Category Archives: OLPC

Telephony in Ethiopia

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When Matt Keller was in Ethiopia recently while travelling through East Africa, he met a young student who was making phone calls between a pair of XOs.  Here he is preparing one of the laptops:

This is both simpler and more homegrown than the work Stephen Thorne and Pia did In Australia last winter, where a school ran regular Video Chat sessions with students on a small island who were using their XOs for the first time.

If you’ve had your own telephony and videoconferencing experiences, please share them (better yet, post videos:).

OLPCorps in Rwandan schools, Part 2: Kagugu and Nonko

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This is part two of a post about school sessions during the 30 OLPCorps teams’ two-week training in Kigali, Rwanda with members of the OLPC Center for Laptops & Learning and Rwanda’s RITC/OLPC Core Team.

The workshop brought OLPCorps teams to five Rwandan schools with XO laptops; the following is a brief synopsis of the trainings in two of the schools, Kagugu and Nonko:

Kagugu Primary School:
This is known as the best public school in Rwanda. The school is located in Kigali and has a total of 3020 laptops and 3242 students (P1 students share laptops), and 47 teachers. The school has Internet access. Students do not currently take their laptops home. Julia Reynolds of the OLPC Learning Team, Epimaque TWAGIRIMANA Leader of the Rwanda Core Team, Core Team technical members Basil IRENE MASEVELIO, John-Marie NYIRINKWAYA, and 30 OLPCorps members conducted the training at Kagugu. Both days were focused on teachers.

So all 47 teachers could participate, they were arranged into 3 different groups, each with 2-hour training sessions. The first day, teachers were introduced to Scratch. It was their first time using Scratch because the laptops were just recently reflashed to a newer software build. After a basic introduction, teachers were asked to take a picture of any object or scenery in the school yard, and import this picture into Scratch and tell a story about the picture. The teachers, with the assistance of OLPCorps members, used sound, images and animation to tell their stories. At the end of the session, teachers shared their work with the larger group to supportive applause.

The second day, teachers sat with OLPCorps members in smaller groups and explored ways they could use the XO in the classroom. Both OLPCorps members and teachers were fantastic. Together, they explored ways to use Turtle Art, Memorize and Scratch for lessons. One teacher, who had not previously used the laptop in his class, decided he wanted to start right away and grabbed some OLPCorps members to assist him in his classroom.

Kagugu teacher Simon's students with XOs

Kagugu teacher Simon's students using XOs for outdoor language learning

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2 years of XO hardware

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Geekdad continues his series with a close look at the XO hardware – particularly distinguishing points that haven’t yet been picked up by other manufacturers.  And he touches briefly on the XO-1.5 and future designs.

As netbook makers start to consider their designs for next year and work proceeds on the next generation of power and robustness for XO design, it’s worth considering how useful the new ideas are to different audiences.

It’s worth a read.  As expected, the series is going to wrap up with a look at Sugar and its development over the years.  I wonder if there will be any mention of multiplayer Micropolis online…

School Sessions in Rwanda with OLPCorps, Part 1 : Rwamagana B

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Mwiriwe from Kigali! This is part 1 of a 3 part series on OLPC Learning Center work with OLPCorps this summer.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

Things are just slowing down here after the excitement and energy brought by the 30 OLPCorps teams who were in Kigali from June 8-17th for a two-week training–the first action of the OLPC Center for Laptops & Learning.

The workshop brought OLPCorps teams to five Rwandan schools with XO laptops; the following is a brief synopsis of each training:

Kicukiro (Photo courtesy Michael Stein)

Students at Kicukiro Primary School (Photo courtesy Michael Stein)

1. Rwamagana B Primary School:
Rwamagana was the first school to receive XO laptops in Rwanda in 2007. The school is located an hour outside of Kigali and has a total of 750 XO laptops, 822 students (P1 does not have laptops), and 12 teachers. All students take their laptops home. Silvia Kist, of the OLPC Learning Team, along with Bryan Stuart, led training, with the support of 11 OLPCorps and 2 Rwanda Core Team Members.  More details after the jump.

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An XO reflection, 2 years out

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Chuck Lawton at Wired writes about 2 years of the XO, after getting his hands on one for the first time.   Some of the review is the normal shock of changing window managers and interface styles, but he has a sense of how many details we have changed with education in mind.

What amazes me most through my experimentation with the XO is that attention to detail that the hardware and software designers have made when developing the product. To unthink how we do things and present the software and interfaces in a way that becomes intuitive to someone with out exposure to Windows is quite an accomplishment.

Two years ago, people were excited about the XO because of the prospect of a $100 laptop. But I think in that excitement, they missed the point. At the time, before the netbook explosion, all they were buzzing about was a cheap laptop. But the XO laptop is not a hardware experiment. What One Laptop Per Child has done is create an ecosystem whereby kids can learn through doing and sharing. They have organized a group of talented hardware and software developers and challenged them to invent something new. They have created a philanthropic organization to achieve their goal of production and distribution. The cost is only one part of the equation – a barrier that must be broken in order to make that ecosystem accessible. And it’s that ecosystem – their vision – that deserves more credit than many of the tech blogs are willing to discuss.

This promises to be a three part series with a focus on hardware next.   I hope by the time it finishes he covers Sugar in more detail and uses in the classroom (which is where the intro seems to be heading).

Sugar goes mainstream… on a stick

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A recent publicity push and a number of public demonstrations of Sugar on a Stick (which recently released its Strawberry edition) have attracted many interested new developers and a lot of intrigued parents and teachers.  I’ve seen it mentioned on digitial library lists and public education channels, in contexts that wouldn’t normally be discussing laptops or computers.

Sean Daly writes about a recent round of feedback from a local community of children and parents.  Chat and Maze seem the most immediately attractive to this community of computer-savvy children.  Some comments of interest:

The principals were interested in jabber collaboration which they had never heard of.

One mom expressed frustration that dropdown menu choices found by mouse rollover could not be validated with the Enter key.

Several parents and a teacher asked about translation tools.

Some parents who had already heard of OLPC asked where the crank was. [still!]

It’s worth a read.