Computing devices, together with communication, are great cognitive extending tools, especially when they become affordable.
I have also seen cases where brand new computers were stored in locked rooms in the early 90's when schools were given computers from the government without adequate support. At the time, my thoughts were that we need education software. My thinking has since changed as Internet has become ubiquitous, but I still see the need of locally available information for community where high-speed connection to Internet is problematic. [Case in point, the connection speed in Australia is 3rd world. I live in Metro Melbourne and I still have only ADSL connection! BTW, I have two ADSL lines coming into my home, I will appreciate anyone telling me how can I combine them to give me better bandwidth!]
From lifehacker, pocket wikipedia is a 175 MB download with hand-picked material for mobile devices. This reminds me of the One Encyclopedia Per Child project. The 0.5 release is available from The Pirate Bay among other.
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You mention the OLPC in the title. It can be a book reader or a tool to think with.
I believe it is being rolled out with school servers which contain a lot of texts in the local language.
It also contains some good tools to think with including the activities Etoys and Measure.
What do we need? We need good software. Not necessarily new software, there is a lot already available. Just need to recognise and install good thinking tools and provide sufficient facilitation so it gets used.
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