Posted on July 31, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Countries: India

To describe India’s relationship with OLPC as “rocky” would almost be an understatement. Back in 2006 for example the Indian Ministry of Education was very critical of the project and called it "pedagogically suspect". Later that year some Indian organizations came together and announced their work on a “$10 laptop”.

XO in India
XOs also popular in India

Then suddenly in autumn of 2007 the first information about a small pilot-site in Khairat became available which was soon followed by quite an extensive report from the school which appeared on the OLPC wiki.

Now in July there’s been a number of new developments which all indicate that OLPC is gaining some significant momentum in India. First in mid-July it was announced that XOs bundled with CDMA modems are expected to hit retail stores later in the year. Additionally OLPC India’s page on wiki.laptop.org now mentions an additional 5 deployments going on at the moment.

The biggest sign of things to come was included in the latest community-news update which includes an invitation to the OLPC India Day which will take place in Mumbai on August 4.

Mr. Nicholas Negroponte founder and chairman of the One Laptop Per Child non-profit assosociation will be in India to share with us his vision for the world with the XO laptop and formally launch the National level initiative in India. (emphasis mine)

The following day OLPC’s Chief Learning Architect David Cavallo will hold a day-long Learning Workshop which is aimed at

Teachers, trainers and content creators, persons nominated from current projects and planned deployments.

Now I don’t know about you but to me this sounds like a traditional Big Bang for a larger-scale implementation project. With more than 350 million people under the age of 14 living in India the target audience is potentially very large indeed. (Just for comparison’s sake: Uruguay’s population in that age group is about 800,000 while Peru’s is about 8,5 million.) Even if India were only able to achieve One Laptop per every 100th child this would still mean a 3,5 million units deployment.

It remains to be seen what happens over the coming weeks and months but the sheer number potentially involved in an OLPC deployment in India is just mind-boggling and we’ll definitely keep a close eye on what’s going on there.

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Posted on July 30, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: Intel

olpc classmate
Classmate ain't the XO laptop

This morning, AP bring us news that Portugal pledged 500,000 Classmate PC's for elementary school students, the largest order for Intel's 4P Computing offering to date.

Sadly, I think this is an epic error on the part of the Government of Portugal, for three reasons:

The Classmate PC is a dog improving (see updates in comments)

As much as I love Intel's long-term commitment to a comprehensive relationship between teachers, students, schools and technology through their multi-year, multi-million dollar Intel Teach Program, their hardware response to the XO laptop is lacking.

As we've said before, $5 Billion in Intel R&D and we get the Classmate PC?

Now besides the short battery life, and classless knock-off looks, the reports from USA deployments do not impress. Nor does Uruguay's open bid results: the XO laptop was the clear winner.

The software "choice" is false

If you read the AP article, you may think that this Portugal tender as a proxy for the larger Foss vs. Microsoft battle for 4PC dominance:

sugar on classmate pc
Clasmmate PC - Sugarized!
Intel spokeswoman Agnes Kwan said parents of young school children will be able to choose between computers running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and ones with an open-source Linux operating system
Yet, unless the Portuguese run Sugar on Classmates, the choice is false. Both of the suggested Classmate OS's are about office productivity software, not educational exploration, and have no place in schools.

The shocking loss of autonomy

Worst of all, in my humble opinion, is the subtle announcement that Portugal has just give up all autonomy to make objective technology decisions:

As part of its biggest deal for the Classmate PC to date, Intel said it will serve as technology adviser to Portugal's Ministry of Public Works, Transportation and Communications, which is coordinating the laptop program.
Combine that complete outsourcing of computer systems evaluation with silence on the financial terms of the deal and I'm thinking there is a deal in the works - cheap Classmates now for lucrative future government orders.

Shady deals being a hallmark of Classmate sales to date.

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Posted on July 28, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Sales Talk: G1G1, Sales Talk: G1G1_2008

The other day when I was in Vancouver and using the XO while sitting in a nice café someone started asking me about the machine and the current state of OLPC. When I mentioned that Give 1 Get 1 was going to make a comeback in autumn the person asked me whether I would recommend him donating this time ‘round since he missed out back in December 2007. I have to say that I scrambled for a couple of seconds before being able to give him a real answer.

broken XO display
Don't drink and punch your XO.

