Making Books Transparent

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Sayamindu and I have been contributing over the course of the year to a Bookserver initiative to define how digital texts are indexed, discovered, and distributed.  The Open Content Alliance organized a conference yesterday and today in San Francisco to help us move forward with Bookserver development, improve the draft specification.  It was an inspiring event, with a lot of good working code and interfaces to share with one another.  Brewster throws a mean party, and when he announced he was hosting one last night to celebrate the launch of the Bookserver project and the Archive’s move into a beautiful new space in the Presidio, some 500 people turned up.  I was pleased to run into Mary Lou, with four laptops sporting new Pixel Qi screens – low power, and yet so very hot.

I spoke about what OLPC is doing with this new specification – Sayamindu’s modified “Get Internet Archive Books” activity was the first client application to use the developing spec and beta book servers – and we spent some time brainstorming ways to improve OPDS.  It’s an open group and process – all input is welcome. Continue reading →

Uruguay completes ambitious 400,000-child XO deployment: first nation to fully implement olpc

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Today Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez handed out the last XO in the initial project of Plan Ceibal, Uruguay’s national olpc project, providing an XO to each of the 395,000 children in primary school from 1st to 6th grade across the country’s 2332 public schools.  Of these, some 1900 are connected to the Internet; and those students and teachers generate a significant percentage of traffic to this and other OLPC websites (sending us hundreds of thousands of visitors a month).

The handout was of the last laptops was made in Montevideo at Escuela 28/80.  It is remarkable to see how quickly they reached this first milestone, and I can’t wait to see what the program does next.

When I visited Uruguay in August, I got to see one day-long handout at a school; the care with which the head teachers worked with every parent to introduce them to the laptop along with their child for a minute apiece as they were taking them home for the first time has stayed with me.  It was very much a social process, not technical training, making what might be foreign to parents seem fun and natural.

Plan Ceibal have already published the most comprehensive evaluations of a full-saturation olpc project to date, for both teachers and administrators, and a series of remarkable videos and books about the project for the lay public.

Continue reading →

School Server v0.6 released

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The School Server is a key component of OLPC deployments — and one that was somewhat late to the stage. So I am pleased to report that there is a new and improved! version 0.6 available.

The main goal of this release is making installation and configuration easier and more reliable. It is an incremental update on the XS-0.5.x codebase, light on new features but strong on the “it just works” side. And very easy to upgrade for XS-0.5.x users.

What is a School Server, you ask? When you deploy XOs to a school, you want a server to connect them to the internet, serve content locally, provide backup  and upgrade services, and more. You can find out more in  our earlier story on it, or jump straight into the wikipage that explains it all.

This release brings:

  • Easier installation. Mysterious ejabberd commands are gone, rejoice!
  • Moodle and the XO authenticate transparently. Register, restart, click the ‘Local Schoolserver’ link in Browse. It just works.
  • Better network scalability. Moodle can directly control the neighbourhood view which is controlled by ejabberd. Now traffic no longer swamps the network and XOs.
  • Delegated security. You can use time-based security even with disconnected or partially connected School Servers.
  • An XO can run as a School Server. Suitable for small schools or groups.  This is still experimental, but is running pretty well.
  • Want to know more?  Read the release notes.

The work for our next release has already started, as people have been working ahead.  More after the jump.

Continue reading →

XO 1.5: Create, Collaborate, Contribute

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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!

OLPC in the Senate: feedback from today’s event

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One Laptop per Child made its public debut on Capitol Hill today with its “Fighting Insurgencies with Laptops” event.

Attendees and speakers, including the ambassadors from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the U.S., painted a picture of an eclectic mix of people from starkly different backgrounds and professions who came together to talk about One Laptop per Child as something that could be a clear manifestation of U.S. smart power. As Senator McCain said, there is nothing better suited to connect and educate this generation of children than OLPC. This refrain was echoed by both the Pakistani and Afghanistan Ambassadors.

Senator McCain speaking about OLPC

Senator McCain speaking about OLPC

This year, we are  expanding our vision by asking Congress to make a concerted push into Afghanistan and the tribal areas of western Pakistan, where isolation and a lack of government reach have spawned some brutal violent extremism.

The OLPC proposal: fight a “soft war” in these areas by giving children access to real education and to the world’s body of knowledge, and by connecting these remote areas to the rest of the planet via computer and satellite.  One child. One laptop. One world.

Sinhala/Tamil XOs in Sri Lanka

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OLPC is making great strides into Sri Lanka, as reported recently in the Sri Lanka Daily News. The small island country, just off the southeast tip of India, is looking to turn a corner after years of internal strife, exacerbated by the devastation of the Tsunami in 2004. It is with great pride and anticipation that OLPC is able to join the Education Ministry and University of Colombo in their goals to provide the nation’s younger generation with skills in Information Technology and the English language.

These complimentary aims, reported by the paper as a motivation for the program that will bring 1,250 new laptops to students in thirteen separate schools, have been widely cited as twin engines propelling innovation and progress in Bangalore, not far across the Palk Straight.

1,250 XO laptops are heading to Sri Lanka!

In addition to the operating system in English, the computers are enabled to operate in either Sinhala or Tamil languages. Please check in (or, better yet, leave word) for progress updates coming out of Sri Lanka. We’re very excited about this new venture and can’t wait to hear back.