One Laptop Per Child News

UCC students' Ntugi school collaboration Flickr set, blog, and videos

On my own behalf and on behalf of Ntugi Mixed Day School let me thank Upper Canada College and Mark Battley in particular for helping the school to get XO laptops. The laptops have boosted the morale of both students and teachers in the school.

Some parents have transferred their kids from the neighbouring schools to our school because we are the only secondary school connected to Internet. This has raised the school enrollment from 4 classes to 6 classes. Students are using them, especially in Science and Geography. In the 2009 Science Congress, two projects scooped the best 2 positions in the District and were ranked No. 9 and 10 out of 102 in the Provincials. Previously, no Ntugi student had participated in Science Congress.

The laptops have also improved games in the school. Students have learned rules and coaching techniques. In basketball, they are always browsing for NBA and this has assisted out basketball girls' team to emerge 3rd in the district. The teams are gaining more confidence as they familiarize themselves with the games techniques.

The performance in the National exams has also improved greatly. In 2008, the school was No.17 in the district. After introduction to the use of computers in March 2009, the school moved to position 8 out of 42 schools which did the National exam in the district. In 2009, form four class used the laptops to browse for the past papers (National exams). This enabled them to perform extremely well.

Teachers and students now apply for jobs and colleges online. All teachers and almost 1/2 of the students' population have e-mails. Teachers and students use Facebook during their leisure time. After introduction of computers, two teachers have been encouraged to join higher institutions of learning. Mr. Moses Kimathi is doing Masters Degree at Chuka University College and Mrs. Florence Kaburu is at Kenya Methodist University for degree in Counseling and Education. They are always with the laptops for their research work.

The Kenya National Examination Council has started registering students for the National exams online. Schools without Internet facilities are greatly challenged. As the Head of Ntugi Secondary School, I feel very humbled for this donation (laptops) as it has made my work very easy when registering students for the National exams. (K.C.S.E).

The demand for the use of computers is so great by Ntugi and its surrounding community. Parents have been requesting for computer classes but we are limited by lack of room and more computers. Both teachers and students are very willing to teach our neighbouring primary schools, especially Subuiga Primary, the use of computers. For these outreach goals, we are seeking to build a computer lab & a community outreach centre. Apart from lack of computer lab, we are also seeking to expand our solar power capacity. During rainy seasons, the power goes down due to lack of enough sunlight.

The school thanks all those who have contributed to help change the face of Ntugi Mixed Day Secondary School. Let me appeal for more support to help us achieve our goal of contributing a new computer lab and installing more solar panels.

In collaboration with Upper Canada College & the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Ntugi will be a school to watch in both Academics and Co-curricular activities in future. If you'd like, you can follow us on our own Ntugi School blog.

Thanks and may God bless you.
Yours Faithfully,
Ithinji P. Mbaabu
Principal
Ntugi Mixed Day Secondary School
PO Box 3202 - 60200
Meru, Kenya

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Kibwezi is a small rural town located in the arid region of Kenya, about half-way between the capital of Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa. Many of the students come from the surrounding farms. Their families survive on subsistence agriculture and many do not have electricity or running water in their homes.

The access to XO laptop computers stirs emotions of pure joy inside of the children as you can see by this video:

Read more about this deployment XO laptops on the OLPCorps Kibwezi blog.

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Pass saturday, I met with the team that will go to Libreville in Gabon, Africa this month to deploy 110 XO laptops in a school. You can have more details about the OLPCorps LavalUniversity Gabonproject.

The team launched a call for help to the local LUG for helping them be sure that everything is alright before they got there. They want to confirm that all the hardwares, softwares, procedures, etc are good and without error. The project team did a really good job and I think they are ready to go there but a validation before leaving is a great initiative.

What impress me is the answer they got from the community. In a short time, all the aspect of the project was covered! The project is heavily based on wireless architecture so a local group ZAP Québec jump in and offer their help to validate this part of the setup. For the software part (School Server, XO install, etc) and procedures, Rene and me will do the validation.

I was really impressed that many groups joined their efforts and gave their free time to help such a good project. I also like the impression we gave of our community to the project team. We often hear that the free softwares community is a place where people help each other. I am happy to have seen this in action and do my part.