Back at the end of last year when people asked me the same question I normally replied “If you want a small laptop, then yes, go for it.” as the alternatives to the XO were severely limited. Of course the omnipresent ASUS eee PC701 was available but to many people the small screen-resolution was a deal-breaker. If they didn’t know about that one already this was my main argument against purchasing the eee PC701 when people asked me about it.

Although it’s also susceptible to gravity the XO’s robustness (unless you throw a hard punch at the screen) is a definite selling point when you plan to bring your laptop along wherever you go. You’d hate to be stuck with a half-broken $1800 machine just because you dropped your laptop from 2 feet like this guy did with his MacBook Air. And while there are quite a number of issues that people ran into the XO is definitely a very capable machine when it comes to accessing the Web, reading an e-book or watching a movie while on-the-go. It certainly beats having to lug around a 15.4” laptop.

Now, in mid-2008, the situation is quite different. Last time I checked there were about 30+ small and (relatively) inexpensive notebooks, now often referred to as 4PCs or netbooks, around. ASUS alone has 7 or 8 different eee PC options out there. Acer, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, MSI, VIA and a whole bunch of other companies have also released similar products. As always they all have their strengths and weaknesses, just like the XO, but the competition is definitely quite fierce.

As an example let me use the soon-to-be available Dell E Classic which will cost $299, have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of Flash for mass-storage. Even with the XO sporting the awesome display, above mentioned robustness, equal or potentially slightly longer battery-life and the feel-good aspect of donating to a very-worthy cause it’s quite hard to argue against that feature-set, right?

Of course the points mentioned above are mainly relevant to people whose main motivation for donating to OLPC is to get a small laptop for themselves. However a significant number of the donors also participated in G1G1 to get a laptop that’s suitable for their own children. Again, in late 2007 the main argument for the XO would have been that the competing products weren’t designed with children in mind. Plus none of them were able to run Sugar which is definitely one of the most attractive aspects of getting an XO.

While the products mentioned above aren’t necessarily designed with young users in mind most people would agree that children at the age of 10 or 12 will quickly learn how to use them. Also thanks to the work by some dedicated individuals it’s now quite easy to use Sugar on existing Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu installations.

That leaves us with a third group of donors, the ones who want to enable a child in a developing nation to receive a laptop via the Give 1 part of the equation. With many more organizations working on pilots and deployments now compared to the end of 2007 it’s much easier to find efforts worth supporting by directly donating to them.

In the end the overall effect on me is that it’s become quite a bit harder to tell people to do Give 1 Get 1 once it starts again in autumn. Assuming it’s a carbon-copy re-run of last year’s Give 1 Get 1 and the price is again set at $399 there’s now a plethora of other devices and options that I’d recommend people to also consider before making a decision.

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.

Posted on July 26, 2008 by Jon Camfield in Sales Talk: Microsoft, Software, Software: Windows

olpc windows xo
The future XO laptop OS
While the press gets all excited about a RTM'ed Windows XO, I'd like to revisit the original XP on XO video one last time.

Despite the impression that Microsoft "massaged" the Windows XO video let's for the moment presume that the video was simply edited a bit oddly, and that the demo was the state of the art, XP on XO performance.

Did you watch it closely, while taking copious notes about XP on the XO performance? Well, I'm enough of a geek that I did. And the results are not pretty.
James Utzschneider and Bohdan Raciborski walked us through Windows XP on the OLPC XO, showing off a few common tasks - the general OS, recording and playback of audio and video, power management and the ebook mode, and document sharing.

Continue reading "Windows XO: A Detailed Microsoft XP Video Dissection"

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Posted on July 25, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Price

cheaper than OLPC
Do you remember when One Laptop Per Child called its XO the "$100 laptop"? Did you also notice they've finally dropped price from the description of their program? Timely, I say, since the 4P Computing market has just eclipsed OLPC in low-cost leadership.

Say hello to the Impulse NPX-9000, what Liliputing is calling the world's cheapest laptop at USD $130.00

Now, like OLPC, there is a minimum order amount, just 100 laptops. Also, like OLPC, the price is FOB Shenzhen. But unlike OLPC's Give Many program, I don’t see a ambiguous 2-6 month shipping window or the need for buyers to band together just to get a respectable order volume.

Continue reading "World's Cheapest Laptop for Sale - Not the OLPC XO!"

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Posted on July 23, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Use Cases: Technology

olpc xo sales
A Match from Heaven?


