Can $150 laptop computers in the hands of children in the developing world help educate them and even speed up economic development? Nicholas Negroponte thinks so. After founding and leading MIT’s Media Lab, he started up a nonprofit group, One Laptop per Child to come up with cheap laptops and sell them to developing countries.

There’s a debate about what difference laptops for kids can make in the developing world, and whether governments would be better off spending their money on something else, like better schools, according to this NY Times article. But at least five countries think this is a good idea. Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand have made tentative commitments to buy millions of the laptops, the article said. If all goes according to Negroponte’s plan, mass production and shipment of the computers will begin later this year.