Grand Prairie ISD 1:1 program takes off

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Grand Prairie ISD in Texas is running a saturation 1:1 program, launched in Fall 2009 with two schools: Whitt Elementary and Austin Elementary. They invested in pre-launch efforts, and chose to do everything at once, engaging all parts of the district.

Alisha Crumley, principle of Whitt, reports success and broadly positive feedback for their program.  She describes the process as “pretty seamless, and without challenges… Everyone at the district level that is involved in curriculum, instruction, or technology had a pulse on what was happening.”

That seems a bit rosy without further details.  While they aren’t using XO laptops, they are certainly embracing the spirit of olpc, and I look forward to seeing how they speak about the program in another year.

OLPC Afghanistan in Baghlan

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Part of an ongoing series on OLPC in Afghanistan

This past weekend, OLPC Afghanistan reached Baghlan province, working with the Ministry of Education’s deployment team to provide XOs to 280 children and teachers in grades 4-6  at Firdausi High School.  (In Afghanistan a ‘high school’ can refer to any school whose upper grades reach past 9th grade, but can include students in 1st grade as well.) Firdausi becomes the seventh school in the country to take part in the Ministry pilot program.  The Ministry is working on plans for extending this early work into full-saturation regional or national efforts.

The Firdausi project will integrate the XOs into the school’s teacher planning and curricula, as well as in after-school projects.  They may be used outside of school by families to access training, job information, and resources to develop and improve farms and small businesses.

This pilot rollout was assisted by USAID Afghanistan.  At the end of the day, Earl Gast, the national mission director, commented: “These computers are an investment in Afghanistan’s most important resource – its people.”

: http://blog.laptop.org/2010/07/06/olpc-af-briefing-note/

Young brains and computers: facts and myths

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A post by new contributor Antonio Battro, OLPC’s Chief Education Officer

Recently, there has been much debate about whether computers, video games and electronic gadgets are helpful or harmful to the cognitive development of children. Some naysayers point to a study that says that multi-tasking degrades cognitive performance. The proponents assert that new digital technologies provide new opportunities for creativity and collaboration. This debate is also being played out in ministries of education, universities and classrooms all around the world. The outcome will have a major impact on the education and development of our children.

New disciplines coming from the neurocognitive sciences are changing our theory and practice of education and shaping the new field of neuroeducation. At the same time, new communication and information technologies are changing the way we teach and learn. Millions of children and teachers of the world are sharing and shaping a new neurocognitive digital environment. This formidable transformation has opened a debate that often mixes facts with myths. One of the most disruptive “neuromyths” is that early introduction of computing can harm the brain development of a young child and cause “attention damage.” Some even argue that computing in schools should be introduced only to older children. These are myths that we must replace with facts.

One of the amazing facts is that first and second languages are processed in the same cortical regions of the brain when the second language is learned early in life. Otherwise, the second language is shifted to different circuits of the cortex. In a sense, when humans use a computer and share the same digital environment they are using a second language, or “digitalese.” Postponing the new linguistic skills needed in a digital world contradicts scientific findings in neurolinguistics.
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OLPC Afghanistan recap

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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)

PaleXO + Opensource = PyXO!

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PaleXO, a team of amazing and enthusiastic volunteers dedicated to working with the XO and supporting childhood education in Palestine, just hosted their first python workshop, cleverly titled PyXO!

One of their members, Mohammad Nawahda, decided to start the dynamic team “to make sure PaleXOers get the proper training about Python to ensure they have what it takes to start developing some great local activities and customizing others.” The workshop appeared to be a great success with tons of members from the community excited to get involved and gain basic python training in order to help develop new activities to help Palestinian children learn with their XOs!

Check out their full blog post here!