One Laptop Per Child News on Content

The World in Your Library: an OLPC News Brooklyn Meetup

Posted on March 12, 2008 by Wayan Vota in Content: Reference

Please join me at The World in Your Library symposium this Friday, March 14, at LACUNY in Brooklyn, NY.

There, we'll meet international librarians from Hungary, Latin America, Pakistan and Zimbabwe who will share their experiences on key issues including intellectual freedom, user services and professional development.

Open Systems for the XO laptop

In addition, Josh Gay of Free Software Foundation, David Rothman of TeleRead and Wayan Vota of OLPC News will be discussing:

Combating the Digital Divide and Information Limits around the Globe

Free and Open Source Initiatives
eBook Reader Comparison
XO Laptop Demonstration

3-6pm, March 14th, 2008
Brooklyn College Library
2900 Bedford Avenue (map)

For the last activity, I'd love to see a field of green XO laptops from the NYCXO User Group in the audience. This is a great opportunity to mesh with other G1G1 participants and expand the OLPC support network.

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OLPC and Libraries Should Support Open Systems

Posted on January 08, 2008 by Guest Writer in Use Cases: Community, Content: Reference, Content: eBooks

I am Mita Williams from The Leddy Library at The University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

Open your mind to XO

I had heard of the One Laptop Per Child program months ago but it wasn't until I heard fellow librarian Rochelle Mazar speak about how she used the project to engage students with the "issues of information access and activism" that I made the connection between the work of the OLPC and the professional work that many librarians are engaged in.

The connection that came to mind was not between libraries and formal development efforts (although there are organizations like eIFL.net and Librarians Without Borders that do this) but the work that libraries are currently contributing to on the "open" front: open source, open standards, and open access.

Libraries have many reasons why they should actively support open systems. There are concerns that "if the Kindle's DRM model becomes standard, you can kiss libraries goodbye . " Competing book digitization projects from Google and Microsoft mean that library content will be restricted by search engine choice.

Thankfully, there is the Internet Archive's Open Content Alliance that have partnered with (fellow) libraries like The University of Toronto to ensure that the world's treasures are available to all of the world.

Recently, I put up a library display on the OLPC and what it has to do with libraries. This sort of local outreach is important because even through our own university publishes a number of journals using the Open Journal System, there are still many faculty who aren't aware that they give up much of their own rights to re-distribute their own research once its published in a commercial research journal.

If the purchase of XO laptops are going to be at the expense of a developing country's textbook budget, then not only libraries have to make concerted efforts that every reader has his or her book.

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XO Laptop Safety Guides to Save Lives

Posted on December 30, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Community, Content: Reference

XO safety shutdown screen

If you have an XO laptop, you've seen the XO safety screen. Right about now, I'm thinking about safety in a much larger context. The concept of safety education for children, taught through the XO laptop.

Recently a man died in my arms, his blood still warm on may face from an unsuccessful attempt at CPR revival. In a quiet moment afterwards, I thought it smart to add basic first aid information to the OLPC library.

Basic safety information for cuts, scraps, burns, the kinds of small wounds children could deal with themselves. Sanitary information about making clean drinking water and washing hands before meals, that while simple, can save lives. Maybe even emergency information like CPR or Stop, Drop, and Roll for parents to learn and share.

Keeping in mind the young child audiences, what safety information would you add to the XO?

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The Lightbook: A $20 eBook Reader

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Martin Woodhouse in Content: Reference, Content: eBooks

Martin a few years ago

I apologise deeply for my absence from these pages for more than a month now. I have spent the intervening weeks in completely redesigning and rebuilding my website which isn't quite finished yet but is up and running and contains 120 or so fairly entertaining ( I hope) pages.

What the Lightbook is not

One thing is now clear to me, in any case. The solar powered e-book reading device which we have re-christened the Lightbook is not a computer, any more than a pocket calculator or a portable phone or indeed an electric toothbrush or a gas cooker is a computer.

