Category Archives: OLPC

OLPC to begin in October in Fiji

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The Cabinet in Fiji has approved the Ministry of Education’s ‘One Laptop per Child’ program, scheduled to begin in October according to the Fiji government online portal.

The Cabinet agreed that funding will be provided to facilitate two phases of the project. The Cabinet based its decision on a submission by the Minister for Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts, Mr Filipe Bole.

The Pacific Island Countries Ministers of Education agreed to implement the OLPC project in 2007. In 2008, pilot programs began in Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, PNG and Vanuatu. The project aims to bridge the digital divide at the Primary School level as it involves children aged 6 – 8 years old.

The Minister announced that 800 laptops will be donated by the Bank of South Pacific (BSP).  The first phase of the project will be in Papua New Guinea, with three demonstration schools in the Suva area. These schools are Draiba Primary School, Nabua Sanatan Primary School and the Navesi Primary School. The schools will begin the project in October of this year.

The Minister for Education, Filipe Bole, said the program will expand to 30 schools in 2013.
“By the end of next year, we hope to have all primary schools participating in the One Laptop Per Child program. After that we will move to secondary schools,” Mr Bole said.
“This is part of Government’s efforts to reform education for all students. The Government wants to keep students at school so that they can complete their education.”

The Minister said that the project intends to promote a cultural and educational network, bringing officials from the culture, education, media and information and communication technology (ICT) sectors together to foster the inclusion of culture in education.

He said that the project compliments and enhances other ICT in Education initiatives and will help develop 21st century computer and IT skills in Fijian students. This will greatly contribute to making Fiji a Knowledge-based Society.

OLPC volunteer program – University of Miami

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The University of Miami’s Butler Center for Service and Leadership held an event this past week called “Canes for a Change”, the event is a week held annually in September where students are introduced to the ideas of volunteerism and leadership.

This year, several OLPC Miami volunteers:
Adriana Gonzalez; Yizhou Mao; and Lindsay Acton, took the initiative to set up a table on behalf of OLPC to inform local students about the work OLPC is doing in the community and to get UM students interested and involved in volunteering with OLPC.

The volunteers hosting the OLPC stand were surprised to learn many students already knew about OLPC and were very excited to receive such a positive response from UM’s student body. Over 40 students visited the table and signed up to be a part of OLPC volunteer program in Miami.

”Enhance Learning through Technology” conference in Rwanda

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From 5th to 7th august 2012, Rwanda held an international conference on technology in education with the theme ”Enhance Learning through Technology”. This conference took place at Kigali Serena Hotel. Professor Nicholas Negroponte (founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child); Rodrigo Arboleda (Chairman and CEO of OLPCA) and Sergio Romero (Vice President of Operations and Africa) were invited to attend this conference of technology in education.

In his presentation, Professor Nicholas Negroponte, mentioned that as you cannot compete with world food program  (WFP) which feeds bodies, you cannot compete with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) which feeds children’s brains. He also emphasized on OLPC as an educational project not a computer project as some would think. In his presentation he also talked about a research being done in Ethiopia about what could happen if technology is brought in the hands of illiterate children.  “These children proved to work by themselves to use the tablets, to read and to learn.” he said. 

Kagabo Callixte, a 12 years, grade six, from a local school presented his project using an XO on pollution. He used Scratch activity to describe different causes of pollution and how to prevent it.  The participants were amazed and happy on how this 12 year child presented confidently in front of older people. He mentioned how the XO laptop is important to his life and how it fits in his dreams of becoming a future engineer. Watch Kagabo presentation on YouTube.

After the conference, OLPC officials, together with NKUBITO Bakuramutsa (OLPC Rwanda coordinator) went to Smaldone Primary School (a deaf and mute primary schools that use XO laptops). At the school, the officials observed how children were using the XO laptops  in different activities. Children mentioned how happy they are with the laptops and thanked professor Nicholas and his excellence Paul Kagame to think about them in releasing them from loneliness. When asked by Professor Nicholas about what they could change on the XO laptop to suit their needs, the children mentioned that visual activities could be more useful since they cannot hear.

