OLPC Mongolia is pretty in pastel


OLPC Mongolia header

OLPC Mongolia banner, from laptop.gov.mn


OLPC Mongolia’s national website has been steadily adding new information about their program, and their site looks beautiful. I need to get a proper translation of their blog, which often goes into extreme detail.

They have charming walkthroughs for every core activity (here’s WikipediaEN and Speak. And they love to share data… sometimes in 3D.

Australia, Oceania, Nepal and Canada are leading the way in terms of detailed maps of the schools involved in pilots; it would be great to see what artistic style Mongolia adds to that meme.

OLPC Canada and Canadian Sugar (Maple Syrup?) announced

The Belinda Stronach Foundation has launched a new OLPC Canada website describing their current plans, partners, and development of learning materials (and a new Sugar-like interface using aboriginal designs…)

Thanks are due to BMO Financial and the Ontario government, and the other partners who helped bring the TBSF plans to fruition – most recently with a $750,000 grant. They have published a map of the schools involved in their first-round pilot (some 2800 students and teachers in all), and are planning to expand it to 5000 participants before it ends.

It’s great to see all of these developments in North America at last. Mexico is also seeing an expansion of their program into Nayarit on the western coast, with their initial workshops beginning soon.

OLPC SF Community Summit 2010, Oct 22-24

OLPC’s global community of contributors and volunteers is gathering for its largest ever meeting to date, on the weekend of October 22-24, in San Francisco! Thanks to the OLPC San Francisco Community led by Professor Sameer Verma, and our gracious host San Francisco State University.  If you want to take a stand for global education rights For All in this 21st century, now is your time — OLPC’s Global Community is a friendly and supportive network inviting you too to Stand & Deliver:

The OLPC SF Community Summit 2010 will be a community-run event bringing together educators, technologists, anthropologists, enthusiasts, champions and volunteers. We share stories, exchange ideas, solve problems, foster community and build collaboration around the One Laptop per Child project and its mission worldwide.

Now we’re taking the next step, bringing together the voices of OLPC experience, Sugar Labs, the Realness Alliance — and yourself. Check out our growing list of social entrepreneurs who’ve already signed up from Uruguay, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Nicaragua, Africa, Afghanistan, India, Philippines, France, UK, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Canada, Birmingham and beyond.  Then please consider joining us, adding your own contribution/testimonial and photo!

Repair workshop this Saturday at OLPC HQ

This Saturday we’re holding a repair workshop and presentation — if you haven’t torn down your XO and rebuilt it from the motherboard up, now’s your chance to try on someone else’s machine — and to learn how to break down and rebuild one in under half an hour, with nothing but a Phillips screwdriver!

We’re holding a workshop Saturday through the early afternoon. RSVP if you’re planning to come. The machines worked on will primarily be XO-1’s, since those are still the machines most likely encountered in the field. The major differences on the 1.5 make these sorts of repair much easier, not more complex — there’s little reason to take apart the bottom on a 1.5, for instance, since the keyboards just pop out.

OLPC comes to Doomadgee in rural Queensland

OLPC Australia is in the middle of providing 300 children and teachers with XOs in Doomadgee, Queensland. This continues their work in Aboriginal regions across the continent (see their amazing school-by-school map).  I always look forward to the updates of that particular map – which colors every school deployment by whether it is completed or not.