I make the point light-heartedly and even nonsensically, here. But to persist in even looking at the Lightbook as though it were a 'computer' is not merely to miss the point but, damagingly, to adopt a mind-set in which yes, of course, it's an inferior, a 'pared-down' version of something which it isn't and was never intended to be.

No, you can't read the Web with it. You can't play shoot-up games on it, nor take photographs, record MP3 tracks on it, any more than you can with a paperback book. In fact, I dare say, the Lightbook shouldn't really be appearing on this site at all --- except that it does what Nicholas Negroponte originally intended; namely, it brings education, knowledge, learning, to those billions of human beings in this world who lack electricity, let alone a connection to the Internet, who have never read a book, but whose lives would be improved immeasurably by the ability to do so at negligible cost.

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Internet Archive Loves the XO Laptop eBook Reader

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Software: Applications, Content: Reference, Hardware: Screen, Content: eBooks

Recently, Steve Cisler, went to the headquarters of the Internet Archive, an Internet library with permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.

The Internet Archive is a great resource for exploring the digital past, and was a fellow Tech Award Laureate in 2007.

More to the point, the Internet Archive ♥ One Laptop Per Child's wondrous eBook technology. Just check out Steve's video about his trip:

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One Bible-Thumping Child Per Village

Posted on November 04, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Community, Software: Localization, Content: Reference

Are they in need of God's word?

Imagine that you are trying to spread the Gospel, educate illiterate villagers on the teachings of Jesus. What might be an effective means to do so?

While the Gutenberg Bible revolutionized the Christian religion in Europe, it's not much help if you only speak Limbu or Bambra but can't read any language. Proselytizers have recognized that you need to transform the word of God into an acceptable format, or as Tim Bulkeley says:

If MP3 recordings of the Bible were available in someone's tribal language their children or grandchildren could download them and play them, and pass them on to friends and neighbours. The illiterate villagers could HEAR the Bible.

In fact, the Washington Post reports that since 2000, the Bible has been translated more than 600 more languages. And what better platform to spread Scripture audio books that One Laptop Per Child's XO computer?

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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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One Pornographic Image Per Nigerian Child

Posted on July 19, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Internet: Access, Use Cases: Community, Countries: Nigeria, Content: Reference

Check it out! They are "XO-ing"!

While I've discounted the OLPC child pornography fears of others and we've explored adult OLPC XO uses, I haven't spoken about the potent mix of Internet access and the natural curiosity of children, especially those reaching puberty, to go looking for images others may not want them to see.

Of course, the worst kept secret for any telecenter or cybercafe is what happens when you mix Internet access and young men: porn. I've seen whole computer rooms turn into porno galleries as boobie-gazing men replace women and children as the primary customers of a center. Yes, its sad, but its also human nature.

And human nature just bit One Laptop Per Child on its naked ass,

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OLPC Documentary: A Video of $100 Laptop Progress

Posted on June 05, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Business, Commentary: Press, Content: Reference

You are watching OLPC TV

What do you think about John Kintree's Open OPLC listserv call to action for the One Laptop Per Child community: a documentary that illustrates the capabilities of the XO computer

I would like to see such a production begin with children, in schools that have already received XO computers, demonstrating what they can do with them. This would include the mesh networking, dual-mode monitor, Sugar interface, and some of the networked activities.

Since the units that have already been distributed to children are the B2 builds, the documentary might conclude with a visit to MIT and demonstration of the enhanced capabilities of the B3 units, and a description of other design changes that might take place, such as the antenna, before mass production begins.

Now why might John have such an interest in OLPC video? Isn't there enough randomly scattered across the web or concentrated on the excellent OLPC.TV? Well, maybe John has a point with his rationale:

If sufficient orders from national departments of education have not been received at the time the documentary is produced, the documentary could help raise the orders, or be used as a fund raising tool.

I know that if an opportunity for individuals to purchase two XO computers, one of which the buyer would receive and the other being given to a child in a developing country, I would like to see a comprehensive documentary before placing my order.

Now what might Charbax, the vlogger behind OLPC.TV have to say about John's proposal?

