The OLPC Association welcomes Roberto Interiano, a long-time advisor, as Senior VP of Operations. He has extensive experience in international public and private sector work, particularly in Central America, and shares an infectious enthusiasm for our work.
You can read more about his past experience in the press release.
Update:Â The US Embassy recently visited Ecole Shalom and its OLPC deployment, with a donation of creole books, and blogged about it in English and French.
Nick Doiron recently travelled to Petit-Goave, Haiti, Â continuing to map the country there via OpenStreetMap.
He has also been hacking on activities for the OLPC schools there, most recently the Bridge activity originally from Daniel Drake and Nirav Patel — adding a plugin which lets you incorporate a solar sensor, which lets sunlight grow giant flowers that push up your bridge!
If you think this sounds like a daydream morphed into activity form, you’re absolutely right.  (see screenshots below).
Nick: if you’re looking at games to add solar sensing to, then Rollcats is an obvious choice.  The Sun is your cheerleader!
Somos Azucar, Activity Central, and escuelab are organizing Sugar Camp Lima on November 18-19, to build a new Sugar image for Peru: complete with Aymara and Quechua localizations, and activities focused on engagement online and “digital citizenship”. Â An invitation to the event can be found here, and Sugar enthusiast Yannick Warnier explains why he finds this so exciting in a call for others to join him.
The event has international support, including the Municipality of Lima, Ciudadano Inteligente, and the World Bank. Â The XO image developed will be proposed to the national team as a basis for the next update implemented across the country.
If you have an activity you’re hoping to polish up and get into the next Peru image — or are interested in localization, testing, or general Sugar development, this promises to be a great event. Â I hope the camp attendees will review and add to the Feedback Actividades page that Claudia recently set up, a place to gather requests and suggestions from students and teachers in the field.
To RSVP, or for more information, contact escuelab:Â contacto@escuelab.org
Nickelodeon Latin America and One Laptop per Child announced the wniner of their video contest focused on creating a better environment last month. Primary school children across Latin America were challenged to use their XO laptops to create videos focused on creating a better environment, and the best was judged to be a scratch video from Giuliana Violetta Pozzoli, a 10 year-old girl from Caacupé, Paraguay.
This week Nickelodeon is hosting Giuliana, her mother and teacher at its annual HALO Awards ceremony in Los Angeles — an event recognizing kids who are working hard to make the world a better place. The videos of all five finalists in the contest can be viewed online at http://olpcstories.org.
“Our partnership with Nickelodeon Latin America is a great example of how private sector corporations can work with OLPC to advance children’s education and development,†said Rodrigo Arboleda, CEO of One Laptop per Child. “We look forward to other successful collaborations with Nickelodeon and MTV Networks Latin America, as well as the U.S., in which we continue to inspire children to use their creativity and skills to make a difference in their communities.â€
“We are thrilled to have partnered with OLPC on this initiative,†commented Mario Cader-Frech, Vice President Public Affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility for MTV Networks Americas. “The response from kids throughout the region to participate in this contest was amazing, and we are delighted by their desire to want to make this world a better place.â€
The OLPC Community Summit is back for a second year, hosted again by OLPC San Francisco. It promises to be the year’s best rundown of OLPC efforts around the world, large and small.
You can see the schedule online at olpcsf.org, and should register now if you want to attend. Last year was pretty packed!
OLPC Mexico notes the great work by a team at San Luis Potosà who finished localizing Sugar into Téenek, the indigenous language of a people in Mexico. The whole post, drawn from a recent report on the OLPC deployment in the region, is worth a read.