Category Archives: OLPC

The OLPC Laptop Guide hits bookshelves near you

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guest post by the inimitable Anne Gentle

Copy this book! We hope you will.  I am proud to say that through a collaboration with One Laptop per Child, Sugar Labs and FLOSS Manuals, a print and online manual about using the XO laptop and Sugar operating system is now available as via print-on-demand at Lulu.com.   Tom Brady checked it out when he was visiting the office last week and thought it was pretty neat.

You can order your own print copy for a modest price – someone walks off with one of mine every week, and I’m due to order some more.  Or you can read it on your XO laptop -  the PDF is always available for free and for remixing into your own works. Soon, the book will be for sale on Amazon as well.

Two sides of an elegant book

Two sides of an elegant book

The OLPC Laptop Guide has a simple, clean cover design and the content inside was written by a community of professional writers, editors, open source experts, and OLPC staff. This book contains 240 pages of how-to information for your XO laptop and the operating system that kids love, Sugar. This book was written by a group of people in the unique wiki tool offered by FLOSS Manuals. Much of the content was written in a five-day collaborative BookSprint. In it you’ll find instructions for connecting with and caring for this unique little laptop. The neat thing is, once you’re done with a real book, you can pass it on to the next person who wants to learn about their XO. Get a book and pass it on.

G1G1 goes international

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One Laptop per Child: Give 1 Get 1

Update: We are shipping G1G1 Internationally to 45 countries, through December 31st this year. See details on the late-November countries post.

We have spent the past two weeks preparing for the Give One, Get One fundraising campaign starting on Monday.  Last year’s donors (thank you!) were critical to launching projects in Rwanda, Haiti, Ethiopia, Oceania, Afghanistan*, and Mongolia.  This year’s campaign will begin a new wave of OLPC projects.

The biggest difference this year is that G1G1’s donors are also going global — we are launching the campaign simultaneously in the US and Europe at 11am UTC (6am EST) on the 17th.  (UPDATE: Amazon.com information pages are up, and it is possible to put in a G1G1 request now, but the Give Only and other pages will not be up until later this afternoon.)

Donors in the US will be able to donate and Give a laptop through Laptop.org/xo.  The Get laptops going to recipients in the US will be fulfilled right away.  Donors outside the US will be able to donate through Amazon.co.uk, where G1G1 will cost £275 (currently just over 322 Euros) plus shipping.  The Get laptops for recipients outside the US will be fulfilled as soon as possible.  stay tuned to this blog for more details in the coming days.

Update: the Christmas round of shipments was sent out last week; everyone who donated by December 16th should have received their XO by now, unless we are still waiting on clearance to ship to their country [sorry, Japan!  Fumi, where are you when we need you?].  A final batch of machines will be sent out in January; the program is expected to end on December 31.

Update 2: donors in Australia, Hong Kong, and France are encouraged to donate through pages specifically set up for your country for a tax deduction.

The benefit of working with leading industry partners like Amazon to expand our reach is that our mission becomes clearer, letting OLPC focus on its real purpose: giving One Laptop per Child — at a global level.

Party this Sunday in Harvard Square

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The Boston-area OLPC crowd are organizing a launch party for G1G1 this Sunday night between 7pm and midnight in Harvard Square. The party will be at John Harvard’s Brewhouse.  If you’re in the area, it should be an amazing time — come say hello!

XOs welcome; the first 10 people to bring a G1G1 machine from last year will get a sweet G1G1 2009 t-shirt.  No word yet on whether any velociraptorz will be present.  I’ll update with more info and photos once I have them.

Now that’s a great smile…

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We all took a group photo yesterday afternoon, after a long week.  There was a camera crew idling in the office who were kind enough to oblige us.

That’s Delisile’s son in front holding up an XO and smiling… as charming as he is gorgeous.  Even Tom Brady was shy in his presence.

The Cambridge crew takes a break

The Cambridge crew takes a break

Everyone has been getting a bit jumpy with the gray weather and long days, but this was fun. Henry is showing off the New York Times front page.  If you look closely, you can see that after Amy, our controller, came into the office this morning the market rallied a few hundred points.

More updates coming soon: with news about G1G1 around the world, launch parties this Sunday, and new videos, photos, and essays.  Send specific questions and requests our way!

Recruiting: OLPC Social Media Warriors

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Thanks to Joshua Gay of CK-12 for his help in crafting this posting!

Help us spread the joy of education to children all over the world by becoming a Social Media Warrior. At OLPC, we have the tools, the educational materials, and learning resources to help transform the lives of millions all over the world. To do so, we need thousands of volunteers to understand what we have and what we are capable of doing for the lives of children everywhere – and we need three of you to help us get the word out to them using the social networking and media sharing sites that pervade our lives.

Video Ninja

  • We’ll hand you the keys to our YouTube, dailymotion, flickr-video, and myspace-tv accounts; work with our marketing team and branch out to other video networks at your discretion.
  • Promote videos from media.laptop.org, olpc.tv, and other sources, including training resources for volunteers and staff in third-world deployments.
  • Track down celebrity speakers for original source material and permission to use it.

Facebook Rockstar and Myspace Maven

Details after the fold.

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