One Laptop Per Child News

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Rwanda which became the site of the largest non-South American OLPC deployment in mid-2011 recently saw the launch of a second, independent OLPC project. This new project is run by a coalition of four different German organizations which distributed a total of 100 XOs at the St. Jacob School in Kigali in November:

In Germany a group of dedicated organizations have teamed up to introduce 100 of these laptops for three classes at the St. Jacob School in Rwanda. The Stuttgart-based Care for Kids e. V. has taken the initiative and took over the project management, the Hamburg-based OLPC Germany e. V. has organized the procurement of the laptops, the Stuttgart-based WCE (Germany) e. V. took over the IT implementation tasks, and the Hechingen-based Children need Peace e. V. organized the activities at the school and the children's village in Rwanda. All organizations and members also strongly contributed in funding through donations.

"Family picture" after handover of the laptops and the responsibility to the school

It will be very interesting to see how this project develops over the coming months and years. Given that the government itself is running the aforementioned 100,000 XO project which it plans to expand to 200,000 XOs by mid-2012 this will also be a great opportunity to compare the two different OLPC projects taking place in the country. Plus I'm sure there will be many opportunities for both efforts to learn and benefit from each other.

Resumen en español: En Ruanda, donde el gobierno está ejecutando el proyecto más grande de OLPC fuera de América Latina, se lanzó un nuevo proyecto independiente en noviembre del año pasado. Una coalición de cuatro organizaciones alemanas compró 100 XO para la escuela St. Jacob School en Kigali. Será muy interesante observar el desarollo del proyecto en los proximos meses y años y además es una buena oportunidad para hacer una comparación entre los dos proyectos distintos en el país. Aparte de esto estoy seguro que habrán muchos aspectos donde los proyectos pueden beneficiarse mutuamente.

Resumen en español al final del artículo

One of the most frustrating aspects of my 2010 journey through Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru was seeing how many children had to use XOs whose keyboards were broken. Uruguay seemed to be particularly hard-hit by this issue. From what I gathered this is due to the fact that they received many XOs which were produced fairly early on when OLPC had yet to implement changes to make the membranes of the keyboards thicker and thereby more robust.

As such I was very excited when I saw this photo showing off a new and seemingly much improved membrane keyboard which is the standard option for the upcoming ARM-based XO-1.75:

A comment on the wiki page of the photo refers to this as a grid style keyboard. As you can see the gaps between the individual keys are now protected with a plastic cover. This should really go a long way in reducing the number of broken keyboards and the associated maintenance hassles and expenses.

It will also be interesting to see whether OLPC will make these keyboards - or rather the whole bottom portion of the XO - available to deployments. That would allow them to gradually replace the machines hit by this issue rather than having to purchase XO-1.75s. Though of course one question here is at what cost such a replacement (parts plus shipping/handling and actually repair procedure) would be available to Uruguay and other projects.

In any case it's great to see this improvement become standard for future XO-1.75 owners.

Resumen en español: Una fuente de frustración durante mi visita en 2010 de los proyectos en Uruguay, Paraguay y el Perú fue el número alto de alumnos que que tenían XOs con un teclado roto. Por esto me emocioné mucho cuando vi la foto arriba que muestra el diseño nuevo del teclado que será la opción por defecto en los XO-1.75. Ahora el espacio entre las teclas individuales esta protegido por una cubierta de plástico que debería ayudar mucho en mejorar la resistencia del teclado.

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Yesterday the Mobiles for Education Alliance - which includes many big players such as USAID, U.S. Department of State, Peace Corps, World Bank, IADB, UNICEF, UNESCO, and others - announced an upcoming event with Sugar Labs' Walter Bender.

The topic for the February session of the mAlliance's Seminar Series is "The OLPC Project, Learning and the XO 3 Tablet" and according to the invitation it will focus on:

• The move to a tablet device for OLPC
• The relationship between device design and learning
• The OLPC model and the Sugar operating system

The invitation also mentions that:

An interactive and informative discussion will follow Walter's presentation, and attendees will be invited to explore hands-on the XO 3 tablet and the soon-to-be-released XO 1.75 and XO 1.75 touch.

The event will take place on Friday, February 10th between 9:30 - 11:00 a.m. (EST). For those of you who are based in D.C. the physical address is Ronald Reagan Building, North Tower, 1300 Pennsylvania, Suite 700 but there's also an option to follow the presentation virtually. In either case mAlliance asks that you RSVP to [email protected].

I'll do my best to attend the virtual presentation as this is certainly promising to be an interesting session.

Resumen en español: El 10 de febrero Walter Bender estara dando una presentación enfocado en OLPC, el aprendizaje y el XO 3.0 en un evento en Washington, D.C. Felizmente tambien hay una forma virtual de seguir el evento de la distancia y voy a intentar de verlo así. Hay más información sobre el evento en la invitación (en Inglés) y para regitrarse hay que mandar un correo a [email protected].

La calesita surge de un proyecto escolar iniciado en el 2010 por niños de 3er año de escuela en conjunto con una maestra, la directora y un voluntario de RAP Ceibal. Durante dos años estuvieron trabajando para concretar su proyecto. El mismo permitió nuevos abordajes de temáticas referentes a ciencia, energías renovables, medioambiente, entre otros.

Giving them OLPC laptops, not just any computer, transforms their world beyond what a teacher and a regular computer could achieve together. My experience is that wherever we have OLPC deployed, virtually anyone visiting those schools has almost had an "spiritual" experience of what learning learning can be.

How children can be engaged in learning by themselves, as a class and engage the teachers as well... It transforms the school from a place where children are forced to go into a place they don't want to go away from.