Part 1 of a limited series
Gillian and I spent part of the day taking apart an XO-1.5 (HS edition!) and putting it back together. We’ll be showing you how to do everything from a (2-minute!) keyboard replacement to a flash drive upgrade. Stay tuned for the photo series and guide.
Gillian removes the new keyboard
Me swapping out the XO-1.5 onboard storage (that's a 4G Micro SD card)
Humane Reader‘s $20 offline reader : needs only an external display, cables, and keyboard for a 38x25 monochrome display of Wikipedia or whatever text you please. Offered in XO green, it has been designed more as a tool for hackers than a scalable solution for offline reading. From its own website:
The palm-sized device comes with an SD Card reader for storage and a micro-usb connector for both power and USB device action! The expansion headers break out maximum hackability, and are compatible with most Arduino expansion shields. Use most existing Arduino software, or write from fresh to take full advantage of the audio, video, IR, and keyboard capabilities of the platform.
And there’s talk of a $35 touchscreen tablet : Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal is personally promoting a reportedly $35 tablet computer, which he says will be available sometime in 2011. Charbax makes the case that he is referring to (and demoing) an AllGo reference design, which was on display in June’s Freescale Tech Forum. They are still looking for a manufacturer.
Fast Company is extremely skeptical, since India’s last $10 computer was overhyped and misleadingly promoted. It wasn’t a laptop or even an entire computer, it was… hey, wait a minute… it was a cheaper Humane Reader, only done in white and with no industrial design!Â
These look like fun, but not something I would necessarily want to use for too long at a stretch. In contrast, I’ve been toting my XO-1.5 HS around all week, and it is very satisfying… more after the jump.
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Toshiba is testing my favorite laptop design, a dual-touchscreen model: the Libretto W100.  It will be available to the public in a ‘limited run’ later this year, for around $1,100, and will sport a pair of 7″ touchscreens. They say the laptop will run Windows 7 and offer a variety of keyboards for the ‘bottom’ screen.
It’s good to see this design get out there and effort put into software for it — we will eventually move away from static keyboards altogether, and I would love to see it happen in this decade.
Toshiba Libretto W100
Pixel Qi and Make ran through their stock of DIY kits for retrofitting a 3Qi screen into a standard laptop, on the first day they were available for sale. But now the screen kits are back. Check their list of definitely-compatible 10.1″ laptops, or try it out on your own.
Part of an ongoing series on OLPC in Afghanistan.
Since 2008, we have worked with the Afghan Ministry of Education to build capacity for OLPC in Afghanistan. The initial pilots over the past year have been with 4th-6th grade students, in MOE schools and community-based education groups.
OLPC has committed 5,000 laptops to pilots throughout the country, starting with Esteqlal High School in Nangarhar Province’s Jalalabad city.  There the program engaged all fourth, fifth and sixth grade students, with a ‘3 phase implementation model’ (below) used by the ministry.
The next project involved five schools in Kabul city. Initial feedback has unfortunately only been measured in terms of standardized test results (in math and literacy), but initial results showed a 20% increase on those tests.
In the coming months, national team plans to include schools in other provinces. They also aim to recruit and train more technical people to help with planning and preparing teachers and connectivity teams for schools across the country.
Parts of this post were drawn from the recent report “Briefing Note – One Laptop Per Child in Afghanistan,†by Lima Ahmad (AIMS), Kenneth Adams (AIMS), Mike Dawson (PAIWASTOON), and Carol Ruth Silver (MTSA)
For Afghan kids who receive XOs, their educational time is split between self-study with the laptop at home and sharing their learning experience with teachers and fellow students in the classroom. This blended learning model gives kids sufficient learning time and the support to achieve curriculum.
OLPC Afghanistan laptops are installed with an assortment of materials, including the Ministry of Education’s standard national curriculum of books, health information, and complete localization of all core activities in Dari and Pashto.
And the laptops aren’t just for students. By providing information for parents about economic opportunities, they give parents and kids the chance to learn together.