One Laptop Per Child News on Countries

OLPC Tuquito Project Progress in Argentina

Posted on July 30, 2007 by Guest Writer in Countries: Argentina, Software: Localization, Content: Localization, Software: Operating System

OLPC Tuquito's team began to work at 1st January of 2007, with the knowledge acquisition about the project One Laptop Per Child and then with development educative applications, writing documentation in Spanish, and testing XO in different operating systems as Tuquito GNU/Linux for OLPC.

We divided in different areas to work: Tests of the prototype; Documentation; Development and programming; and Adaptation of Tuquito GNU/Linux for its operation in the XO. The principal target were:Write documentation in spanish.

Test and install different version of Tuquito in XO. Testing performance.

Development educative applications.

Awareness and teacher qualification.

I am Pablo Frias, staff of Tuquito GNU/Linux, and here is a summary of project progress.

First we testing OLPC in software emulator, as Qemu or VMWare. This way can us to test and to learn Sugar (front-end) in a PC desktop. Today there's an OLPC book in Spanish, which speaking all technical aspect in software and hardware from XO machine.

Then we site-up twice source information, once is a wiki-page with official content about project Tuquito OLPC and another blog-page with recently information about project.

There 's a lot information as how-to, tips, suggests for Sugar in Gentoo, Hello World in Sugar, Create SVG icons for Sugar, a image gallery, and specific technical information.

In education subject, we wrote a complete implementation of OLPC Project in Argentina, which technical infrastructure, server configuration and additional elements, as teacher capacities, awareness and qualifications.

In addition we created a site for development of application named Trac to follow recently activities release. Applications development are:

Recently we public some multimedia content, as podcast, interviews and videocast and we released two type of Tuquito images in original version and Peeper version, which can be boot from USB drive without install in XO. You can find more information how copy image to USB in Tuquito OLPC site.

Now we are continuously developing, writing, talking about project, interviewing and a doing a campaign of diffusion for OLPC Tuquito project.

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Tuquito in McDonald's: Argentinean OLPC Video Duel

Posted on March 06, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Argentina, Software: Operating System, Commentary: Press

It's Tuesday. You've made it past the Monday crunch. You have a few minutes and you'd like to catch up on the latest OLPC Argentina news. Then may I direct your attention to two dueling videos by Mauro Torres of Tuquito?

The first One Laptop Per Argentina Child video is a very polished submission for Alternaria TV with Nicholas Montoza where he and Mauro show the Tuquito-modified Sugar user interface:

Click To Play

Next up we have a fun geek gab fest with several guys goofing around with the OLPC XO. Note its almost the same crew and now you can tell that the video is shot in a McDonald's restaurant:

Hmm… is this a trend I detect, South American Children's Machine XO demonstrations in restaurants? First Chile, and now Argentina. Brazil and Uruguay, you're turn!

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Argentinean Debt Financing an OLPC Implementation Miracle

Posted on November 29, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Argentina, Implementation: Plan

Now that Argentina has announced that it will be receiving 50 laptops now and 500 in December, it's time to revisit OLPC in Argentina by the numbers and see how the country might pay for the full one million Children's Machine XO purchase.

An Argentine Student

First, we take the conclusion of Alexander Piscitelli, General Manager of Argentina's Ministry of Education, Center of Technology and the main OLPC government counterpart, in an interview with Cecilia Bazán via a Google translation:

It would be necessary to every year buy a million, during 10 years. In addition, 850 thousand [children] enter every year to the educative system. You would have to always buy a million machines.

Then when we compare a one million annual laptop purchase to the Argentine education budget of $5.6 billion per year, we are all happy like. But if we look at the public expenditure on education minus teachers salaries, it's only $300 million. At least half of which would be required to buy computers for only 10% of the student body per year.

