One Laptop Per Child News

Ceibal is the project by which by the end of 2009, all Uruguayan schoolchildren of public schools and their teachers will receive a laptop from the government agency LATU.

It is a project based in three pillars, equity, learning, and connectivity. The combination of the three issues will allow us to give equal opportunities, to develop new tools for learning and education, and to achieve new relationships in society that will be interconnected.

I am Miguel Brechner, President of the Uruguay Technology Laboratory (LATU), and this is just a summary of some of the things that are happening with Proyecto Ceibal recently.

At this point we have deployed 70,000 machines, in 7 regions of the country, and completed more than 400 schools. Urban schools have servers and DSL access and rural schools have Edge or Satellite access. In urban areas the system is designed that no child has to walk more than 300 meters to get Internet access when he is outside school.

Our plan is to deploy 180,000 machines in 2008, (around 1,300 a day) and 170,000 more in 2009. We are using XO for the laptops (awarded in a tender last year) , as well as Wavion, Bell Air and Mikrotik equipment for connectivity. We are in the process of a second tender for laptops.

We have defined that the Sugar is the interface we want in the laptops. We have just published a RFP for porting Sugar to Windows XP and other Linux. Our investment in this project has to be the more independent that we can, and we need to be in the long run, hardware independent as well as operating system independent.

We have a group of around 500 volunteers that help during deployment and support the schools, and we have now a program with the students of the University (around 1,000) that will work with kids, parents and teachers outside school, and will receive credits in their faculties.

The majority of the teachers are supportive of Ceibal. At the beginning there was a big resistance due to uncertainties, pedagogic discussions and the fact that Ceibal is a Presidential project and not a project born inside the educational environment.
After the starting of the deployment, the interaction between teachers and children has been very great both learning from each other and the acceptance and new activities has grown.

The teachers receive training and their machines before the deployment of their regions. The parents are demanding to be trained, and the school is the center of activities in each town.

Private schools have requested to be part of the plan (45,000 more children) and they will buy the computers at cost, and receive all the networking for free, as there will be only one network called Ceibal.

Collaboration with other implementations has taught us a lot, so please comment and send suggestions to us. Also, Recursos en la red sobre Ceibal is a comprehensive list of Ceibal resources and ways to get involved.

Tags: Ceibal | Internet Access | LATU | Miguel Brechner | OLPC Uruguay | Proyecto Ceibal | Sugar |

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I am extremely excited to announce that Greg Smith has joined OLPC as Product Manager. Greg has been a long-time volunteer. Greg is an experienced project manager previously at Cisco, he gets Constructionism, and he is tireless.

As an OLPC volunteer, he has logged many hours over the last twelve months organizing the wiki, working with the Support Gang, and helping deployments like Nepal prepare for their pilots. And did I mention that he has been an occasional contributor to OLPC News:

• Optimal XO Application Development Model Process
• An April Update on XO Laptops in Uruguay

Greg's hiring is crucial as OLPC's technical management team currently consists of the chronically overtasked Kim Quirk and Jim Gettys. He has already taken charge of the Release Management Process as you can read in the OLPC wiki.

In an April e-mail to the Developer's mailing list, Greg laid out what I call Greg Smith's Eight Steps to Build Stuff People Need. These steps apply as equally to an open-source project and as a closed-source one.

Enumerated steps

1. Find a real user ready to communicate and work with you.

2. Line up volunteers and evaluate group skills and time.

3. Discuss with user the key challenges and pick one or two you want to address.

4. Come up with a design proposal and validate with users.

5. Code up a prototype or working example.

6. Run beta test, refine and gather feedback.

7. Deliver code and give great support in the early going.

8. Go back to step 1 or to step 6 and keep at it :-)

If you haven't gotten the point already, Greg excels at making sure a product meets the actual needs of users. For months now I have been calling for OLPC to hire someone to interface between coders, kids, and teachers. OLPC has found the right someone in Greg Smith.

Tags: Eight Steps | Greg Smith | OLPC Staff | Product Manager | Project Management | Support Gang |

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While surfing over on wiki.laptop.org earlier today I noticed that an interesting update regarding Give 1 Get 1:

Important information about the first G1G1: The deadline for activation of the T-Mobile accounts is June 30th. If you have not activated your account, please do it today! OLPC will not be able to help you after the 30th.

I assume if you're geeky enough to read this Web site you probably activated your T-Mobile account on day 1. However it would be a shame for people to realize on July 1st that they still haven't activated their account. So if you know any G1G1 people who might have missed this then let them know about the deadline.

