Category Archives: OLPC

Little Pim to provide language learning on XOs

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Little Pim the Panda has a series of videos that are part of an ‘Entertainment Immersion Method’  which uses animation to help children learn new vocabulary, and improve analytical, memory and concentration skills in 11 languages.  Children can learn over 360 words and phrases using all of the Little Pim lessons.  Now OLPC is partnering with them to bring language learning to millions of students with XOs around the world.

Rodrigo said of the partnership,  “We are delighted to join forces with Little Pim to make learning language more fun for children. OLPC and Little Pim share a common philosophy that learning should be a joyous experience and that children learn best when learning and play are seamless activities.”  Julia Pimsleur Levine, CEO of Little Pim, said: “We are thrilled to partner with OLPC and help bring Little Pim content to millions of bright young minds around the world.”

Read the press release.

Colombus School for Girls returns to St. John

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The Columbus School for Girls, led by Christine Murakami, is preparing for its 2012 trip to St. John. You can follow their awesome trip blog this week. From Christine’s latest:

We are having our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders all work at different paces due to the differences in age and experience. It feels completely appropriate, and what’s great is that the girls are intuitively pacing their classes according to what’s going on in the class. With the shorter periods, there is less stress about “covering the material” than there was in the past, and as a result, the students are learning the material well.

Uruguay celebrates 5 years of Plan Ceibal!

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Plan Ceibal’s first pilot, in Cardal, began 5 years ago on May 10, 2007. The town has a sign commemorating the event. And tomorrow they will host a celebration of the program’s fifth anniversary with a small festival, starting at 11:30. If you’re nearby, come and celebrate 😉

OLPC Rwanda: building a platform for expression for the whole community

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In an Op-Ed in Uganda’s Independent, Andrew Mwenda notes that Rwanda has set itself apart from its neighboring countries in almost every field; including with its tremendous fiberoptic network and olpc laptop program. “building one of the most promising platforms of democratic expression”. He notes:

Kagame has predicated his presidency on performance by his government. Hence, the delivery of public goods and services to all its citizens regardless of their station in life… It is Kagame’s political genius and greatest achievement and is unrivalled in post-independence Africa. But equally it is the greatest source of frustration among elites.

The article is worth a read.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo is in Rwanda this week to thank President Kagame for his amazing work in supporting OLPC for all children in the country, and to learn from the program there.

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The REFM financial group, from Virginia, selected OLPC this year as its annual charitable recipient. Thank you for your support! From their blog:

The biggest wasted resource in the world is untapped brainpower. Somewhere in the world there is a child that will cure Cancer… Parkinsons… depression. But the likelihood is that this child is not getting anywhere close to a sufficient education to allow them to realize their potential.

Today kids grow up with access to the Internet from their bedrooms. They are REALLY lucky. But not the poorest kids. One Laptop Per Child’s mission is to empower these children.

Learning to read with One Tablet per Child

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Can tablets make a difference to a child learning to read for the first time, without a teacher or traditional classroom structure? That’s the question we are exploring with our reading project, currently underway in Ethiopia.


A few dozen children in two rural villages have been given tablets which they are using for a few months. They are interested in learning to read English, and understand this is something they can learn with the tablets; which also come with hundreds of children’s apps.

They are equipped with software that logs all interactions, building up a clear picture of how each tablet is being used. Data from the tablets is gathered each week and sent back to the research team, which also rolls out new updates to the tablets week by week.

Richard is in Ethiopia this week, to get better first-hand knowledge of how the tablets and other infrastructure are holding up, and a visual sense of how they are being used.

“if a child can learn to read, they can read to learn”