Category Archives: Community

Fireside chat: holiday cheer

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Happy Holidays to all!  As I was working on a community newsletter this past weekend and reflecting on the work of the past year, I was warmed as always by the constant and refreshing work of our community groups and national partners.   They rarely get caught in the global OLPC spotlight, but as often as not they are the ones inspiring and improving the projects that flourish.  And while some contributors such as Caryl Bigenho and Anne Gentle have worked on fairly visibile projects like the Contributors Program and the XO Guides, many others work on projects that haven’t had their own press releases or events.

So I’d like to take this post to thank some of the extraordinary and prolific OLPC supporters I have worked with over the past years:  Bernie Innocenti, who was so taken with the early work on OLPC he left his home in Italy to come to Boston and support the project for over a year, inspiring us all with his passion, energy, software experience and continent-sized chiptune collection, and has since remained a pillar of support for SugarLabs; Bert Freudenberg, who led the Etoys for the XO team, helped build the OLPC community in Germany, and worked since the first software development to keep us focused on empowering children and giving them a great learning environment; and Christoph Derndorfer, who when not studying interface design has done as much as anyone to encourage local chapter formation, effective global reporting on OLPC’s works, international volunteer exchange with deployments, and outreach to new potential activity developers.  Wade Brainerd, who since winning a prize in the first OLPC Game Jam has developed, facilitated, or mentored a half-dozen remarkable activities (from Bounce to Colors! to WikiBrowse to Typing Turtle), making up some 10% of all activities that ship with the XO; Lionel Laske, who founded OLPC France, and has tirelessly organized press, superstar support, and local projects there; and Pia Waugh, who helped launch both OLPC Australia and OLPC Friends and realized half the holy grail of a videochat-powered pilot.  Chris Leonard, who has shared ideas, supported donors and health-related projects, and remained one of our most active wiki maintainers; and Tabitha Roder, who has maintained our leading group of testers for years.  And the volunteers who never tired and later joined the staff — Daniel Drake, who in-between working and contracting at OLPC has been a world-traveller supporting independent deployments with his priceless insight and energy, leaving joy in his wake; and Mel Chua, who worked on just about everything, from chapters and events to art to content and code to docs and testing.

To all of you: thank you, thank you.  It is your devotion that keeps the spirit of olpc alive around the world… and that, where we have flourished, has made good projects great.

New Deployment: Middle East

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UNRWA Amari Girls School, an elementary school in the West Bank

OLPC has launched a new deployment in the Middle East in conjunction with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Since the start of its operations in 1950, UNRWA has been a vital provider of basic necessities, health care, and education for Palestine Refugees. Largely funded by the two Give One Get One campaigns and other contributions, OLPC hopes to enrich the education of these children whose lives have been uprooted by warfare. The first wave of 2,700 donated laptops will reach the Gaza and the West Bank in January 2010. Check out the new Middle East page on our website for more information.

XO 1.5: Create, Collaborate, Contribute

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As the mystery around the XO-1.5 unfurls, take part in something historic! Approximately 30 XO-1.5 B2 units are now available at OLPC in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Given that our supply is limited, we want our allocation to be fair and meritocratic. Here are some key points to remember for this round:

  • Hardware and software developers will get priority over educators.
  • Educators will get in on the next round – the hardware and software need to work first!
  • Certain projects may possibly be vetoed if they are violent or unsuitable in nature.
  • Worldwide shipping and customs/import fees are included in this participation.

Don’t know where to start? Use the following as general starting points for your ideas:

Need something more specific? Here’s a list of suggestions based on notes from Daniel Drake:

  • Voice chat (maybe even VoIP? Imagine the XO doubling up as a phone!)
  • Project Karma, the superb endeavor led by the OLE Nepal team.
  • Physics activity – Can the make-believe “Physics” world interface with the real world? Think sensors!
  • Media editing activity – Going beyond simply “Record“ing on the XO.
  • Programming activities – Building upon Pippy, Develop and maybe even an activity for LOGO.
  • Sustenance activities – Build/improve upon Simcity, FoodForce II, or be inspired by  The Incredible Machine!
  • Ebooks – take a look at the latest Read activity and its support for annotations and formats, and build upon it.
  • Touchpad activity – How do I use the touchpad? A simple but much needed activity.
  • Low level stuff – the new video driver, for instance.
Create, Collaborate, Contribute

Create, Collaborate, Contribute

The Contributors Program is a thriving program that has seeded a whole set of unique and interesting projects around the world. Dare to contribute a Project ranging across educational, technological, and/or outreach initiatives… Want to know more about Contributors Program? Read our FAQ at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors#FAQ

Further XO-1.5 test units will likely not be available until December (around release time of the XO-1.5) so find your muse, get your ideas together, and send them in! Interested folks need to email contributors@laptop.org explaining how their software/development or other projects impacts children. Take a look at this form http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program/Project_proposal_form and submit your proposal!

Come Meet the New XO-1.5

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The OLPC hardware sneak peak event of the year is heading toward DC!
It's not the machine. It's the movement.

Samuel Klein from OLPC will be presenting the newer, faster, stronger X0-1.5 laptop.  There are some great new additions to our education-enhancing machine, and plenty to get excited about.*

As most of you know, One Laptop per Child has been working tirelessly to spread education/information access across the globe – mostly in the remotest locations – while simultaneously ramping up quality, pushing down costs, and searching for ever-improving environments for the XO’s hardware and software. Come by, sit back, and enjoy a well-guided tour through fascinating complexities and dramatic possibilities that are developing both on the home-front and in the fields.**

OLPC Learning Club DC and HacDC are also expected to announce their joint launch of an XO Lending Library and share details on the local activities that keep OLPC and Sugar Labs going strong.

We hope you will join us and engage in the conversation, helping to push the frontier of education, information accessibility, and collaboration into the revolutionary years ahead.

Where:  HacDC, on 1525 Newton Street NW, Washington, in the church sanctuary

When: Tuesday, September 8th, 7:30pm

* See for instance the XO-1.5 hardware specs .

** Looking to get ahold of a brand-new XO-1.5? Developers, teachers and contributors are encouraged to complement the new XO with new learning content, as always

Update: This will be taking place during our Community Book Sprint (September 6-11) capturing stories of real-world classroom issues. Get in touch to help out over the coming week!

OLPCorps Roundup

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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):

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OLPCorps in Rwandan schools, Part 3: EPAK and Kicukiro

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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)
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.

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