If there are additional issues or concerns (replacement laptops, bad shipments) from the first G1G1, please send an email to HELP @ LAPTOP.ORG

I am wondering how many "get 1" XOs are actually being used these days and how many are sitting in boxes, on shelfs and in basements gathering dust since their owners realized that no, this is not a replacement for a $1000 Dell machine.

OLPC has begun planning for the next Give One Get One (G1G1) program which will be available to the US, Canada, and several other countries. It is expected to launch later this year. Please check our website for more information after September 1. (my emphasis)

Ah, interesting, seems like September 1st is D-Day! That gives OLPC some more time to address the plethora of issues that plagued the first Give 1 Get 1. Plus that Christmas delivery looks potentially feasable, even for the Canadian folks.

Tags: G1G1 | Give 1 Get 1 | OLPC | One Laptop per Child | T-Mobile |

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This Saturday, XO laptop users in Washington, DC and Ottawa, Canada are going to form a very special mesh - we'll be exploring and learning XO software and hardware together via Nortel's massive videoconferencing center. First, we'll heard reports from all the OLPC-centric activity over the last month, like the 4PC Bakeoff, OLPC Grassroots Jam NYC, OLPC Grassroots Unconference in Boston, OLPC Photo Jam 1, and more. More details and event information is on OLPC Learning Club DC.

Tags: Grassroots | Kernel | OLPC Canada | OLPC Learning Club | Sugar | Update 1 | XO Repair | XO User Group |

OLPC Learning Club: Connecting Capitols to Update 1 | Comment (4) | Digg This | Add to del.ico.us | Slashdot It

We'd like to invite all of the readers of OLPC News to participate in the upcoming OLPC Grassroots Web Conference being held on Saturday, July 19th at 10 AM EST. GrassCon will be a live-video streaming event. The goal of GrassCon is to give grassroots groups from around the world the opportunity to share their experiences and future plans, and allow the community to interact and ask questions.

The theme of the conference is "From Code to Kids", a topic that covers a majority of what OLPC grassroots groups are doing. We'll be hearing about past, current, and future software development, as well as pilot programs and public awareness programs from around the world.

More information about GrassCon, such as the location of the streaming video, will be posted the week before the conference. We're looking forward to seeing everybody there!

Tags: Alex Keybl | Grassroots | OLPC | OLPC@Duke | Web Conference | XO User Groups |

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While thinking about some of the recent stories on the over-hyped Windows XP on the XO I realized how ridicoulus it seems for anyone to get excited about an operating system released in 2001. An operating system that is the successor of Windows ME!

So instead of going down memory lane and mocking Microsoft I decided to compile a little overview of a cutting edge Sugar demo that I was shown when I was at OLPC HQ in Cambridge, MA some weekends ago. The demo setup was prepared by Alex, an intern at OLPC, and its goal is to show off some of the cool features that you can get to use on your XO when you spend some time tweaking the thing. It is based on the latest joyride builds which include a significant redesign of both the home and neighborhood view. If you're running the faster builds you'll also notice significantly shorter activity startup times!

On the home view the running activities have moved into the edge on the top, the lower edge now contains the wifi and battery monitor (which tells you how much time you have left) and a volume control panel (finally!). The ring in the center is now customizable and users can select which of their installed activities should show up there.

Tags: Battery Monitor | Firefox | Google Maps | MPEG-4 | MPlayer | Opera | Sugar | XO Activities |

A Cutting Edge Sugar User Interface Demo | Comment (11) | Digg This | Add to del.ico.us | Slashdot It

Columbia University's Institute of Learning Technologies just completed a 4-month evaluation of the OLPC pilot in New York City. The evaluation's summary is clear about the outcome of the pilot so far:

In general, the XO pilot at Kappa IV has been a success from the point of view of all the participants, including Teaching Matters staff, teacher, students, and parents.

Tags: Evan O'Donnell | John Clemente | Kappa IV | NYC | OLPC | Teaching Matters |

One Laptop Per New York City Student a Success | Comment (14) | Digg This | Add to del.ico.us | Slashdot It

One of the things that initially attracted me to OLPC was that we Nepalis could it make it our own. So often ideas and initiatives that come from the West are pre-packaged and controlled. With XO's we can localize the Sugar interface, develop activities that accord to our needs and culture, and come up with power solutions that work in our particular environments. One of the key things that we needed to localize was the name of the laptop itself. This has happened in an unexpected manner. When the concept of One Laptop Per Child was first being introduced and spread in Nepal back in 2006, one question that was discussed regularly in the community was: what should we call the laptops? There is no Nepali word for computer, let alone a laptop. In normal usage, computer is referred as computer written in Devnagari script.