At the end of June LEGO announced that it would introduce "Education WeDo" which the company describes as

a new product that redefines classroom robotics, making it possible for primary school students 7-11 years of age to build and program their own solutions. Bridging the physical world, represented by LEGO models, and the virtual world, represented by computers and programming software, LEGO Education WeDo provides a hands-on, minds-on learning experience that actively involves young students in their own learning process and promotes children's creative thinking, teamwork and problem solving skills
Having spent a lot of my youth playing with LEGO and considering that the XO is definitely my favorite toy these days I'm certainly very excited about being able to combine these two platforms:

One LEGO USB Hub connects directly to a Mac/PC laptop, desktop, OLPC XO or Intel Classmate computer to allow control of hardware input (tilt and motion sensors) and output (motor), thereby bringing models to life

Continue reading "OLPC and LEGO - A Match from Heaven?"

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Posted on July 22, 2008 by Jon Camfield in Use Cases: Community, Sales Talk: G1G1

olpc xo sales
Give Many XO minimums
So there's an ongoing tension between small projects interested in using OLPCs and the guys over at 1CC who are too busy to really deal with a ton of small orders, regardless of the value of the particular cause, the built-in support it may already have, or any other warm, fuzzy reason.

If the order doesn't get up to the Give Many standard - an order of 1,000+ XO laptops shipped anywhere from 3-6 months after payment - it falls on seemingly deaf ears. All good reasons to negotiate a term sheet when navigating the GiveMany waters.

I wrote about this general problem first in a long and academic paper when OLPC was still selling in only lots of a million laptops and only to governments. I railed on OLPC for missing the importance of the small but well supported projects in favor of unmanageably huge (but big-number) projects, and proposed a solution -- peer networks of small schools, governments, and any other interested parties banding together to be able to meet the minimum order.

Continue reading "Could Many Organizations "Give Many" XO Laptops?"

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Posted on July 19, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Use Cases: Community

OLPC GrassCon is set to start in a couple of minutes and in order for you to enjoy the show we've embedded the event's streaming player below.

Personally I'm most looking forward to Timothy Falconer's "Waveplace Foundation" (10:30 a.m. EST) and Tomi Davies' "The Galadima Experience" (10:45 a.m. EST) presentations since it's always great to hear reports from what's actually happening in deployments. I also hope that I don't fall asleep (it's 7 a.m. around here) because I'm supposed to go live to talk about "Moving from talk to action." at noon.

And if you're in the Bay area then make sure to join us at the San Francisco user-group meeting that starts at 10 a.m. local time. You'll find me near the coffee mugs!

Continue reading "OLPC GrassCon Live-Stream"

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Posted on July 17, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Use Cases: User Groups

Yep, it's definitely a busy weekend for the OLPC community. Not only is GrassCon taking place on Saturday morning but OLPC San Francisco will also have their July meetup on the same day. Meetups are the best! I'm very happy to be able to join them and I will also give a short overview of the current state of things at OLPC and especially about what's happening in the various grassroots communities these days. But what I'm most looking forward to are the things listed under other activities: Build a mesh network, share activities, generate crazy ideas. We also have...

Continue reading "This Saturday: OLPC-SF meeting at SF State University"

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Posted on July 16, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Use Cases: Community

grasscon_logo.jpg
I briefly wanted to remind everybody that the previously mentioned OLPC Grassroots Web Conference (GrassCon) will take place this coming Saturday, July 19, at 10 AM EST. The theme of the conference is "From Code to Kids", and looking at the conference lineup below I have to say that I'm really looking forward to the presentations. Even though it means kicking myself out of bed before 7 a.m. as I'll be in San Francisco at the time!

10:00 - 10:12 Introduction (technical difficulties... etc.)
10:15 - 10:27 Alex Keybl - OLPC@Duke's College Model
10:30 - 10:42 Timothy Falconer - Waveplace Foundation
10:45 - 10:57 Tomi Davies - The Galadima Experience
11:00 - 11:12 Rabi Karmacharya - OLPC Implementation in Nepal
11:15 - 11:27 Tom Boonsiri - OLPC Golden State (Prerecorded)
11:30 - 11:42 Mel Chua - State of OLPC Grassroots Efforts
11:45 - 11:57 Nikki Lee - Olin University Chapter
12:00 - 12:12 Christoph Derndorfer - Moving from talk to action.
12:15 Concluding Remarks

Continue reading "Reminder: GrassCon to take place this Saturday"

