Is OLPC still active? I remember it being a big deal for a few years and then never really heard anything about it since.

Yes and no, so far as I'm aware.

The project has lost a good deal of its funding, from what I've heard, and now has a lot less backing from the technical community (I think Collabora are the only backers now), placing the project's overall management mainly into the hands of educators, who don't tend to be the best at that side of things.

So you end up with things where various parts of their various websites are broken, and there isn't as much well-handled PR going out.

However, they are still somewhat active [0], but at a much smaller scale. Focusing on individual classrooms as goals, rather than the massively ambitious target of One Laptop Per Child in entire nations.

[0] http://planet.sugarlabs.org/

It was a good idea, but probably too ambitious. I like better the idea of installing hardened kiosks in public areas - way easier to build and maintain with commodity parts. Portability is nice but it's honestly not critical.

This reminds me of the "hole in the wall" kiosk, installed in a slum in New Delhi in a way that was supposed to be accessible only to children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimally_invasive_education

That would be a completely different project, with totally different outcomes, though.