Jeff Saucier wrote OLPC deployment in Gabon and its republished here with his permission

One of the major innovations of OLPC consists in the idea that a computer given to a single child (also called 1:1 computing) is the best way to enhance the pupil's ability to learn effectively. It's called ONE-laptop-per-child after all.

In a recent article in ScienceDaily, strong evidence is presented that shows that 1:1 computing allows students in these programs to outperform their peers in traditional classrooms. According to findings of studies published in the Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment:

Students who have participated in 1:1 computing report higher achievement and increased engagement. This new collection of articles brings together some of the best evidence to date on the implementation and impacts of 1:1 computing.

All of the studies that examined the impact of 1:1 computing on student achievement found that students in the 1:1 settings outperformed their traditional classroom peers on English/Language Arts standardized tests by a statistically significant margin. Study authors also reported on evidence of increased student motivation and engagement, as well as changes in teachers' instructional practices.

This is great news for OLPC. So far the evidence of the effectiveness of 1:1 computing was circumstantial and anecdotal.

Wow! Watching this video from OLE Nepal I am so happy for them and sad for One Laptop Per Child. The success of OLE and the failures of OLPC are so self-evident:
See how OLE Nepal is focused on empowering the teachers? Hear how they're working with the established educational system? That's the path to XO laptop success - using technology as an enabler of educator evolution, not a bludgeon to force change.

Better yet, did you see the shoutout to the Teachermate? Yeah, OLE is the real education project.

Our goal here is to dramatically and quickly improve educational outcomes. Unfortunately that process doesn't happen magically by itself. There's a myriad of cultural and reality on the ground matters that need to be taken care of. We need to understand concretely the problem we are attempting to solve and how our intervention is going to lead to solving it. So the reality on the ground in most Afghan schools here is that students and teachers really don't have enough time in class. Typically 30 mins for lessons that they would really need one hour for. Teachers often have to find additional hours to do other jobs to make ends meet.

Going back to that lack of time, sometimes capacity difficulties, they often can't provide feedback to student work, homework, etc. Without feedback, hints, etc. which parents and teachers can't provide learning results naturally suffer. Finally against this backdrop providing opportunities for group work / soft skills is tricky to say the least.

When Beth Santos presented at OLPC Learning Club DC about her OLPC Sao Tome experience, her description of the OLPCorps deployment had me asking one very intense question: Was OLPCorps 2009 an OLPC failure?

When Beth first went to Sao Tome to volunteer with Step Up, she didn't expect to work with XO laptops. She just wanted to help the São João school. On arrival, she found XO laptops stored in a closet, unused since the OLPCorps volunteers left.

This should not come as a surprise. We predicted that abandoned XO laptops would be one legacy of OLPCorps. Technology adoption, in any culture, requires enthusiastic supporters with a long-term commitment to change. By parachuting in volunteers for a few weeks on summer, OLPC was setting up OLPCorps to have a temporary impact at best.

One Laptop Per Child has announced they're starting to distribute C2 Test Model XO-1.5 laptops through their Contributors Program. This is great news for hardware and software developers who are looking to code and test for OLPC. But it pretty much sucks for everyone else.

There is not a week that goes by without someone asking me how they can get XO laptops for their community-based project. XO-1, XO-1.5, and to my amusement, XO-2 and even XO-3 laptops - any XO laptop! They are shocked that OLPC will not sell XO's to them and confused when told about the Contributors Program.

Why? Because the Contributors Program is still a mysterious process where some groups get XO's and others don't, based on... Whim? Chicken bones? Negroponte's fancy that day?

They seek a clear, transparent process. Some way, any way to get XO laptops with certainty.

Today was the third and last day of the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010". Since the conference ended at 1PM only the keynote, a single session and a closing panel took place. However it turned out to be a really strong finish which made for a perfect ending for what was truly a great conference. After yesterday's constant crashes and issues I was very happy to see that ustream.tv worked like a charm today. The only thing that was slightly annoying is that my conference WiFi account ran out 10min before the actual end of the conference, hence the last few minutes of the last session are missing from the recordings.