Scratch the World! ANIMATE contest & updated Sugar activity

For those who haven’t noticed Scratch taking over the world, OLPC France published a lovely essay about the contest and the value of Scratch and Etoys for young students.

La promesse selon laquelle le projet CEIBAL donnerait aux élèves du pays des perspectives de réduction du fossé numérique et d’inclusion numérique n’est pas vaine, puisqu’ils sont désormais en mesure d’échanger d’égal à égal avec les jeunes créateurs Scratch appartenant à une communauté internationale à laquelle on doit déjà près d’un million de projets (projets Scratch) de par le monde.

The promise that CEIBAL would address the digital divide and digital inclusion for the nationls’ students is not in vain, since they are now on an equal footing with the young  Scratch artists in an international community which has produced nearly a million Scratch projects.

In Uruguay, Efecto Cine and Plan CEIBAL are running an “ANIMATE” contest through June 15 for the best Scratch submissions by students across Uruguay. Ten winners will be announced, with the top four receiving mini-DV cameras for their schools. (Rules)

Meanwhile, an updated Scratch activity is being developed with full Journal and camera integration, and a new activity release is expected within the week.  Kudos to everyone working on the project.

Efecto Cine and Plan CEIBAL are running an “ANIMATE” contest through June 15 for the best Scratch submissions by students across Uruguay. Ten winners will be announced, with the top four receiving mini-DV cameras for their schools. (Rules)

XO-3 concept design is here!

Update: thanks for all of the feedback on the design!  There has been some discussion about materials, and a few interesting pieces have passed around the office, but no new eye-candy is forthcoming for a while — we’re busy getting the 1.5 out the door.

The XO-3: it’s designed to be thin, sleek, and touch, while continuing to lower power, cost, and material waste.  We’ve been anticipating the new designs for a while, and now they’ve arrived!  As announced in Tuesday’s  press release, after our upcoming releases of our 1.5 and 1.75 models next year, we are looking at the XO-3, a thin touchscreen tablet, for 2012.  Here are the latest images from the Fuse design team:

xo3 1

xo3 2

xo3 3

xo3 4

xo3 5

xo3 6

xo3 7

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xo3 9

xo3 10

XO roadmap updates: XO 1.5, 1.75, and 3

Today we announced our coming hardware lineup, the pending production of the XO 1.5, and published the first concept photos and timeline for the XO-3 tablet.  Here’s the press release:

ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD DRIVES BREAKTHROUGH ADVANCES IN REVOLUTIONARY XO CHILDREN’S LAPTOP Product Road Map to Deliver Unprecedented High Performance, Low Power Consumption and Design Innovation at Lower and Lower Cost

Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 22, 2009 – One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education, announced today its product road map to deliver robust laptop performance and innovative design for use in the most remote, poor and rural communities and at the lowest power and cost in the industry.

“The first version of OLPC’s child-centric laptop, the XO, is a revolution in low-cost, low-power computing. The XO has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries and in 25 languages,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child. “To fulfill our mission of reaching 500 million children in all remote corners of the planet, OLPC will continue to innovate in design and performance. Because we are a non-profit, we hope that industry will copy us.”

The new versions of the XO laptop will be as follows:

• XO 1.5 – The XO 1.5 is the same industrial design as the XO 1.0. Based on a VIA processor (replacing AMD), it will provide 2x the speed, 4x DRAM memory and 4x FLASH memory. It will run both the Linux and Windows operating systems. XO 1.5 will be available in January 2010 at about $200 per unit. The actual price floats in accordance with spot markets, particularly for those of DRAM and FLASH.

• XO 1.75 – The XO 1.75, to be available in early 2011, will be essentially the same industrial design but rubber-bumpered on the outside and in the inside will be an 8.9”, touch-sensitive display. The XO 1.75 will be based on an ARM processor from Marvell that will enable 2x speed at 1/4 the power and is targeted at $150 or less. This ARM-based system will complement the x86-based XO 1.75, which will remain in production, giving deployments a choice of processor platform.”