While most people who have come in contact with a computer do have an idea of what the word refers to, we thought that the word does not do justice to the education aspect of the laptops that we were trying to highlight. Besides, the words computer and laptop have technical connotations that make the large non-tech savvy public resist to the OLPC concept at some level. Referring to the laptop as "XO" was acceptable within the OLPC community, but it was too abstract and caused more confusion outside of the community.

Tags: E-Paati | Nepal | OLE Nepal | Rabi Karmacharya | localization |

E-Paati and E-Paath: Making OLPC Our Own | Comment (3) | Digg This | Add to del.ico.us | Slashdot It

Sadly, some would say, we now have a dual boot XO. Gizmodo has just released a video of the XO laptop booting both the Linux-based Sugar and the Microsoft Windows XP operating systems.

Congratulations to One Laptop Per Child developers, as this was a software feat. As Wilson Rothman says:

To get both operating systems to run, the BIOS has been modified to behave more like standard PCs (rather than Macs or Linux machines). The original BIOS for the XO was originally conceived for AIX and Solaris servers, all running variants of UNIX.

While OLPC should be all proud of themselves for the accomplishment, Microsoft should be ashamed of their earlier "massaged" XP on the XO video. According to Michail Bletsas via Wilson, XP takes a little over a minute to boot up on the XO, not the 4x faster time promised by Bohdan Raciborski's video.

Tags: BIOS | Dual Boot | Gizmodo | Michail Bletsas | Microsoft | Sugar | Windows XO | XP on the XO |

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This is the second part of Alexandros Kaloxylos' "Using XOs in a Greek classroom".

As for the creation of exercises with the use of squeak our impressions are both positive and negative. Positive is the fact that someone related to computer science can create or modify exercises quite easily. How good the exercise will be, is limited mostly from the imagination of the developer. The negative impressions derived from the fact that one should be very careful when presenting these exercises to kids with no experience with squeak. It took us some time to lock down buttons and images (we could not lock them all down since some exercises would not be executed properly). We did this because it was very easy for a kid to move parts of the exercise around, make it un-executable and miss the point of the exercise. Thus, it is very easy for the teacher to loose a lot of time for debugging in squeak. Note also, that exercises developed in desktops have to be checked again after porting them into the XOs since there are some differences in the positioning of items in the screen (possibly something to do with the differences in the screen analysis).

As far as organizing a teaching unit with the use of XOs, we observed that it takes considerable more time in comparison to conventional methods of teaching. This is because the teacher needs to collect, develop and organise the necessary electronic material (books, bookmarks, slides, exercises etc). We are not very confident that if left alone, an average teacher can do this in a satisfactory level. Probably, the supporting material has to be available and managed centrally.

Tags: Alexandros Kaloxylos | Greece | OLPC | Squeak | classroom | localization | teacher-centric | testing |

Using XOs in a Greek classroom, Continued | Comment (3) | Digg This | Add to del.ico.us | Slashdot It

At first I thought that I was looking at a late April's fool joke. Then I was reminded of a other potentially faked material involving Microsoft and OLPC. But the more often I look at the photos that Gizmodo has posted the more I believe that I'm really looking at a limited edition XO-1 that comes in red:

"Wilson caught this limited edition Red OLPC at the company's headquarters near MIT's campus in Cambridge today. The limited edition run of 100 is made for developers working on the dual boot Sugar Linux and Windows XP system, and has specs identical to the regular OLPC, except 2GB flash memory—the minimum required for Windows."

Now the 2GB flash-memory certainly doesn't surprise me. In fact I think this might become the standard on the previously mentioned XO-1.5 which is supposed to become available in spring 2009.

However the red enclosure is a really nice touch, even though apparently someone messed up the order and forgot to get accompanying red power-adapters.

Tags: Gizmodo | Microsoft | OLPC | XO-1 | limited edition | red |

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Do you remember all the hoopla around the XP on the XO announcement in May? Where Microsoft gave us a press release, blog post, and a video, all announcing Windows XP for the XO laptop. Well, thanks to the sleuths on OLPC News Forum it looks like Microsoft may have faked two of the three.

First, let's look at the official press release photograph showing XP on the XO. Now, take a very, very close look. Do you see what teapot sees?

The image is definitely an overlay -- lower corners obscure the screen border, and black areas around the screen are nowhere to be found.

