One Laptop Per Child News on Commentary

TurnYourWorldAround's Connect-a-Kid and the OLPC

Posted on May 05, 2008 by Jon Camfield in Sales Talk: Donors, Commentary: Press

Tara Suri in CosmoGIRL as "The Giver"

Tara Suri has recently launched TurnYouWorldAround.org and Aandolan.org (which means a movement for change in Hindi) is an organization that "implements social-change initiatives and provides youth with the tools to become changemakers." I don't want to spoil the surprise waiting for you if you explore the site for a few minutes.

TurnYouWorldAround - Aandolan's recent project is Connect a Kid, where youth can create projects to fund-raise for OLPC's Give Many program through their school, community, or just friends and family:

[Connect a Kid] is an initiative of Aandolan, an organization started by teens that provides youth with the tools to become change-makers. Having partnered with OLPC, [Connect a Kid] works to raise funds to purchase laptops, and also aims to raise awareness about the need for global education. Youth register --- and then work with friends and family to help kids around the world!

Tara Suri on CNN's YPWR

The website and information packet you get post-registration provide fundraising event ideas, action plan outlines, and other useful tools to create, promote, and evaluate project(s). The groundbreaking part of this is that it's a youth-to-youth program, empowering both the recipient of the XO laptop as well as the giver to realize their ability to organize and enact change.

CNN's YPWR (Young People Who Rock) has a blog post up about Tara, and now an interview at cnn.com/video

Disclosure: I work at Youth Service America, where Tara Suri is a member of the National Youth Council, a collection of amazing young people who make the likes of most of us tired with just seeing the amount of good they get done on a daily basis. She's a co-founder of HOPE (Helping Orphans Pursue Education) (when she was 13). She was also named Cosmo Girl of the year for 2007.

Tags: GiveMany Tara Suri ConnectaKid | TurnYouWorldAround | Youth2Youth |

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OLPC Fan Show: a XO-Friendly TV Channel

Posted on February 02, 2008 by Guest Writer in Commentary: Press

I'm Oriol Pascual, and amongst other things, love tech and new media. At the end of last year, I ordered an OLPC and while waiting for it to arrive, decided to aggregate already existing content regarding the XO.

I created the OLPC Fan Show; a 24/7 tv channel about the OLPC program. The video player is from Mogulus and I use OLPC News RSS to feed the ticker.

Most information available on the Internet regarding the XO is text-based, and this is a good way to get to know all the details for anyone with an interest on the subject. However, I felt that video may be a complementary and friendly way to consume OLPC related content for those that do not have the time and/or patience to read long wiki pages and blogs.

In that sense, OLPC.tv does a great job by aggregating all video and audio related to the program. Moreover, platforms for video distribution like Mogulus allow anyone to deliver a tv-like experience where a series of videos are continuously streaming on a user-friendly player.

There's over an hour of quality content playing continuously on a loop at the OLPC Fan Show. I selected some of the official OLPC Foundation videos, a review from David Pogue, or a visit to a XO user in Africa. I tried to avoid home made and un-boxing videos. The idea is that if you don't know what OLPC is all about, and you want to get a flavour of it at minimum effort...then you should check the OLPC Fan Show.

The aim of the site is to spread the word and efforts of the OLPC program on a user-friendly way. The means to achieve that include the delivery of easy-to-digest content, recreating a familiar tv experience. Additionally, OLPC Fan Show provides the latest news from the OLPC News blog, and a chat to interact with other viewers.

I'd like to invite OLPC News readers to suggest videos to add. And if it happens that you hold a Mogulus account and want to produce some content, or even better, a live show; let me know in the comments below.

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You Can BETT on a Guest Post Happy Ending!

Posted on January 22, 2008 by Guest Writer in About OLPC News, Use Cases: Education, Commentary: Press

Hello, this is Alan Bell again. You may remember me from the "Help I haven't got an XO for BETT" post a few weeks ago. Well I can now report that this story has a happy ending.

BETT XO laptop crew

The day after the article appeared on OLPC News we got a call from Tomi Davis, of OLPC Nigeria. Roughly speaking the conversation went "Would you like to borrow some laptops?" to which we replied "Hell yeah!"

Pre-BETT Prep

We (Tomi, The Open Sourcerer and myself) arranged to meet up the night before the BETT show, the laptops were pre-production Beta 4 models with rather old software so we worked with Tomi to upgrade them using a hastily purchased USB stick from a dodgy looking local shop (cash only - no change - lets just call it twenty quid - no, you can't have a receipt).