• XO 3.0 – The XO 3.0 is a totally different approach, to be available in 2012 and at a target price well below $100. It will feature a new design using a single sheet of flexible plastic and will be unbreakable and without holes in it. The XO 3.0 will leapfrog the previously announced (May 2008) XO 2.0, a two-page approach that will not be continued. The inner workings of 3.0 will come from the more modest 1.75.

Let us know what you think!

XO 1.5: Create, Collaborate, Contribute

As the mystery around the XO-1.5 unfurls, take part in something historic! Approximately 30 XO-1.5 B2 units are now available at OLPC in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Given that our supply is limited, we want our allocation to be fair and meritocratic. Here are some key points to remember for this round:

  • Hardware and software developers will get priority over educators.
  • Educators will get in on the next round – the hardware and software need to work first!
  • Certain projects may possibly be vetoed if they are violent or unsuitable in nature.
  • Worldwide shipping and customs/import fees are included in this participation.

Don’t know where to start? Use the following as general starting points for your ideas:

Need something more specific? Here’s a list of suggestions based on notes from Daniel Drake:

  • Voice chat (maybe even VoIP? Imagine the XO doubling up as a phone!)
  • Project Karma, the superb endeavor led by the OLE Nepal team.
  • Physics activity – Can the make-believe “Physics” world interface with the real world? Think sensors!
  • Media editing activity – Going beyond simply “Record“ing on the XO.
  • Programming activities – Building upon Pippy, Develop and maybe even an activity for LOGO.
  • Sustenance activities – Build/improve upon Simcity, FoodForce II, or be inspired by  The Incredible Machine!
  • Ebooks – take a look at the latest Read activity and its support for annotations and formats, and build upon it.
  • Touchpad activity – How do I use the touchpad? A simple but much needed activity.
  • Low level stuff – the new video driver, for instance.
Create, Collaborate, Contribute

Create, Collaborate, Contribute

The Contributors Program is a thriving program that has seeded a whole set of unique and interesting projects around the world. Dare to contribute a Project ranging across educational, technological, and/or outreach initiatives… Want to know more about Contributors Program? Read our FAQ at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors#FAQ

Further XO-1.5 test units will likely not be available until December (around release time of the XO-1.5) so find your muse, get your ideas together, and send them in! Interested folks need to email contributors@laptop.org explaining how their software/development or other projects impacts children. Take a look at this form http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program/Project_proposal_form and submit your proposal!

Come Meet the New XO-1.5

The OLPC hardware sneak peak event of the year is heading toward DC!
It's not the machine. It's the movement.

Samuel Klein from OLPC will be presenting the newer, faster, stronger X0-1.5 laptop.  There are some great new additions to our education-enhancing machine, and plenty to get excited about.*

As most of you know, One Laptop per Child has been working tirelessly to spread education/information access across the globe – mostly in the remotest locations – while simultaneously ramping up quality, pushing down costs, and searching for ever-improving environments for the XO’s hardware and software. Come by, sit back, and enjoy a well-guided tour through fascinating complexities and dramatic possibilities that are developing both on the home-front and in the fields.**

OLPC Learning Club DC and HacDC are also expected to announce their joint launch of an XO Lending Library and share details on the local activities that keep OLPC and Sugar Labs going strong.

We hope you will join us and engage in the conversation, helping to push the frontier of education, information accessibility, and collaboration into the revolutionary years ahead.

Where:  HacDC, on 1525 Newton Street NW, Washington, in the church sanctuary

When: Tuesday, September 8th, 7:30pm

* See for instance the XO-1.5 hardware specs .

** Looking to get ahold of a brand-new XO-1.5? Developers, teachers and contributors are encouraged to complement the new XO with new learning content, as always

Update: This will be taking place during our Community Book Sprint (September 6-11) capturing stories of real-world classroom issues. Get in touch to help out over the coming week!

An XO reflection, 2 years out

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).