June 30, 2009 at 2:01 pm
· Filed under Laptops, OLPC, XO by sj
Chuck Lawton at Wired writes about 2 years of the XO, after getting his hands on one for the first time. Some of the review is the normal shock of changing window managers and interface styles, but he has a sense of how many details we have changed with education in mind.
What amazes me most through my experimentation with the XO is that attention to detail that the hardware and software designers have made when developing the product. To unthink how we do things and present the software and interfaces in a way that becomes intuitive to someone with out exposure to Windows is quite an accomplishment.
Two years ago, people were excited about the XO because of the prospect of a $100 laptop. But I think in that excitement, they missed the point. At the time, before the netbook explosion, all they were buzzing about was a cheap laptop. But the XO laptop is not a hardware experiment. What One Laptop Per Child has done is create an ecosystem whereby kids can learn through doing and sharing. They have organized a group of talented hardware and software developers and challenged them to invent something new. They have created a philanthropic organization to achieve their goal of production and distribution. The cost is only one part of the equation – a barrier that must be broken in order to make that ecosystem accessible. And it’s that ecosystem – their vision – that deserves more credit than many of the tech blogs are willing to discuss.
This promises to be a three part series with a focus on hardware next. I hope by the time it finishes he covers Sugar in more detail and uses in the classroom (which is where the intro seems to be heading).
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June 29, 2009 at 10:42 pm
· Filed under Children, OLPC by sj
A recent publicity push and a number of public demonstrations of Sugar on a Stick (which recently released its Strawberry edition) have attracted many interested new developers and a lot of intrigued parents and teachers. I’ve seen it mentioned on digitial library lists and public education channels, in contexts that wouldn’t normally be discussing laptops or computers.
Sean Daly writes about a recent round of feedback from a local community of children and parents. Chat and Maze seem the most immediately attractive to this community of computer-savvy children. Some comments of interest:
The principals were interested in jabber collaboration which they had never heard of.
One mom expressed frustration that dropdown menu choices found by mouse rollover could not be validated with the Enter key.
Several parents and a teacher asked about translation tools.
Some parents who had already heard of OLPC asked where the crank was. [still!]
It’s worth a read.
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June 24, 2009 at 1:34 pm
· Filed under OLPC by julia
The Kigali press have been attentive to our new learning center there, and the New Times has run a number of reports after the opening ceremony with quotes from Kagame and his staff, a series on education by David, a spotlight on children and their XOs, and a Sunday feature.
There have been local radio interviews with the staff of the center as well ( ICT in education ). More images after the jump.
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June 11, 2009 at 6:39 am
· Filed under OLPC by seth
This summer, OLPC is starting two projects in Africa. One is OLPCorps, which we have covered over the past few months and which you will be hearing a great about from the participants themselves. The other is the founding of a learning center that has just been founded at the Kigali Institute for Science, Technology and Management [KIST]. As part of this process, the OLPC learning team, including David Cavallo and Juliano Bittencourt, have been in Kigali for some time, laying the groundwork for this week’s public launch. President Kagame himself came to open the center — here is the official press announcement:
LAUNCHED IN RWANDA BY HIS EXCELLENCY PAUL KAGAME, THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF RWANDA
OLPCorps Teams to Assist in Providing New Educational Opportunities in 17 Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa
Kigali, Rwanda, June 9, 2009 — One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help provide every child in the world with access to a modern education, in collaboration with the Government of Rwanda, is launching in Kigali, Rwanda, a Global Center for Excellence in Laptops and Learning. The purpose of the Center is to create the highest quality examples of learning with connected laptops in schools and communities, support ongoing laptop implementation plans in Rwanda, and create an African regional laptop network.
Leading the world in exemplifying laptops for learning, Rwanda is the natural base for this new center. The government of Rwanda has committed to providing all 2.2 million of its primary school children with laptops by 2012 and to serving as a model for other countries to copy, improve and further innovate. The Center also will develop senior fellows, community learning specialists and technology specialists who will return to their countries to lead efforts nationally, regionally and locally to extend laptop learning programs.
“OLPC has experienced great success when support for our mission comes from both the government (top down) as well as from grassroots (bottom up),” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. “The partnership with Rwanda represents a substantial commitment by both OLPC and Rwanda to bring learning to the grassroots and country level, which is exactly where it should be.”
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June 5, 2009 at 11:27 am
· Filed under Deployments, OLPC by sethadm
Children in remote communities in Western Australia and the Northern Territory are being introduced to the digital world with their own XOs as part of an international program aimed at boosting attendance. They have been localized to include the local language of Yolgnu Matha. From an announcement last month as the project was being rolled out:
Mr Lacey was hopeful the laptops would increase the current attendance rate of about 360 students regularly attending out of 500.
“We want to use it as an incentive, come to school….” At Rawa Community School, near the Great Sandy Desert 600km southeast of Port Hedland in Western Australia, the laptops will mean learning can be better adapted to each student.
It will be interesting to see how this fits into the plans of Geoff Anson and the crew at OLPC Australia. Meanwhile, Pia Waugh of OLPC Friends has joined the Government 2.0 movement in the Australian government and can offer a perspective from both sides of that fence.
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