After a little while we had five happy laptops meshed up and we were familiarizing ourselves with the activities on offer. Initially there was a problem with the keyboard mapping in the new image, the H and U keys were both mapped to "u". After a bit of head scratching (key maps are under /usr/share which didn't help) Tomi got some help and a patch from the developers and we were soon up and running.

The laptops had a Nigerian keyboard layout (which in no way resembles the Konyin keyboard) and Nigerian power supplies which (thanks to the colonial history of the British Empire) happen to be exactly the same as the 240V 3 pin British power supply. For demonstration purposes we had to rename the laptops, so we settled on naming them after countries where the OLPC foundation is working. Knowing our stand at BETT was quite small, and that it would be rude to take all of Tomi's toys away, we borrowed three, "Nigeria", "Thailand" and "Uruguay".

As we were going to be passing IKEA our wives had kindly provided us each with a long shopping list, so we amused the other late night wardrobe shoppers by tapping out tunes with TamTam and measuring the restaurant with the acoustic tape measure. I typed up my shopping list whilst munching meatballs and then used an XO in tablet configuration as we hunted down our assigned items of inexpensive Swedish style. Next day was BETT.

Never a BETT-er Reception

We got there at ridiculous o'clock in the morning with the bag of laptops and found the Open Forum Europe stand. We were just about to arrange a small wager on who would be first to spot a teacher wearing sandals and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches when the first delegates started to arrive.

"Wow, is that really an OLPC laptop? I have just seen it on BBC breakfast news! That is so cool, can I hold it? really?"

As far as we know we were the only stand at Bett to get pre-show publicity on the BBC. In the afternoon Tomi joined us at the show and we were interviewed on camera by the show publicity people (no idea if it was broadcast anywhere, but it felt to us like our first TV appearance).

Keyboards for the visually impaired

Everywhere we went at the show people spotted the XO and started talking to us:

"Wow, that is so cool, can I hold it? really? It was worth coming all the way to BETT just to see that".

I took one of the XO laptops on a grand tour of the show, taking in such delights as the Special Educational Needs zone where we tried the XO with some interesting peripherals like a chunky keyboard and a Braille reader. The XO does work with various assistive technologies, it is ready for use by the whole class including SEN students.

The RM stand was very big and impressive, they had lots of the Asus Eee PC laptops on display, I noticed that they were all locked down to the desks, it seems you just can't trust a room full of teachers! The XO stopped here for a cheeky photo, then I ran away.

One of the big news items at the show was the new report from Becta (the UK advisory body to the UK educational community) on Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. From reading the report it would seem that schools should welcome Office 2007 and it's OOXML file format with about as much enthusiasm as they welcome head lice. OOXML - as welcome in schools as a head lice infestation

Look who dominates

I visited the Becta stand and was instantly mobbed by the stand staff when they recognised what I was holding. They had loads of questions about the laptop and the OLPC mission, they were talking to someone from RM (or possibly Asus) about the Eee PC and he had quite a lot of questions about the XO. Suddenly a big camera arrived and we were told that the CEO of Becta was doing a live interview for BBC News 24 right now.

They wanted some people in the background chatting and looking busy so I grabbed the XO and moved to where the bloke from the BBC was directing us. The chap from RM (or possibly Asus) quickly joined our little crowd of extras and then stood with his long coat held out wide like a flasher directly between the XO and the camera. I smiled and carried on answering questions from the Becta guys.

Building a BETT mesh

On Friday we were very pleased that Francois Brutsch (who commented on the previous article) joined us on the stand with his G1G1 XO, he attached to the mesh and made friends with the other laptops in no time and worked with Frank Margrave to get several shared activities running. There was a constant stream of visitors to the stand including teachers, ICT coordinators, head teachers, Ofsted officials, other exhibitors and the occasional Minister of state.

XO laptops everywhere!

Everyone had questions, generally starting with "Can I hold it? Really?" then moving on to the "what was that Intel thing all about?" question and the "can I buy lots and lots right now?" question. (answers: yes, yes, they stormed off in a huff but we don't care, no).

Several teachers told us that over the last few years UK schools have drifted from "teaching" to "training" and they want to move back to getting kids excited about exploring the world using computers rather than "preparing them for the workplace".

Big thanks go to Tomi Davis, Stephen Aitkin, Bob Blatchford, Nick Wood, Alan Cocks, Frank Margrave, Mike Banahan, Alan Lord, Francoise Brutsch and OLPCNews.com for working together to make this happen.

