Category Archives: Deployments

News from small and large deployments, reports and visits and analysis

Homo docens: The teaching brain in the digital era

Posted on by
Reply

You can find the full essay on the olpc wiki.

Summary: The formidable expansion of the digital environment in our planet is one of the most urgent challenges of this century. This new environment supports most human activities around the world today. Among the multiple socialchanges empowered by the digital environment we must emphasize the transformation of the education of the new generations, the so-called “digital natives.” The access to this digital environment is now becoming a hope for millions of students and teachers, a way to overcome ignorance and poverty. It is a human right, and a value in itself.

At the same time the digital environment is becoming the common ground for the mind, brain and education sciences. We think that the future of
education will depend on the increasing integration of these sciences. And education is the hope of humanity. The teacher is facing new pedagogical challenges in a globalized world. We should however acknowledge the fact that while we have significant information about the learning brain we lack a similar knowledge of the teaching brain. Our expectation is to bridge this neuro-cognitive gap in the next years.

OLPC Kenya: working towards an education alliance

Posted on by
Reply

Sandra Thaxter, who has been working with some of the grassroots programs in Kenya, recently joined with others in the OLPC Kenya volunteer community, for a meeting with the the Kenyan Institute for Education on their digital learning initiatives.

Assistant Minister of Education Calist Mwatela set up a meeting between these groups, and they are planning a series of Skype meetings over the next few weeks. Sandra wrote more about this and her dream of an OLPC Kenya Alliance, as a guest post on the Eshibinga blog.

Keep up the good work!

South Africa: Building grassroots support for access to a modern education

Posted on by
1

As noted last week, Jackie Lustig has compiled a report from our South African projects. It draws on background data from the country, and highlights work done there over the past four years.

Starting with a gift of 100 laptops from donors on Boston, and expanding through the interest of a number of OLPCorps projects in 2008, South Africa has expanded its OLPC community to almost 1500 students and teachers today.


OLPC South Africa case study, 2008-2012

(This is an 8MB pdf, so may take a moment to load)

Kevin Brooks challenges Mark Warschauer and Morgan Ames to reflect

Posted on by
Reply

Kevin was recently fired up by likes Sridhar’s recent summary of Australian OLPC projects and how they are building a national education programme. He challenges Warschauer and Ames to take a look at their work. (They are known in the olpc-verse primarily for their paper framing the idea of a computer for every child as a “technocentric” “utopian vision”.)

Given the depth of information out today about the diversity of olpc programs, there is much more research to be done – not about whether to give learning tools to children (of course you should), but about how to use them as the basis for transforming and enriching a community. To paraphrase a famous educator, the diversity in OLPC implementations around the world will help us discover the most effective approaches.

A tip of the hat to OLPC Australia, which continues its truly remarkable work.

Upcoming case study : South Africa

Posted on by
1

OLPC South Africa is preparing to publish a case study of it’s entirely grassroots growth – from 100 students and mentors in Klipotwn in early 2008 to a network of 1400 students in 5 cities, all sharing training and class experiences.

Support for these programs was a combination of individual donations, local purchases, government support, OLPCorps, and support from other international NGOs.  Some are traditional school projects, while others such as at the Kliptown Youth Project involve a combination of community, school, and peer mentoring.

The full study should be up on Friday.  Here are a few quotes:

South Africa spends a larger share (5-6%) of its GDP on education than any other African nation. Education is compulsory for all children between the ages of 7 and 15 (grades 1 to 9) and access to primary education, the UN’s second Millennium Development Goal, is now nearly universal.

However, as recently pointed out by Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s National Planning Minister, South Africa ranks 137 out of 150 countries in math and science and is one of the bottom 25 performers on the African continent.

…

As of early 2012, there are a total of 1,400 XO laptops in South Africa. The Kliptown Youth Program provides technical and training support for all these deployments.

…

The first priority was getting people to understand that the XO is not a toy – it is a resource for education. Many children in Kliptown have difficulty learning to read so it is important to get them excited about reading. The children like reading from the XO screen because it makes learning fun and cool.