One Laptop per Child

After a year of intense engineering draws to a cexercise/>lose, One Laptop per Child is getting ready to take our new much faster XO-1.5 laptop out of the oven…

We ask educators and hackers the world over to taste our freshly baked treats: who do you know, who has Great Ideas for firing up classrooms using OLPC’s brand new XO-1.5 laptops, building lifelong opportunity for the world’s poorest children?

Take a Big Bite: If you are planning work on content, software, or hardware learning projects with an XO, please apply today to our contributors program.  If OLPC’s XO-1.5 C2 early production laptops can help you and your community innovate using Sugar and Gnome learning software, you may be able to get free laptops for development and testing.  OLPC and Sugar Labs would love your help empowering deep Learning/Deployment in some of the most challenging environments and underserved countries you know.

Dimpled XO 1.5 Hinge Cover: Look cexercise/>losely for the 3 new dots!

We recently modified the Contributors Program F.A.Q. to make clear that, in addition to content, software, and hardware work, we also encourage proposals for free laptops from volunteers doing exceptional and creative outreach/advocacy work.

Do you still need background on the XO-1.5′s breakthrough new performance and possibilities before you apply?  We invite pioneering educators and experimenters to jump in, helping pave the way for the next generation(s) of hands-on educational computing and open educational resources in all languages!

Thanks: group proposals especially welcome from informal user groups in any city worldwide!! If you too need help forming a community volunteer group like the ~100 people who recently signed up in Los Angeles, please write volunteer@laptop.org

(Small print: OLPC will pay for shipping and customs/import fees worldwide if you are approved, in all countries where this is possible)

Imagine you are sitting on your comfy couch watching TV. You decide to tune in to 60 Minutes. They are talking about a nonprofit organization that is bringing a low-cost laptop to children in developing countries. You think that is a great idea and decide to learn more.

Fast forward two years, and you are in the middle of a floating fishing village in Ha Long Bay in Northeast Vietnam. You have started a project to bring a number of these laptops to the only school in the village. While there you are tackling a variety of speed bumps that arise. These range from easy to extremely challenging. As the days pass, you can see the joy in the children and adults of the village. You realize that you have made a difference and changed their lives. You have changed their world for the better.

This is the story Nancie Severs of New Hampshire relayed when she presented at OLPC’s Cambridge headquarters.  Hearing Nancie speak is inspiring. She has heart and energy. Last year she visited the Vung Vieng Floating Fishing Village with her husband Mark. She thought of OLPC and realized  she could bring the XO to this village with a plan. She says if the XO laptops work out here “in the middle of the sea” where learning resources are limited, books are destroyed by the salty air, and newspapers blow away or get wet, then she will be convinced that it can work almost anywhere.

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A student in Vietnam

I recently attended a presentation given by Nancie Severs, one of our dedicated volunteers. She had just returned from Vietnam where she donated her time to a school in small floating fishing village.  She published a partial account of her experiences organizing a small team to bring one laptop per child to Vung Vieng village.  Read how she overcame environmental, cultural and energy challenges to pilot the first deployment ever to this area of the world on the Vung Vieng wiki page.

Meanwhile, long-time OLPC volunteer and crack developer Mario Behling has started exploring larger-scale projects in Vietnam, and set up a lovely website (olpc.vn) about the projects there and blogs about them, including Marina’s work in Saigon.

It’s 8am on Saturday morning, and 100 students and five teachers sweat in a single classroom. Most likely, there is no energy today, but with luck, students come to class with their computers fully charged from another neighborhood. In a concrete room with one door, the students spend hours working on their bright green XOs. The sounds: typing and talking.  And laughter.

Students working on XOs outside in Sao Tome

This is the scene in São Tomé e Príncipe, a two-island nation of about 160,000 off the west coast of Africa, near Gabon and Nigeria, at the São João Secondary School. The school received 100 XOs in the summer of 2009 through an OLPCorps team of students and professors from the University of Illinois.  It now runs XO classes for its sixth grade students with help from Beth Santos and a local organization called STeP UP (São Tomé e Príncipe Union for Promotion).  The XOs at the school are  quite popular – the program has been covered by local and national news networks.  You can see pictures of the project and find other São Tomé-related links at the Sao Tome Blog.

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Nicholas addressed the 14th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Heads of State yesterday (the 31st) in Addis Ababa.  The theme of the Assembly was “Information and Communication Technologies in Africa: Challenges and Prospects for Development“.

After his speech, Nicholas met with President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete of the United Republic of Tanzania, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Vice President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana,  and Foreign Affairs Minister Seyoum Mesfin of Ethiopia.

In addition, OLPC was invited to participate at the Information Technologies in Africa Exhibition, jointly organized by the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa, that took place in parralel with the Heads of States Summit.  The whole event ran from Jan 27 – Feb 3, and the formal sessions met during the last 4 days of the event.  OLPC was asked to participate in recognition of OLPC’s  contribtion to Africa’s devleopment.

Our reception was very warm, following on the interest at the EALA Summit during the fall.  Every national leader who touched on education spoke of the importance of connectivity and (lowercase) one laptop per child for vitalizing education.