Do you have an OLPC-related activity too? Want to have the support of five thousand global readers? Then be sure to write a Guest Post for OLPC News today.

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Fake Steve Jobs Misteps with Mary Lou Jepsen

Posted on January 01, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Commentary: Press

Mary Lou Jepsen of OLPC

While Fake Steve Jobs sometimes goes over the top with his criticism of One Laptop Per Child, I often find myself laughing till I cry at his biting, on-target satire of Nicholas Negroponte's missteps.

Sadly, today FSJ turned his bite on Mary Lou Jepsen, the departing CTO of OLPC, and committed missteps of his own.

While he generically insults OLPC, he specifically questions their non-profit tax structure, the generosity of G1G1 donors, and Mary Lou's post-OLPC intentions:

[A] question worth asking is whether Mary Lou Jepsen actually managed to retain ownership of her designs while working for OLPC, a 501(c)(3) organization. If so, doesn't this mean that in effect taxpayers subsidized the R&D for whatever "for-profit company" Mary Lou Jepsen is now about to launch?

FSJ, you just went too far. Not only is Jespen one of OLPC's (and definitely my personal) hero, she just spent three years of this very short life dedicating herself to making OLPC work.

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BBC Visit to OLPC Nigeria's Galamida School Pilot

Posted on December 02, 2007 by Winter in Countries: Nigeria, Commentary: Press, Implementation: Schools

A key OLPNC actor in action

Hi, I am Winter. We had Anders Mogensen's wonderful reports from Galamida, Nigeria on OLPC News just in early October

Now the BBC carries a story about the same school.

The story is set in a positive tone. Children, teachers, and reporter do seem to like the project. They do not seem to expect to solve world peace, hunger, and the climate problems like Negroponte envisions.

We do get a first example of class room use.

At the moment the laptops are used to augment the text books and black boards rather than replace them. "One of the biggest uses of the laptop is for note-taking in class," said Mr Kusamotu.

In addition, he said, teachers use the preloaded encyclopedia to teach classes. During our visit we saw a lesson on the mammalian eye based on the preloaded content along with maths lessons that used the calculator.

This is more or less what is to be expected from a short deployment.

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Is OLPC the Only Hope to Eliminate Poverty and Create Peace?

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, People: Negroponte, Commentary: Press

Wow! OLPC Foundation now has its own YouTube channel and Nicholas Negroponte has just gone off the deep end of hubris. In his flagship video on why governments should spend millions on the XO laptop when their population may be poor, starving, or even lack clean water, Negroponte has announced that:

[The XO laptop] is probably the only hope. I don’t want to place too much on OLPC, but if I really had to look at how to eliminate poverty, create peace, and work on the environment, I can't think of a better way to do it.

I love me some clock stopping hot XO technology, but an instant middle class? World peace? An end to global warming? Might that be a bit of a stretch for a little green computer? And a slight egotistical leap for a MIT professor? I say we take this conversation to the comments section, where we can make OLPC News in the mold of Walter Bender's XO-enabled classroom:

We're giving them this environment where they can be expressive, they can be critics, they can engage in discourse and dialogue, and beat up on ideas, and that is where learning happens.

Especially since OLPC has turned off comments on the videos themselves - stifling the very debate they promote.

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Laptop Mag's OLPC XO vs Asus Eee PC Bake Off

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: Intel, Commentary: Press, Laptops: XO-1

Do you remember Nicholas Negroponte's arrogant resistance to competition in the WSJ OLPC smackdown?

At a meeting this month in Cambridge, Mass., with representatives of Macedonia's government, Mr. Negroponte balked at authorizing a pilot project there after learning that officials also were considering testing the Classmate. He told them he didn't want to participate in a "bake-off."

Low cost computing bake off

Despite Negroponte's aversion to pilot testing the kids over at Laptop Mag took matters into their own hands with a OLPC XO vs. Asus Eee PC 701 bake off of their very own. Here's the crib sheet results:

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All Education and Educational Decisions are Local, Not Federal

Posted on November 27, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Education, Countries: India, Countries: Nigeria, Countries: Peru, Commentary: Press

Yesterday's Boston Globe had an telling juxtaposition of Iqbal Quadir of the wildly successful GrameenPhone and Nicholas Negroponte of the wildly publicized One Laptop Per Child. Like last week's WSJ article, Negroponte again came off looking the fool. Why? Because he ignored local user groups in favor of dealing with governments - federal governments. Now let's have Iqbal Quadir give the money quote on why GrameenPhone is a success and OLPC isn't:

"I have learned from history that actually, the countries that are developed, where governments behave and serve the public, are those where the citizens have empowered themselves through technologies and business,"

So let us take a tour of XO laptop users where citizens have empowered themselves through technologies, through education, to form more holistic communities. First up, a news report on OLPC Peru's Una computadora por niño program in Institución Educativa Santiago Apostol de Arahuay

.

