackers. Also, the focus is a simple slide, so it's tough to get a good focus without moving the scope around. I can see how a kid might grow impatient with those faults. You are going to want to put this on a secure tripod - they aren't so good holding in your hands.

Aside from that, I agree that this is something that every kid should have. Perhaps it will get them outside looking at the sky instead of inside immersed in some FPS game.

Re:Better than they need to be?

[herojig]

Here in rural Nepal, we would use the telescope to see when ama was going to get up the hill with fresh water, or dada was returning from the hilltop with a bit of fresh meat. A similar thing is happening with the $200 netbook project, they are becoming the village telephone and whatnot when the power goes out for the mandatory 6 hours or so. But this is not to say that new low-cost educational tech is not useful or not needed more then fresh water, sanitation, shelter, and food. The low cost cell phone microscope is saving lives, and laptops are powering entire comm links for villages without power most of the time. Keep it all coming!
Jigs in Nepal