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Posted on July 15, 2008 by Jon Camfield in Software: Operating System, Software, Software: Third Party

olpc shuttleworth
Mark "Ubuntu" Shuttleworth
Last month I talked about Ubuntu's Netbook version over at my personal blog, which is designed specifically for the ultraportable, "4P Computing" market. Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical's CEO, the parent company behind Ubuntu) just posted more about the interface design for the "netbook" market:
Almost universally, they’ve [OEMs] asked for standard Ubuntu packages and updates, with an app launcher that’s more suited to new users and has the feeling of a “device” more than a PC.
The Asus Eee's "basic" mode had a very device-like feel to it and has done reasonably well with it's Xandros Linux backend, and with Ubuntu's star performance as a Linux desktop for the masses, I can only imagine the UX (User eXperience) will be even better.

Continue reading "An Ingenious Ubuntu Experience on 4P Computers"

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Posted on July 15, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Use Cases: User Groups

Hello PDX! It's been too long since Wayan organized OLPC News meetups in Portland, so while I am in town I'm organizing a Portland XO User Group Meetup this Thursday, July 17.

Your olpcnews co-editor
Now admittedly I'm not sure whether we'll be able to improve on the Canadian XO face-juggling madness however we're definitely going to give it a shot! We'll have much meshing of XO's with and beer-fueled discussions about all things OLPC.

We're also honoured to have Deepak Saxena from OLPC as a guest and he'll be able to answer all of your software- and especially kernel-related questions. I will also bring my XO which is currently running one of the latest joyride software-builds so everyone can take a look at the most recent changes and developments when it comes to Sugar.

Without further ado, below are the details of the event, looking forward to seeing you there!
OLPC News Portland Meetup Thursday, July 17 6:00 - 9:00pm Lucky Lab Northwest 19th and Quimby [map] Portland, Oregon
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Continue reading "OLPC News Portland Meetup this Thursday!"

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Posted on July 14, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Microsoft, Software: Windows

olpc windows xo
Windows XO laptop in action
Are you itching to ditch Sugar for an adult operating system? And does Ubuntu on the XO leave you wanting more?

Then you have another, proprietary option: Microsoft Windows XP on your XO laptop, making it a Windows XO computer. The first step to the Dark Side is easy, just update your XO firmware to OLPC Firmware Release q2e10.

This is the first test candidate for OFW2 series firmware that supports dual-boot of Linux and Windows XP. And we're not talking about the special red XO laptops either, this will allow XP to run on any XO.

But before you get too excited about upgrading to a Windows XO laptop, this XO firmware will not run a standard XP distro. Like the dual-boot video shows, you'll need a specially-prepared SD cards with an OLPC-specific version of Windows XP.

You'll also need to check your Open Source Software morals as you boot up.

Thanks to ffm for the firmware tip!

Continue reading "How To: Run Windows XP on the XO Laptop"

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Posted on July 12, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Internet: Access, Countries: India

olpc cdma india
Rocking CDMA XO Laptops?!
Tucked away in Deepshikha Monga's short article, "OLPC looks to World Bank for India funding" is a XO laptop bombshell:
Later this year, the XO laptops are expected to hit the retail stores. Sources say Reliance Communications, which partnered OLPC Foundation to conduct an XO pilot project in Maharashtra last year, is looking at retailing these laptops bundled with its CDMA modems.
Might this be the reason for Nicholas Negroponte's visit to India in August for OLPC India Day? Regardless, it would be a shocking yet welcomed shift in strategy for One Laptop Per Child.

Instead of relying on the slow, arduous, and mostly unsuccessful governmental sales process, India's Reliance Communications has the right idea: Sell XO laptops directly to parents and the public.

Continue reading "Retail Sales of CDMA-connected XO Laptops in India?!"

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Posted on July 11, 2008 by Christoph Derndorfer in Use Cases: Community

computerlab_s.png
Windows XP computer-lab
This is the second part of "The Lost Tribe of OLPC".

So here we have a local, grassroots community. Active, organized, enthusiastic. Confused. Lost. Like a lot of us.

First confusion: OLPC Boston (and close associates, like Brightstar) appear to have all the power. All that power is in one single nerve pressure point which is very easy to control: the availability of XOs. If XOs were available in the market on reasonable terms, the Community might take off and be successful, which apparently doesn't seem to be OK for the Foundation. Currently too many are trying for 1CCs' preferment, pending on a nod for yea of fearing a shake for nay. Grumbling is optional, but rather discouraged, as that would make you look like a bad "team player". No XOs for you!