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A $50 Dollar One Laptop Per Child eBook Reader

Posted on May 27, 2007 by Guest Writer in Use Cases: Education, Content: Reference, Prototypes: XO, Content: eBooks

Martin Woodhouse's youth

Its Martin Woodhouse again, and according to the Sunday Times of London, I am an eccentric Englishman.

When the One Laptop Per Child project was announced I thought, as I am sure we all did, that Information Technology had come of age; that it had moved from being a bright teenager to an adulthood where wisdom and love are added to cleverness. That hasn't quite happened yet, but it can still do so.

The OLPC XO, for instance, needs similarly to move from mere brilliance -- it is, I repeat, brilliant in design, just as OLPC is gorgeous in kindliness and concept -- to maturity. It needs to do the job it is meant to serve: to educate the world's illiterate, and therefore unempowered, poor.

Now before designing anything, it's always wise to consider its purpose, sometimes very carefully indeed. We have set down that purpose, and we need, accordingly, to ask what it is that a person needs in order to move from illiteracy to education? (As, I remind you, each one of us has done while we were ourselves growing from infancy, through childhood, to being an adult person. We are just proposing to allow every person in the world the same opportunity; that is all.)

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Your OLPC XO-Included e-Book Wish List

Posted on December 20, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Content: Reference, Content: eBooks

The previously dormant OLPC Library newsgroup, a forum to discuss "content collections for OLPCs, both software and booklike" came alive recently with emails by past and present librarians, looking for the content organization of the OLPC XO.

The first email was from Jim Pace, a former librarian, who shared his hope, one we can all ascribe to:

Years ago I thought E-books would take off and revolutionize the dissemination of information, especially with the development of E-paper at Zerox PARC. But I was wrong. Perhaps this laptop project will do what E-Books did not: Bring the world's collected knowledge to a significant portion of the world's population. A public library in every citizen's pocket.

And such a noble goal is also in the minds of One Laptop Per Child.

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2B1: "WikiHow" Content Comes Preloaded

Posted on September 14, 2006 by David in Prototypes: 2B1, Content: Localization, Content: Reference

The founder of wikiHow, Jack Herrick, has posted a call for wikiHow users to select the best 1000 how to guides for inclusion on OLPC's €100 laptops. Not much news in and of itself - wiki content has been discussed on OLPC News previously - however the announcement page appears to confirm the novel approach to providing large chunks of content to a machine with a tiny amount of onboard storage; they will utilise the power of the mesh network.

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"C" is for Clarification

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Commentary: OLPC News, Content: Reference

We here at OLPC News were shocked when we noticed that the One Encyclopedia Per Child mock up included an image of a gun for the letter "G." We didn't think One Laptop Per Child would be that insensitive, but there is was on the OLPC Wiki. Recently, Ivan Krstić contacted OLPC and, like we hoped says:I'm loathe to the idea of my name being associated, even if just as a possibility, with attempting to bring gun imagery to children.

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"O" is for "Oversight"

Posted on September 06, 2006 by David in Content: Education, Content: Reference

Rifling through the OLPC wiki can be wonderfully edutaining. As is the way of the wiki, content comes and goes as people review, revise and revert the facts and figures. During the the ~~CM1~~ 2B1 naming debacle we learned how lousy a wiki can be in announcing a product name to a watching audience. Today we learn that using a wiki for feedback is not always such a bright idea.

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Wikipeida Shipped in Subsets

Posted on August 08, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Content: Reference

While I still say that OLPC + Wikipedia was no surprise anyone who knew that Samuel Klein joined OLPC, the match-up has continued to be reported by news sources around the globe. Reading the articles, I've found two new developments not originally mentioned. First, while OLPC is going to pre-load Wikipeida content, Wikimedia is careful to say that the arrangement isn't special. To quote the Linux News story:

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OLPC + Wikipedia

Posted on August 04, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Content: Reference

With an announcement by Jimmy Wales at Wikimania that should surprise no one who knew that Samuel Klein joined OLPC, OLPC will be shipping their ~~$100~~ $140 dollar laptops with a text version of the Wikipedia.

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One Laptop Per Child News

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.