While Intel may be convinced that netbooks aren’t for first-time computer buyers, a new wave of first-time XO users are paying for part of their own XOs in Rwanda, under their scheme to allow private school students to take part in the government project. Moses Gahigi interviewedRichard Niyonkuru about the Rwandan national program, and their shift towards a more learner-centered model.
Elsewhere, near Australia, new blogger Air Sok writes about being introduced to Sugar, hosting a guest presenter who had recently been using the XO in East Timor, and using the Physics activity in class. A lovely post; please stop by and leave a comment on the new blog!
Ng Tze Yongtried out the XO for a night in Singapore after a talk by Nicholas at Singapore Management University.
I tried my hand at creating simple animation, making a neurotic Garfield-lookalike cat walk around. It was a pity I had only one XO-1. If I had two, I would have launched the Distance program, which allows me to measure distance by placing two laptops opposite each other.
He was most interested in its resilience; find the full article at the Electric New Paper.
July 20, 2009 at 12:06 pm
· Filed under Visionby seth
Irene Tham of the Straits Times, Singapore writes:
MOST would agree it takes more than a laptop to make a difference in a child’s life. But the man behind non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) – whose tagline is ‘Give a laptop, change the world’ – is not swayed by naysayers.
‘When people tell you that something is impossible, they usually have a vested interest in it not coming true,’ said Professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC.
The organization aims to provide every disadvantaged child in Third World nations with a laptop. Its goal – and one which Prof Negroponte emphasized repeatedly – ‘is not a laptop project but an education project’.
As the Corps move forward, we’ve asked each team to post blogs on a variety of key themes revolved around the deployment process. In the coming weeks we will highlight a few teams who will cover basic issues and statistics ranging from demographics, health, and education infrastructure to the local culture’s perspective on OLPC’s 5 principles and what the children do when they take the XO home.
Today’s post focuses on the diversity of Corps communities and learning environments teams are working in. The Corps deployments range from urban to rural, 1:1 to 1:3, 6 years old to 12 years old, and high to low student-to-teacher ratio. We share updates from Uganda, Senegal, and South Africa.
First day of XO Camp at Driehoek, South Africa (from Youtube):
Bryan Stuart and Paul Commons are back with us in Cambridge, bearing among other things a collection of gigapanoramic photos – 200M composite images made with the Gigapan cameras they carried with them. You can see and annotate Bryan’s photo stream on gigapan.org.
Other education groups have been doing the same thing; and you can find some excellent photos in their collections.
July 15, 2009 at 3:34 pm
· Filed under Children, OLPCby lidet
This is the second year that OLPC has had a booth at the annual soccer tournament hosted by the Ethiopian Sports Federation in North America (ESFNA). This is one of the big events of the region’s Ethiopian diaspora each year, and we have been working together to bring laptops to children in Ethiopia as we strive to focus attention on children’s education.
This year the OLPC booth drew a lot of children to the booth, and provided a very different kind of activity for children who were present at the stadium! We had non-stop traffic from 2:00pm – 9:00pm every day of the tournament.
Three children who came on the first day, ended up volunteering for the duration of the tournament giving demos, and showing others how the XO works. The XO machines setup at the booth drew children to the booth, and many people came up and asked on how they could get one for their child or get involved with OLPC-Ethiopia.
We hope you share our excitement for what the future holds for Ethiopian children and join our efforts in putting laptops in the hands of more children in Ethiopia.
If you have any questions, or would like to join the OLPC Ethiopia community, please email us at Ethio@laptop.org .
This is final part of a 3-part series on the initial learning workshops in Kigali, Rwanda, focusing on EPAK and Kicukiro schools.
EPAK:
EPAK is located in Kigali. The school has a total of 420 XO laptops, 350 were given by the government; another 70 laptops were given by international humanitarian organization, Right to Play. There are 680 students and 15 teachers. So that each student at the school has access, students in the morning session will share their laptop with students in the afternoon session. Laptops were first dispersed during the OLPCorps training. 15 OLPCorps members and Paul Commons, Reuben Caron, and David Cavallo of OLPC led the distribution and training sessions.
On day one, the team prepped by discussing a variety of issues which were likely to emerge, such as language barriers, how to address concerns of integrating the laptops into the curriculum, etc. Teams touched upon each issue individually and designed approaches based on this discussion. For language, a majority of the translation was led by Kaçandre Bourdelais from Laval University. However, during the individual training sessions, French speakers were assigned to a separate teacher to manage translation. The training provided mostly individual attention on programs that teachers wished to explore in more depth. Teachers varied in the activities they explored, from Measure and Scratch to Turtle Art. Later that afternoon, the same teachers were seen explaining what they had learned to their students and how they’ll have the same opportunity the following week.
