Category Archives: Children

Major updates about children learning, in the field, XOs in classrooms.

Documenting life on Earth – Abel and his XO

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Last July 24, thousands of people all over the world submitted their videos to YouTube to share their lives, to participate in Life in one Day (La vida en un dia). This was an experimental bit of cinematography to create a documentary created entirely by YouTube users, capturing one day on Earth. Ten OLPC students from Peru took part, posting videos of their day for the project.

Now all of the stories have been edited together into a single documentary.  The film was directed by Kevin Macdonald and produced by Ridley Scott.  National Geographic is helping with distribution.   Rick Smolan was also involved in the film’s development last year.   Since its global online premiere at Sundance, the documentary has been received enthusiastically at the Berlin and SXSW film festivals.

The film will be shown in theatres across the US this summer.

Here is the official trailer:

 

And here is the story of Abel, an 11-year old shoe shiner and one of Peruvian gen-XO children who took part – part of his video was included in the film, showing his life working on the street, and what he loves to read on Wikipedia. He and his father had the luck to be flown out to Sundance for the online premiere!
Hat tip to Mike Massey and OLPC Mexico.

Illinois Institute updates charger design for Haiti schools

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The Illinois Institute of Technology is updating its design for solar chargers being used by OLPC schools in Haiti. Laura Hosman‘s students, working with Bruce Baikie of Green Wifi, are improving designs for charging setups for the off-grid primary schools in Haiti using XOs. Their work was featured recently in the Chicago Tribune.

They have been working on this project with Guy Serge Pompilus, the Haiti national project coordinator, since 2009 — and the focus on robust solar charging has increased greatly since the 2010 earthquakes.

April olpcMAP updates

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We’re hosting an olpcMAP discussion session at our Cambridge HQ on Wednesday night, with students (and future collaborators!) from Tufts. If you can’t be there, catch up on recent additions and developments to the project with this month’s olpcMAP update.

Meanwhile, mapping maven Nick Doiron shares the view from his seat in Montevideo, where he is a resident hacker this month with Plan Ceibal.

Reflections on Sugar from Santa Cruz, Bolivia

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Mentors from the Santa Cruz have started an ‘education alternative’ project and creativity center at a Children’s Home aiming to combine younger students with university students studying programming. They started working with 9-year olds on XOs and with Sugar, and after a few months have moved to working with 6-year olds and older students.

They offer some early feedback on using Sugar and Etoys in afterschool projects, and are working on engaging teachers and starting some programming projects. I look forward to seeing their reflections at the end of this season.

OLPC Rwanda reaches rural schools in Muhanga

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Caritas Kanizio of Rwanda’s Education Ministry distributed 500 XOs to students and teachers in Ruli Primary school in Muhanga this week.  This is part of an expansion of Rwanda’s OLPC project to rural schools, which has taken some time to develop but has been in ways the most rewarding part.  It has helped bridge the connectivity and technology divide within the country.

Rwanda has positioned itself as a tech-savvy hub in East Africa for some time, but rural towns have had very limited access to computers.  Parents generally hope to learn about computers through their children, and the program is seen as heralding better Internet connectivity for the communities as well.

 

Little green legs

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Two weeks back, the Financial Times posted an essay by Gillian Tett about OLPC, titled “Billions of children could be transformed by cheap computers” (and later, “Why logging on should be child’s play”). The article eventually concludes that children’s lives could be transformed, and that being able to ‘log on’ to the Internet should probably be child’s play for all children — but was much more ambivalent than the titles suggest.

They ran a long reader response to the article the following week, which is worth sharing:

As a fellow anthropologist in the financial sector, I am surprised by Gillian Tett asking “Could the idea fly? Should it?” regarding the distribution of $200 connected green laptops to children in the developing world. I similarly question her implication that this is a local Latin American initiative by One Laptop Per Child, as part of a grand “intellectual vision” recently developed by neuroscientists.

In the 21st century, we cannot separate computer literacy from the traditional “3Rs”. The luxury of computer literacy is the competitive edge of the developed world’s affluent children…

One Laptop Per Child’s mission statement has no neuroscientific technobabble: to supply cheap, green, durable, connected laptops for “collaborative, joyful, and self-empowered learning … [and] a brighter future”. Currently, 2.1m XO computers have been deployed to children and teachers worldwide in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

For Ms Tett to ask “if” or “should” this happen is like asking if the horse Goldikova should race. The little green laptop has legs – and it’s a winner.