Category Archives: Vision

Updates about OLPC goals and milestones

National education improvement, Peruvian style

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Peru’s extraordinary Una Laptop por Niño program continues to lead the way for deployments around the world. Most recently, they expanded their program to 100% of Peru’s public primary schools (roughly 20,000 in all), the largest OLPC project  in the world.  On Friday Oscar Becerra, head of ULPN in Peru, reported:

Today at noon President Alan García formally inaugurated the new Ministry of Education building in Lima. The building features a monument sign at the front, crowned by an XO computer in its original green and white colors. We hope it will be a lasting memory of the outstanding contribution of OLPC to Peruvian education improvement.

Three cheers for that, and for expansion to a new building! And congratulations to Oscar and President García for leading the way in supporting education at all ages with technology and creativity, under a wide variety of conditions.  I can only hope for similar education reform to reach my own country one day soon.

OLPC and Telstra win a Bronze Medal at the Cannes Lions festival

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Last year, Telstra worked with OLPC to develop a media campaign promoting OLPC in Australia, and raising money for 500 XOs to be sent to aboriginal communities. This month they took home an award from the Cannes Lions festival for media, in recognition of the excellence of that campaign. See the Cannes entry for images and screenshots of their designs.

Rumour has it that the followup this year will be astonishing — I can’t wait to see it.

Tamil Nadu seeks 6.8M laptops for older students

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On June 4, the Electronics Corporation of the state of Tamil Nadu [ELCOT] floated an international tender for sourcing 912,000 laptops.Requirements include a 2.1GHz clock, 320G hard drive, 2G of RAM, 3 hour battery life, and an Intel chipset. Also required: Lin/Win dual-boot, a 36-month warranty, and managing regional repair centers across the country for 3+ years.

ELCOT tender

ELCOT tender  elc58921

The Times of India reports that this is part of a long-term program to provide free laptops to 6.8M pre-college students across the state, and they are hoping for bids under $300 a unit. Unlike previous pronouncements about laptops for children, which were received much media attention with little result, this tender received comparatively little fanfare, and was focused on logistics. The tender closes in early July, and delivery is to start on September 1 of this year.

This free laptop program is a political promise made by the AIADMK party, which is currently in power. They worked through ALCOT to carry out a similar program in 2006, the Free Color Television Scheme,  which provided color televisions to every family without one (4 million in all). In response to complaints that many of these televisions turned up on a grey market, they are mandating hardware and software marking of the machines to note they are from Tamil Nadu.

The AIADMK haven’t budgeted for the program yet, however: this week their Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa petitioned the central government in New Delhi for funds to support it.

Marshall Islands prepare for OLPC deployment with national workshop

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As noted on the OLPC Oceania blog last week, the Marshall Islands is the latest nation to receive new XOs through OLPC Oceania.

Oceania continues to be a model for solid deployments. The Marshall Islands project has a clear project document and technology plan, and is moving steadily towards implementing them. Last week the national team held an educators workshop with teachers from across the region, and Mike Hutak and Ian Thompson.

Acting Minister of Education Mattlan Zackhras encouraged all teachers to take advantage of the workshop so that everyone in the islands could benefit from the program. As he said at the opening ceremony,

“By bridging the digital divide to an inclusive global community, our students here in the islands can share ideas with other students in the Pacific and from around world“.

OLPC and FabFi mesh networks bring Internet to Afghanistan

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OLPC is working in 9 schools and 5 cities in Afghanistan. Many of the schools have some limited Internet connectivity at home, but most families still don’t have Internet (though they may get GPRS coverage if they have access to a cell phone) in their neighborhoods or home compounds.

In Jalalabad, this is changing in part thanks to a mesh network run by FabLab Jalalabad. Through their FabFi network, many children with XOs and their families have access to the Internet (and Wikipedia) for the first time. Fast Company wrote up a good story on this, following the New York Times’s lead last Sunday (commentary).

Similar FabLabs with mesh networks have sprung up elsewhere, most notably in Kenya. I hope to see them spread more widely in Africa and Asia – it seems like a robust and scalable model for engaging communities in maintaining their own networks.

Narrative Interfaces for OLPC

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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.