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.
Part of an ongoing series on OLPC in Afghanistan.
In their recent publication “Briefing Note – One Laptop Per Child in Afghanistan,†authors Lima Ahmad (AIMS), Kenneth Adams (AIMS), Mike Dawson (PAIWASTOON), and Carol Ruth Silver (MTSA) make one thing very clear: Afghanistan requires an innovative approach to improve their education system.
“The conventional remedy of building more schools, training more teachers and providing more materials would require a six fold increase to the education budget (in the order of $1.8Bn USD per year) and would take 10-15 years to yield measurable results,” the report reads. “While a steady increase in teacher capacity and educational infrastructure is expected over time, Afghanistan does not have the luxury of waiting 15 years to produce the work force foundations for sustainable economic growth.â€
Photographed by Jacob Simkin
Instead, the authors say, a more cost-effective, accelerated method lies in using OLPC’s blended learning model, which incorporates technology with teaching. If executed, in 12-18 months OLPC can more than double Afghan students’ time to learning, provide feedback on curriculum materials, and provide resources that the students wouldn’t otherwise have.
By adopting this model, OLPC can “finally give children in both mainstream and community settings sufficient learning time and support to achieve curriculum outcomes.â€
Make sure to check out the rest of the report here.
Make and Pixel Qi are (finally) offering a 10.1′ Pixel Qi hacking kit for $275.
It is guaranteed to work smoothly with the Samsung N130 and Lenovo S10-2 netbooks. You can coax it into working well on many other machines with a 10.1′ display, but it may not always be a perfect fit. If you try it on another model, let us and the Make folks know how well it fits.
Congrats to the Make team for making this available! I can’t wait to try this out on a few spare machines. Of course Bernie’s TwoHundredDollarLaptop has a much larger sunlight-readable display…
Best of Luck to Team One Beep (http://tiny.cc/flay5) next week as they compete in the final international round of the MS Imagine Cup. Their success in transmitting content over FM radio frequencies to an XO is a nice partial solution. Connectivity is a forever problem.
As OLPC continues to develop programs in areas where infrastructure is subject to frequent disruption from natural or man-made causes its use as a communication device is full of possibilities. For the past few months we have been participating in the Global Education Cluster and INEE to position olpc as a solution in the recovery and reconstruction phases of emergencies. Perhaps more significantly olpc has a place in the mitigation and pre-disaster preparation. FM Radio is an effective way to get information and instructions out during emergencies and less likely than Internet service to get knocked-out. XOs plus cheap USB FM radio receivers makes for a great combination for receiving educational content and critical information.
Now if someone can figure out how to make the XO an FM transmitter too…