Groveling doesn't seem to help either...

Second confusion: OLPC Boston (a.k.a. 1CC, OLPC Foundation, OLPC corporate) is not, repeat, not, the same thing as the international OLPC Community. It took me months to understand it (I am a bit slow). While Boston might rebuff, tar, dunk you in the Charles river, the OLPC Community (a lot of them in Boston, a lot of them working for OLPC also) might still love you, though some might be wary of being seen in public in your company.

Continue reading "The Lost Tribe of OLPC, Continued..."

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Posted on July 10, 2008 by Yama Ploskonka in Use Cases: Community

olpc-for-all.jpg
Everyone wants XO laptops
Once upon a time, long ago, there was someone from a faraway country in South America doing an advanced program at MIT in Boston, where he met with the soft-shell stage of the One Laptop Per Child project. This person eventually went back to his country, started meeting and inviting locals to learn about OLPC. He kept in touch and received a couple visits of now long, long gone and forgotten OLPC employees. Eventually he called his team the "Grupo OLPC (country name)".

One good day, a year or so ago, the "Grupo" cashed in the goodwill they had built, and invited for a big, formal meeting with all the stakeholders. National government powers-that-be were present. The stand-in OLPC representative actually came from Brightstar, the company that has been hired by OLPC to distribute the computers worldwide. Turns out the government people were not that impressed (maybe when they got the hint that they were the ones expected to pay...), and the Brightstar person laid the party line in non-negotiable terms: OLPC makes peer-to-peer treaties with governments directly, and with governments *only*. Thank you, you may now go back to, whatever. Your help is appreciated to the extend you are effective in getting the government to give us money. Or so it feels.

Continue reading "The Lost Tribe of OLPC"

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Posted on July 09, 2008 by Bryan Berry in Content: Education

In my last post, I wrote about why we need an easy way to create compelling courses for the XO in order to scale constructionism to the national level here in Nepal. In this article, I will talk about what I think those courses should look like and how they should function.
Now it is time for dynamic digital coursebooks, individual modules that contain lesson plans, supplementary readings, illustrations, and learning activities. These coursebooks must be usable offline and able to synchronize important data with the School Server. Some say the XO was inspired Alan Kay's visionary Dynabook. Sadly, OLPC did not choose the excellent name "Dynabook" for their groundbreaking laptop. I am happy to shamelessly re-appropriate the term dynabook to refer to the type of course I have described. Alan Kay still thinks the Dynabook hasn't been invented yet. The key software and educational curriculum are the missing pieces. Let's try to fill in the gaps to make these new dynabooks reach their full potential. We can create perfectly functional dynabooks with existing technology. We don't need anything cutting-edge.

Continue reading "Scaling Constructionism II: Here Come Dynabooks"

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Posted on July 08, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Oceania

OLPC Oceania
Small classes of small XO users
As David Lemming explained to us in describing OLPC Oceania's participatory development model, the area colloquially referred to as "Oceania" is really a scattering of small countries, many with populations less than half a million, scattered across the Pacific Ocean.

They may be beautiful tropical islands, but their remote locations mean Internet costs and quality of service can be shockingly poor. Which makes the progress of OLPC Oceania all that more impressive, and I believe a model for how a one laptop per child program should be implemented in resource-poor countries.

Start Small

First, OLPC Oceania started small - just 50 XO laptops in a Solomon Islands pilot. That allowed the implementing team to take it slow, building XO cultural integration, which can be even more important that technological integration.

Continue reading "OLPC Oceania's Lessons Learned for XO Laptop Expansion"

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Posted on July 06, 2008 by Bryan Berry in Software: Applications

Two evaluators recently returned to OLE Nepal's office after two weeks at Nepal's pilot schools. They are working on an early qualitative evaluation based on interviews with teachers, parents, and kids participating in the pilots. I have found the insights and feedback they brought back incredibly useful. This article will focus on one particularly consistent piece of feedback from the teachers: They want built-in lesson plans for activities on the XO and they want it explicitly defined in the lesson plans which learning objectives in Nepal's National Curriculum the activities satisfy.

The Nepali NGO I work for, OLE Nepal, has put a lot of work into developing mathematics and English activities that are both constructionist and match Nepal's national curriculum. Still, there is much we have to do in order to scale constructionism from a few pilot schools to the national level.

Continue reading "Scaling Constructionism Through XO Software"

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Scaling Cons