Day two began by reflashing and NAND blasting several hundred laptops before distribution–only to find out halfway though that the image file was corrupt. As a result, the majority of the morning was spent installing the latest build. By lunch time, however, all EPAK’s classes had laptops. One particular lesson Corps teams took from this experience was the variety of teaching styles carried out in the classroom. Some teachers, like P1, preferred more strict, instructional techniques, a few teachers valued individual exploration, and others attempted group work. Unfortunately, unexpected power issues at the school forced us to stop by late afternoon.
Kicukiro:
Kicukiro Primary School is located in Kigali. There are a total of 3242 students, 44 teachers and 780 laptops. These laptops will be distributed after July holidays, so that each child has access, the Headmaster has decided that each classroom will have 20 laptops per classroom. The headmaster Felix says that “kids left their old schools to come here because they heard we would have laptops.”
OLPCorps students working with teachers at Kicukiro Primary School (Photo courtesy Michael Stein)
Language was the main hurdle here. More photos and conclusions after the jump.
When Matt Keller was in Ethiopia recently while travelling through East Africa, he met a young student who was making phone calls between a pair of XOs. Here he is preparing one of the laptops:
This is both simpler and more homegrown than the work Stephen Thorne and Pia did In Australia last winter, where a school ran regular Video Chat sessions with students on a small island who were using their XOs for the first time.
If you’ve had your own telephony and videoconferencing experiences, please share them (better yet, post videos:).
This is part two of a post about school sessions during the 30 OLPCorps teams’ two-week training in Kigali, Rwanda with members of the OLPC Center for Laptops & Learning and Rwanda’s RITC/OLPC Core Team.
The workshop brought OLPCorps teams to five Rwandan schools with XO laptops; the following is a brief synopsis of the trainings in two of the schools, Kagugu and Nonko:
Kagugu Primary School:
This is known as the best public school in Rwanda. The school is located in Kigali and has a total of 3020 laptops and 3242 students (P1 students share laptops), and 47 teachers. The school has Internet access. Students do not currently take their laptops home. Julia Reynolds of the OLPC Learning Team, Epimaque TWAGIRIMANA Leader of the Rwanda Core Team, Core Team technical members Basil IRENE MASEVELIO, John-Marie NYIRINKWAYA, and 30 OLPCorps members conducted the training at Kagugu. Both days were focused on teachers.
So all 47 teachers could participate, they were arranged into 3 different groups, each with 2-hour training sessions. The first day, teachers were introduced to Scratch. It was their first time using Scratch because the laptops were just recently reflashed to a newer software build. After a basic introduction, teachers were asked to take a picture of any object or scenery in the school yard, and import this picture into Scratch and tell a story about the picture. The teachers, with the assistance of OLPCorps members, used sound, images and animation to tell their stories. At the end of the session, teachers shared their work with the larger group to supportive applause.
The second day, teachers sat with OLPCorps members in smaller groups and explored ways they could use the XO in the classroom. Both OLPCorps members and teachers were fantastic. Together, they explored ways to use Turtle Art, Memorize and Scratch for lessons. One teacher, who had not previously used the laptop in his class, decided he wanted to start right away and grabbed some OLPCorps members to assist him in his classroom.
Kagugu teacher Simon's students using XOs for outdoor language learning
Geekdad continues his series with a cexercise/>lose look at the XO hardware – particularly distinguishing points that haven’t yet been picked up by other manufacturers. And he touches briefly on the XO-1.5 and future designs.
As netbook makers start to consider their designs for next year and work proceeds on the next generation of power and robustness for XO design, it’s worth considering how useful the new ideas are to different audiences.
It’s worth a read. As expected, the series is going to wrap up with a look at Sugar and its development over the years. I wonder if there will be any mention of multiplayer Micropolis online…
Things are just slowing down here after the excitement and energy brought by the 30 OLPCorps teams who were in Kigali from June 8-17th for a two-week training–the first action of the OLPC Center for Laptops & Learning.
The workshop brought OLPCorps teams to five Rwandan schools with XO laptops; the following is a brief synopsis of each training:
Students at Kicukiro Primary School (Photo courtesy Michael Stein)
1. Rwamagana B Primary School: Rwamagana was the first school to receive XO laptops in Rwanda in 2007. The school is located an hour outside of Kigali and has a total of 750 XO laptops, 822 students (P1 does not have laptops), and 12 teachers. All students take their laptops home. Silvia Kist, of the OLPC Learning Team, along with Bryan Stuart, led training, with the support of 11 OLPCorps and 2 Rwanda Core Team Members. More details after the jump.
