From OLPC Wiki
Children need to learn learning, which is primarily acquired through the passion that comes from access, the ability to make things, to communicate and to express. Writing a computer program, while seemingly esoteric, is in fact the closest a child can come to thinking about thinking. Likewise, debugging a program is the closest one can come to learning learning.
It goes without saying that Internet access and tools for expression (text, music, video, graphics) are the contemporary “toys” for learning.