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OLPC Education Project Should Take an Opportunity to Learn

Posted on November 26, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Education, People: Leadership, Implementation: Plan, Commentary: Press

This email from Mike C. Fletcher was original published on the OLPC Developers listserv and is republished here with Mike's permission

XO laptop hardware focus

Obviously conflict sells stories best, so I won't attack the [Wall Street Journal] author for playing it up. That said, there were issues brought up that we should discuss rather than simply dismissing because the person bringing it up (in this case) had to sell a few papers.

The best friend you have in a design project is the harshest critic available. As long as their critique is fair, we should listen carefully to it.

Much of the stuff I'm discussing below has already been started, or is under-way. I'm just suggesting that we keep it in mind a few things that the article points out...

It's not About the Hardware:

The XO hardware is wonderful, but in the end, it's not the key thing. While it may be able to go into areas that another machine can't go, there are lots of areas that any machine can go into. We are an educational project, and while the screen makes a superlatively good textbook reader, the case is reasonably weather-resistant, and the battery life is good (but not yet so good that it's a killer feature), it is not true that every ministry of education will choose to go with "our" hardware.

Our hardware may have advantages, but it is just a (fairly generic) vehicle for accessing software, content and people, and if countries want to choose another project's hardware, more power to them.[As Nicholas has explicitly stated on a number of occasions.]

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WSJ: OLPC XO Laptop Threatened by Intel & Microsoft

Posted on November 24, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: Countries, Sales Talk: Intel, People: Negroponte, Countries: Nigeria, Commentary: Press, Software: Windows

Today's Wall Street Journal front page has long article on One Laptop Per Child: A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions. In it, Steve Stecklow takes the position that a computer for the poor was stomped by tech giants:

I'd like to take the position that if OLPC is getting stomped (and I don't think its being "stomped" at all), its due to its own foolishness and arrogance, as much or more than any underhanded competition from Intel or Microsoft.

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Masi Oka Says: Help A Child Learn One Laptop at a Time

Posted on November 10, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Brazil, Sales Talk: G1G1, Commentary: Press

As we all get excited for G1G1, feed your tech-lust with two new OLPC videos. Here is the first Masi Oka commercial for One Laptop Per Child. A very artistic 30 second spot that should start showing up on TV stations nationwide starting next week:

While Masi just skims the OLPC Foundation surface with his ad, Red Hat takes a closer look at OLPC Brazil's Porto Allegre school pilot in its fourth installment of XO love:

Are they as good as an XO-1 buy? Yeah, I didn't think so. See you in the XO giving line on Monday!

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Masi Oka: A Hero for One Laptop Per Child Marketing

Posted on November 01, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, Commentary: Press

Masi Oka: OLPC Ambassador

At first glance, I was confused as to why One Laptop Per Child would appoint Masi Oka as their "global ambassador" to sell OLPC as the premier method for learning, self-expression and exploration in the developing world. But then, reading his biography, I found that Masi is no computing cream puff:

Masi went on to graduate from Brown University with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science and a Theatre Arts minor. Oka pursued an acting career while taking his first job at George Lucas’ Oscar-winning special effects house Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Today, despite his successful career as an actor, he continues to provide ILM with technology for groundbreaking effects for more than 30 films.

With that impressive technology background, expect his commercials – both online and on television – to be both entertaining and educational.

Yet I wonder how large Masi's actual role will be.

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OLPC India: A Twenty-Two Laptop Pilot in Khairat

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: India, Implementation: Plan, Commentary: Press

A year ago, One Laptop Per Child was lambasted by India's Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee who called Nicholas Negroponte's idea of Constructionist learning through XO laptops "pedagogically suspect."

Now I suspect that a portion of that rejection was due to the MIT India backstory and India's own laptop fantasies. But not matter the reason, India has been a sore spot for OLPC. As Nicholas Negroponte says:

India has more child population than any other country and will benefit greatly from a creative society of them. India needs to take a role of world leadership in the concept of one laptop per child, even if it is ahead of its time and seemingly daunting.

