OLPC Afghanistan‘s Svetla writes:

The OLPC Afghanistan Team is pleased to announce that 396 Laptops have been distributed to Istiqlal High School in Jalalabad to cover grades 4,5 and 6!!!

A ceremony took place at the governor’s palace including the Deputy Minister, Director of ICT for the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Communication and IT Director general of ICT, parents, children (top class position holders e.g. “honor roll”), USAID/ASMED’s regional manager and the Technical Implementation Team.

The laptops are pre-installed with:

• Complete localization of all core activities in both national languages of Afghanistan (Dari and Pashto)
• The Ministry of Education standard national curriculum books
• Economic information for parents including advice on job interviews etc, a local business directory, a guide to starting a business in Afghanistan, and research of different possibilities for starting small businesses locally.
• Health information (Basic Hygiene, Nutrition, Hand washing – some remaining to be translated)
• Localized updated manuals / guides that replace the standard user manual and appear when the user clicks the Help Icon
• Information for parents about the XO laptop and it’s benefits

Children were of course delighted to receive the laptops and quickly started exploring.  The Technical Implementation Team will be following up after the Afghan New Year Holiday to see how they and their teachers are getting on.  Teachers have already received a 4 day training and had the laptops themselves for over a month to prepare.

You can follow along with the latest news from OLPC in Afghanistan at http://olpc.af