However diagonal graininess of the blue background seems to suggest that it may be taken on XO or XO emulator, and pasted to compensate for camera's contrast/dynamic range. Pretty strange considering that XO screen is not particularly bright or glossy.

If you look at the photo on James U's blog post, you can really tell the difference - his image has the XP screen looking way more natural. And if that were the only trespass, who really cares, eh? Everyone Photoshops.

Yet, its not. Just take a close look at the Microsoft XP on XO video:

Tags: $100 Laptop | Massaged Video | Microsoft | OLPC | OLPC News Forum | Windows XO | XP on XO |

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To me, Tim Russert was my favorite TV newscaster. Some of you may know that Tim Russert died on Friday from a massive heart attack but I only learned after his death about a One Laptop Per Child connection. His wife, Maureen Orth, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia and together, they supported the Maureen Orth Foundation. I'd like for you to remember him by assisting his wife's foundation. One of its initiatives, "Step by Step" is teaching English, teaching how to use Information Technology, and improving instructional techniques for teachers using XO laptops, along with other computers.

Tags: Greg Yohn | Maureen Orth | OLPC Colombia | Peace Corps | Tim Russert | XO Laptops |

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Thanks to One Laptop Per Child, we are now witnessing a dramatic change in the computing marketplace - 4P Computing: the emergence of appropriate power, performance, portability, and price as drivers of technology innovation.

With all the new entrants flooding the market this summer, two questions are quickly emerging for educators who are contemplating 1:1 computing to child programs:

1. Which 4PC is best value for my educational budget?
2. How do I measure what "value" means to me?

While we don't pretend to have a clear answer for either question, a few of the more intrepid OLPC Learning Club DC members are going to geek out on the concept this weekend.

Tags: 4P Computing | Asus | Classmate 2Go PC | LCDC | Laptop Bake Off | OLPC | Underwater Typing |

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On May 2nd and 3rd in Argos - Greece, we taught four different subjects to a small number of pupils using the OLPC computers inside their classroom. It was the first time that such an event occurred in Greece. Out of 7 laptops that were at our disposal, one had only 128Mbyte memory and we did not manage to use it because of its slow performance. Two other laptops were B2s and the remaining 4 XO-1 with OS image 656 (The difference between them is very significant when it comes down to the number of concurrently running applications as well as the time needed for loading the squeak exercises).

The lessons involved 5th and 6th grade pupils from the private elementary Β«MaltezosΒ» school located in Argos, Peloponnese. The boys and girls were already familiar with computers (in MS Windows environment) since they had been taught the basics in the 4th grade and they use computers for 1-2 years for several assignments (mostly using word editor, creating slides and surfing the internet). Each group consisted of 6-8 persons and the topics that were taught were selected from their official textbooks.

Their school teacher is quite competent in computer science (M.SC. in Informatics and Telecommunications). Each group was given four hours of instruction. In the first hour the pupils made contact with the laptops and their graphical environment, discovering how to start / stop the various activities, how to get connected with the 802.11AP of the school (but also in ad hoc mode), how to find the files with the journal how to copy/paste from the browser to the word processor and how to share the files and the exercises prepared in Squeak. Our first conclusion is that the majority of pupils learned how to handle the computers in this hour quite satisfactorily. My assessment is that a pupil can learn to use the computer efficiently over a span of two or three days.

Tags: Alexandros Kaloxylos | Greece | OLPC | classroom | localization | testing |

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I am Luis Ramirez, of "one computer per child" in Chile. Our goal is to achieve free and permanent access to computers for at least 1 million Chilean children living in poverty before our bicentennial (2010). Back in November, I gave an update on The Chilean way to One Laptop Per Child. Today I'll give another update: In 4 words: No XO in Chile Despite all the troubles with OLPC, most of us have remained faithful followers of the tiny XO laptop. That is why we are sad with the latest news: After months of fruitless negotiations between the Chilean Ministry of Education and the OLPC Foundation the door for a pilot in Chile has been closed.

Tags: Chile | Chilean Children | David Cavallo | Luis Ramirez | Ministry of Education | UCPN | XO Laptop |

Free the XO Laptop For Chilean Children | Comment (18) | Digg This | Add to del.ico.us | Slashdot It

In the very thoughtful and unusually well-informed post "The Educational Philosophy Controversy" on June 6, Steve Hamm of Business Week wrote about some of the major issues that OLPC and Sugar face in getting into more schools in more countries. I believe that Steve missed some bits of what is going on, as I commented to him on the Business Week site, and repeat here. Maybe he knows something I don't, though. I have asked him to share some sources so that I can tell you more.