And now we wonder just how Argentina might afford a multi-million One Laptop Per Child purchase if its not going to be from the minuscule non-salary education budget? Nicholas Negroponte has the answer in his comments to Primició Clarín.com (via Google translation):

According to Negroponte, each laptop will cost between 130 and 150 dollars, to finance with credits of the Inter-American Development Bank (I.A.D.B.) and the World Bank.

Really now, Dr. Negroponte? Don't you mean $208, or $972 dollar laptops? Since OLPC XO's are only available in units of one million, that's a $208 million or $972 million dollar purchase price.

And wouldn't Argentina be the same country that has public debt of $118.2 billion, or 72.5% of GDP according to the World Fact Book? Doesn't Argentina owe the World Bank alone almost $3 Billion dollars in interest and charges from its last bail-out? Isn't it already borrowing $2 Billion from the IADB for other projects in 2006-07?

So how much more debt do you think Argentina should take on to buy OLPC XO's? And do you want them to spend it on your "magic"; the OLPC implementation miracle?

Before Argentina is saddled with yet more liability it can ill-afford, might it at least have the chance to conduct a limited OLPC implementation? Controlled pilot programs, tested with objective educational metrics, and employing sound pedagogical teaching structures? Best of all, in an affordable implementation, slowly scaled up to a million units over several years to refine and perfect its rollout?

Is that really too much to ask before indebting a nation's children?

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XO's in Argentina! 50 now, 500 in December

Posted on November 24, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Argentina, Sales Talk: Countries

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Pablo Mancini, we now have word on One laptop Per Child's progress in Argentina. There, Nicholas Negroponte met with Argentinean President, Néstor Kirchner, Minister of Education, Science and Technology, Daniel Filmus and the head of Cabinet, Alberto Fernández on November 22. As a result, the Ministerio de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología has announced (via a Google translation):

Argentina anticipates to have 50 units for demonstration in next the 15 days and that before year end can be counted on 500 prototypes to make a experience pilot.

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OLPC in Argentina by the Numbers

Posted on September 28, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Argentina

Back when the One Laptop Per Child project was announced, and Nicholas Negroponte was still claiming a $100 dollar laptop price point, Taran Rampersad noted that its really a $100 million dollar laptop - you have to order them in one million unit blocks.

The 2B1 Children's Machine is now $138 dollars per laptop, making the minimum order price $138 million just for the laptops. How might this price affect a country like Argentina, a relatively rich developing world country and one of the initial OLPC partner countries?

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OLPC Country Orders Update from Negroponte

Posted on August 18, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Argentina, Countries: Brazil, Sales Talk: Countries, Countries: India, People: Negroponte, Countries: Nigeria, Countries: Thailand

Buried at the end of the "A Crusade to Connect Children," BusinessWeek article are telling quotes by Nicholas Negroponte on the status of One Laptop Per Child computer orders. First off, he explains why India just said no with this interesting passage from the article:

[T]he Indian setback is the result of "an orchestrated campaign by small interests" in some parts of the country. "We are not sure of why this occurred." [says Negroponte] He does have some theories, though, for the overall opposition that OLPC is encountering. "Considerable disinformation is coming from communities that do not want to see Linux on the desktop. There are also laptop interests that see us as competition," [Negroponte] points out.

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Woops, Did We Say "Ordered"?

Posted on August 01, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Argentina, Countries: Brazil, Sales Talk: Countries, Countries: Nigeria, Countries: Thailand

In a stunning development that I say is causing a few heated debates within the One laptop Per Child organization, OLPC HQ is denying they have orders for a million laptops from Thailand, Nigeria, China, and Brazil. To quote the Yahoo.com story

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Four Countries Commit to Laptops

Posted on July 31, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Argentina, Countries: Brazil, Sales Talk: Countries, Countries: Nigeria, Countries: Thailand

Desktop Linux reports that earlier reports of Nigeria buying 1 million of the laptops or $1 million worth of computers are incorrect. No one has bought anything yet, especially since there is nothing to buy yet.

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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.