The conference was ended by a Gala dinner, where a cultural dance troupe entertained the participants, a gift of recognition was handled to professor Nicholas Negroponte as a key note speaker.

by Intwali Parfait Jimmy; OLPC technical and learning Officer

 

“Why I hope kids in Ethiopia can teach us something profound about education.” by Nicholas Negroponte

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I believe that we get into trouble when knowing becomes a surrogate for learning. We know that a vast recall of facts about something is in no way a measure of understanding them. At best, it is necessary but not sufficient. And yet we subject our kids to memorizing. We seem to believe that rote learning is akin to physical exercise, good for their minds. And, quite conveniently, we can test whether the facts stuck, like spaghetti to a wall. In some cases knowledge is so drilled in that you know and hate a subject at the same time.

The closest I have ever come to thinking about thinking is writing computer programs. This involves teasing apart a process into constituent parts, step-by-step functions, and conditional statements. What is so important about computer programs is that they (almost) never work the first time. Since they do something (versus nothing), just not what you wanted, you can look at the (mis)behavior to debug and change your code. This iterative process, so common in computer programming, is similar to learning.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit association that I founded, launched the so-called XO Laptop in 2005 with built-in programming languages. There are 2.5 million XOs in the hand of kids today in 40 countries, with 25 languages in use. In Uruguay, where all 400,000 kids have an XO laptop, knowing how to program is required in schools. Estonia just did the same. In Ethiopia, 5,000 kids are writing computer programs in the language Squeak.

OLPC represents about $1 billion in sales and deployment worldwide since 2005—it’s bigger than most people think. What have we learned? We learned that kids learn a great deal by themselves. The question is, how much?

 To answer that question, we have now turned our attention to the 100 million kids worldwide who do not go to first grade. Most of them do not go because there is no school, there are no literate adults in their village, and there is little promise of that changing soon. My colleagues and I have started an experiment in two such villages, asking a simple question: Can children learn how to read on their own?
If you want to learn more about this research, read the original post here.

 

Itagüí: Educational Revolution

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Itaguí’s Municipal Administration in partnership with the University EAFIT began a technological modernization project in Educational Institutions

On Tuesday September 4th, Itagüí’s Municipal Mayor, CARLOS ANDRES TRUJILLO, officially handed over the first massive installment of XO computers from One Laptop per Child (OLPC) to teachers of basic primary education official institutions of the municipalities. The main event took place at the Southern Cultural Auditorium in Itagüí (Antioquia, Colombia).

Thus, Itagüí began a process of educational revolution in the implementation of the use and appropriation of technology information and communications  that are planned for the education sector and that is being conducted in partnership with the University EAFIT. The project also seeks to raise awareness and ensure the appropriate use of new technologies among all students and make full use of these tools by teachers for the continuous improvement of the teaching process, which will be reflected in management plans  within the 24 official educational institutions.

Photo by rededucativaitagui

The project includes in its first phase leaving a defined strategy that allows for the proper implementation of technologies in the classroom, for which, activities such as training of teachers, school administrators and adequacy of the infrastructure necessary for the operation thereof are being carried out. To do this, educational institutions with XO laptops have already been endowed; in each of the classrooms a whiteboard was installed, each of them gas given a video beam and they installed a central database (CPU) with keyboard and mouse. Additionally, an educational software that allows students to create new experiences, innovate and develop their intellectual capacities and technologies facing the globalized world has been prepared.

Photo by rededucativaitagui

The Municipal Administration has been working hard in order to improve school environment and provide new tools that allow the education sector of the municipality move forward and become a national model framed in change and transformation of education.

Photo by rededucativaitagui

OLPC Update

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One Laptop per Child has grown and suceeded over the years in part due to the efforts
of an extraordinary unpaid volunteer community who have dedicated their time and
energy into developing OLPC projects around the world.

One such volunteer is Satish Jha who has devoted years of effort to soliciting interest in
one-to-one laptop computing from various branches of the Indian Government. OLPC is
grateful for all of his efforts and commitment to the OLPC mission.

As OLPC continues to evolve, we are placing greater emphasis on soliciting project sponsors from the private sector and foundations. Such an approach requires a new
team and a new approach in India. Future projects with any branch of the Indian
Government will be directly handled by the OLPC Association based in Miami, Florida,
USA.

Therefore, as of August 31, 2012 Satish Jha no longer represents OLPC in India or
elsewhere. We thank him for his contribution to the OLPC mission.

Any inquiries with respect to new projects in India should be directed to
countries@laptop.org. We expect to announce a new head of the OLPC project in India
in the near future. The OLPC India website (http://olpcindia.net/en/) should no longer be considered an authoritative source of information on OLPC in India or elsewhere.