And yet it has a massive education problem. A problem that OLPC now hopes to solve using an alliance with Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (R-ADAG) to provide logistics to the OLPC's India initiative:

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One Fake Steve Jobs Sarcasm Per Academia Laptop Project

Posted on October 02, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Commentary: Academia, People: Negroponte, Commentary: OLPC News, Commentary: Press

Recently, Fake Steve Jobs had a blistering commentary on One laptop Per Child. He encapsulated the reality of an entire year's worth of OLPC fantasy in 675 concise words of biting satire. Starting with over-the-top sarcasm, he pointed out the major flaws of the OLPC leadership in developing the XO-1 laptop:

Frankly I'm shocked to see these guys having problems. I mean, a brand new hardware design, a new screen technology, a customized Linux operating system, a one-off user interface, and the customers are the poorest nations in the world, …and the whole project will be run by woolly academics who have never even worked in a real company let alone run one. What could possibly go wrong?

But FSJ saved his most stinging critique for the press corps that fawned all over Nicholas Negroponte and his band of merry men. The very people the public trusts to do the due diligence on new ideas and new initiatives.

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The Real Price of Intel's Classmate PC and Asus Eee PC

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Guest Writer in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: Intel, Commentary: Press

Classmate over OLPC XO?

I am Charbax, of OLPC.TV. I think that Intel and more recently Asus has been getting a lot of attention from bloggers and the media about their Intel ULV-powered Windows XP-ready XO-alternatives.

A lot of bloggers and news media are reporting that the Intel Classmate PC costs $225 and that the Asus Eee costs $199. Some bloggers are saying it wouldn't make sense for a government or anyone interested in cheap laptop computers to buy a AMD Geode-powered thin Linux running XO laptop when you could get a fully featured Windows XP laptop running on an Intel chip for $20 or $40 more.

But what are the real prices that Intel would charge a government that would like to order 1 million laptops? Does Intel at all plan to manufacture that many Classmate PCs when they have just announced the lower power and hopefully lower cost Menlow x86 processor?

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Is Nicholas Negroponte Afraid of Child Bloggers?!

Posted on September 25, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Negroponte, Commentary: Press, Content: Reference

Negroponte scared of child bloggers?!

Did you read about One Laptop Per Child's Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) program to sell XO-1 laptops to North Americans in the New York Times? If so, did you catch this insightful paragraph:

"Staff members of the laptop project were concerned that American children might try the pared-down machines and find them lacking compared to their Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell laptops.

Then, in this era of immediate global communications, they might post their criticisms on Web sites and blogs read around the world, damaging the reputation of the XO Laptop, the project staff worried."

Now let's think about that a minute. Do you mean to tell me that OLPC was afraid of initial childrens' reviews of XO technology?

That their award-winning design, which Nicholas Negroponte believes would create an implementation miracle, might be panned by children bloggers?

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Geeks and Kids ♥ One Laptop Per Child Technology

Posted on September 21, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Countries, Commentary: Press, Laptops: XO-1

No matter the XO laptop price increase, One Laptop Per Child technology is still clock-stopping hot. But don't rely just on my tech-lust to be amazed by the computing revolution spanned from the OLPC developers skills, read what other, respected journalist have to say.

First we have a Laptop Magazine review of the XO laptop, which Joanna Stern perfectly titled as "Why Do The Kids Get to Have All the Fun?". As expanded on in the article:

After spending a day with the XO machine, one question remains: Why aren't our laptops back in the office half as cool? The decidedly Fisher Price look aside, mainstream laptop users should get to share in some of the innovative technology and fun.

And that we should, hopefully with American OLPC laptop sales.

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Hope You Like Journalism Jammin', Too

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Jonah Bossewitch in Software: Applications, Content: Education, Commentary: Press

This weekend, September 21-23, Columbia University's freeculture chapter will be hosting an OLPC Journalism Jam as a part of the OLPC's (indian) summer of content

We're looking for journalists and journalism students, techies with an interest in content management systems and online newspapers, graphic and layout designers, and education students with an interest in writing to join us to create:
A single edition of a online newspaper
A bundle of the open source tools you need to publish one
An open content how-to guide for groups of kids who want to start their own paper
We're looking to do all this in a single weekend. After the Jam, we'll publish our results to the web under Creative Commons licenses so that other groups can benefit from our work. Participation is free. Care to join us?

Word on college walk is that some legendary radical lawyers will be making guest appearances on Friday, and I was invited to remix my Portable Culture Machine's presentation to help break up the coding sessions on Saturday.

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Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop" computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte.