A recent CSM article about getting young people involved in programming and hacking (noting both OLPC and Raspberry Pi) quotes Rodrigo on students’ accomplishments in Uruguay:
“Debugging a program is the most perfect way of learning… We have already 12-year-old children in Uruguay that are proficient programmers. You cannot imagine the stuff we are beginning to see in these young kids.“
Earlier this year, Shelia Cotten and coauthors Hale, Moroney, O’Neal & Borch published an overview of their data from surveying 27 schools during the first year of the city-wide OLPC project in Birmingham, AL.  In the 2008-2009 school year, 1st – 5th Grade students and teachers, in every public primary school in the city, received XO laptops via this program. — amounting to over 15,000 students and teachers. and every public primary school in the city.
The paper, “Using Affordable Technology to Decrease Digital Inequality“, appeared in Information, Communication & Society Volume 14, Issue 4.  From the summary:
[F]ourth and fifth grade students at 27 Birmingham City schools were surveyed just prior to receiving the XOs and then again about 4.5 months later. A total of 1,202 students were matched between the two surveys… students who used a computer to do homework before receiving the XO, tended to make greater use of the XO and felt it helped them in their education. Teachers’ use of the XO was also an important factor. Students who reported their teachers made greater use of the XOs in the classroom tended to use the XO more and felt that the XO had a positive impact on their education.
These findings highlight the importance of training teachers to make effective use of new technology and the need to develop curriculum to integrate computers into the classroom. Dr. Cotten is currently leading a National Science Foundation funded project that helps… teachers receive training which builds technology-teaching capabilities so that students develop the attitudes and the skills necessary to succeed in a technologically advanced society.
Their research has continued since then, and they will also publish about longer-term results.
The Tux Paint dev team last week announced a 2011 summer drawing contest, with prizes including three OLPC XO-1’s, Sugar-on-a-Stick drives, and TuxPaint shirts. Â All children 3-12 are encouraged to submit their best Tux Paint art; the best 10 drawings will receive prizes. The contest is sponsored and judged by the retail company Worldlabel, which will showcase the winning art on their blog.
HOW TO ENTER:
- Download Tux Paint
- Make your drawing in Tux Paint and save it in png format
- Send your finished drawing in png format to worldlabel@gmail.com and include “Tux Paint†in the email subject line
- In the email submission include: 1) the artist’s’ name 2) the artist’s age 3) the title of drawing 4) the country where the artist lives
- All artwork must be the contestant’s original work created on Tux Paint.
- Only one entry per child
Entries will be judged on the quality and originality of the artwork. Extra points will be given to drawings that tell a story.
Entries must be submitted by midnight USA Easter Standard time on 12 September 2011. Winners will be announced no later than 22 September 2011. All entries will be licensed: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported and will be exhibited on this page.
Kudos to Russell Ossendryver and the other devs who keep Tux Paint one of the best drawing activities out there.
As mavrothal notes, you can download and install the latest candidate, os870, or you can update from the command line ( sudo olpc-update candidate-870 ) as long as you have 450MB of free space.
Since you can now run most Linux applications that have been packaged for Fedora 14, you may want to use an SD card for swap space.
This Friday at 2pm EST, Scott and others will talk about how OLPC creates student-centric learning experiences, and how the software stack could become less shallow in terms of providing a narrative and journey to those experiences.
Those interested in joining are welcome to come to OLPC’s new offices at the American Twine building for the discussion. There will be streamed and higher-res posted video of the sessions as well. See Dr. Ananian’s blog for further details.
Rasha Hussein writes on the TEDx Ramallah blog about her journey with OLPC and PaleXO over the past year in Ramallah, and how she was welcomed to the group by Noura Salhi and found friends and collaborators, and inspiration to join a new startup (Bazinga) with others from that group.
I learned the true meaning of voluntary work, and I felt awesome about what I do. It’s been a year now, and it was the best year of my life!
Kudos to her for sharing this experience. Â For more about the Bazinga technology hub, you can also follow them on twitter.
If you have been involved with an olpc project in your community, let us know what it was like — Â we would love to hear from you.