...While Constructionism is key element in the OLPC's value system, it has also turned into a major point of friction. Please read on and send comments…

As one of many on the front lines of this battle, I would like to point out that there is more information available on some of these points, mostly in the OLPC Wiki and on OLPC News (not affiliated with OLPC). See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Controversies for short descriptions and pointers to the original discussions. We have opened a discussion of what Constructionism really is, based on work of AlanKay, Seymour Papert, and Jean Piaget.

Tags: businessweek | constructionism | harel | papert | steve hamm |

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The One Laptop Per Child project is a sprawling initiative with immense potential to improve education on a global scale -- if implemented properly. We at OLPC News do our best to celebrate what is going right, question what is going wrong, and suggest what could be done better. Cute pictures of children with shiny new laptops don't keep us from asking tough questions.

With this open-eyed view, OLPC News is a recognized voice in the OLPC community, even by Nicholas Negroponte himself. The OLPC News blog commands 5,000 readers a day, each spending an average of 4 minutes on the site, and the OLPC News Forum has almost 3,000 members and 22,000 posts on every OLPC-related topic imaginable.

Yet, dear reader, you should know that the editors behind OLPC News are not objective reporters of the latest news. We are most definitely biased. We believe the following:

1. Across the developing world, education systems need to change dramatically to prepare their children for the modern world
2. Children (and adults) learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process
3. Involved teachers, relevant content, and appropriate technology can facilitate both educational change and learning motivation

We recently announced that the OLPC project has entered the "Post-1CC Era" where most of the important action takes place outside of the OLPC Association's Headquarters located at 1 Cambridge Center "1CC" in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These days OLPC is really happening in the deployments and in local communities all around the world. We at OLPC News are doing our part to make sure that the OLPC project is "open, organized, and transparent," to quote Garrett Goebel's mail to the OLPC developers list.

The OLPC News editorial team (editors-at-olpcnews.com) is: Christoph Derndorfer - Co-Editor

Christoph was one of the first members of OLPC Austria, a non-profit group based in Vienna, that supports the One Laptop per Child project via various efforts. Among other things he has co-authored the Activity Handbook, a handbook that helps people get started with software development for the XO-laptop. He has also held presentations on the OLPC project at various events such as Chemnitzer LinuxTage and CeBIT.

Christoph is currently working on his bachelor in computer science at the Vienna University of Technology. He also spent the past few years running a Web site dedicated to small, low-cost and power-efficient computing solutions. His passion for computer technology, and his realization of technology's potential to change people's lives during a year spent in Peru, motivated Christoph to follow the OLPC initiative from the very beginning. He is generally located in Vienna, Austria but currently lives in Washington, DC. Bryan Berry - Co-Editor

Bryan has been involved in OLPC since 2006 as a grassroots organizer. He was one of the founding members of the OLPC Nepal community and helped found Open Learning Exchange Nepal, the Nepali NGO that is implementing Nepal's OLPC pilots.

Prior to coming to Nepal, he worked for 4 years in the Middle East and China on technology deployment for government agencies. His interest in education stems from his own experiences growing up with several learning disabilities and attending schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the worst performing school districts in the United States.

He lives in Kathmandu, Nepal where he works as a systems engineer for OLE Nepal on Nepal's pilots at Bishwamitra and Bashuki schools. Wayan Vota - Founder & Publisher

Wayan started OLPC News in 2006 to track the One Laptop Per Child program from a technology implementor's perspective. Since then, he's started the complimentary OLPC Talks and OLPC News Forum, and was a co-founder of the OLPC Learning Club DC.

Wayan has coined the phrase "Clock-Stopping Hot" to refer to the XO-1 Hardware and "4P Computing" to refer to a new class of computing solutions for the developing world. He has commented on OLPC on 60 Minutes, the Economist, and numerous other mainstream media outlets.

Wayan was director of Geekcorps, a Peace Corps for geeks, through 2007, and is now Senior Director of the Inveneo Certified ICT Partner Program, developing a community of ICT practitioners in the developing world. Wayan also consults with infoDev at the World Bank on low-cost ICT devices for education. Wayan lives in Washington, DC.

OLPC News has an ever-expanding cadre of contributors and commenters:

Tags: Bryan Berry | Christoph Derndorfer | Jon Camfield | Lee Felsenstein | Wayan Vota | Yama Ploskonka |

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