Trains, planes, automobiles

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Original by Sameer Verma – July 8th, 2013

 

I had quite the whirlwind trip to India for a four week period across Dec 2012-Jan 2013. After coming back, I presented about it at the OLPC San Francisco monthly meeting in January ’13. Then, in the hubbub of my spring semester at SF State, I promptly forgot to write it up. So, here it is, a few months late:

I landed in Mumbai (I still like to call it Bombay) right after Christmas eve, and promptly took off for Ahmedabad, Gujarat. After a few meetings with some friends and acquaintances, I ended up presenting to the governing board of CHARUSAT University, and subsequently to their student body over a two-day period. Across several meetings, I had the opportunity to talk about children, education, OLPC and Sugar to their faculty, staff and over 1200 students. It was a tiring visit, but a good one. CHARUSAT has a social responsibility component, and may look to support such a program in some of their neighboring villages.

XO

 

Continue reading the full story here.

“Fruits of Our Harvest Fundaunibán” – Urabá, Antioquia

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Bulletin No. 230 “Fruits of  Our Harvest Fundaunibán”

In Urabá, laptop deployment advancing  as a tool for learning.

We invite you to read and know the results of the work done with children of Urabá, Antioquia, Colombia.

 

http://issuu.com/marianaludmilacortes/docs/no230_-_en_urab____avanza_implement

Non-flash version here.

Family Oriented XO Tablet Debuts at Walmart for $149

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Captura de pantalla 2013-07-14 a las 20.32.06The new family-friendly XO Tablet debuts July 16 on Walmart.com and will be in Walmart stores on August 1, and will provide kids with a fun and exciting new way to build, learn and dream at their own pace via a powerful Android tablet packed with free educational games, apps, videos, e-books and more. The flexible tablet also grows with the family offering up to three separate user accounts plus full-fledged Android tablet functionality with parental-controlled access to conventional Android apps and the Google Play store.

“The XO Tablet is the first and only tablet designed specifically to help kids explore their dreams and spark their imaginations,” said Jeff Saka, president of Vivitar. “Not only does it combine active learning with fun, imaginative play, but parents can also feel confident in giving the durable and secure XO Tablet to children of any ageand they can even use it themselves.”

The only multilingual (English/Spanish) and Google-Certified tablet for kids on the market, the XO Tablet and on-board XO Learning System were designed and developed by One Laptop per Child (OLPC) to harness the power of a touchscreen device to create new ways for children to learn. The tablet’s child-friendly interface, cover and packaging were developed by legendary designer Yves Behar and his team at the Fuse Project. Priced affordably at just $149.99 MSRP, the XO Tablet from Vivitar features a 7-inch 1024 x 600 dpi hi-resolution screen and a 1.64GHz dual-core processor running the latest Android Jelly Bean OS with nearly 8 hours of battery life to deliver a high-performance user experience at an exceptional value. The tablet will also be available in Canada and Europe in the French and Italian languages later this year.

“Touchscreens are intuitive for children, making the XO Tablet an optimal platform for educational interaction and creativity and ideal for our US retail debut with Vivitar,” noted Rodrigo Arboleda, Chairman and CEO, OLPC. “With the XO Learning System at the center of this tablet, OLPC along with our content partners, are able to offer curated, state-of-the-art learning technology to kids and their families across the country.”

XO Learning System content has been curated and selected for age-appropriateness and learning value by OLPC in collaboration with Common Sense Media, a leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping parents and teachers make informed decisions about media. Additional OLPC partners include Oxford University Press, Discovery Kids Puterbugs, TED, Story Emporium, MyCityWay, Pipo Ceibal, Little Pim, WeWantToKnow-DragonBox+, JokerWare, Zeptolab, Brain POP, Kids Yoga Journey, Bankeroo, Sesame Street and others.

Dreams Dashboard and On-Board Apps Provide World-Class Educational Curriculum

The XO’s unique Dreams interface lets kids explore more than 100 free pre-loaded apps, games, books and other content over a $250 value based on subject areas, interests and skill level. Children can choose their own learning adventure depending on what they want to be today, or when they grow up. Options like “I want to be an…” XO Artist, Engineer, Chef, Mathematician, Musician, Teacher, Traveler and more give kids a wide array of activities to choose from with content created by world-class partners.

XO Journal, Parental Controls Provide Insight and Security

The XO Tablet is designed to help parents become actively involved in their child’s tablet use and learning progress. With support for up to three user accounts, parents can set specific permissions for each user to control access to apps, the Internet, games and Google Play. These password-protected privileges can be adjusted anytime as the child matures to offer wider access and more capabilities.

With the innovative XO Journal tool, parents can gain unique insight into how each child is using the device, how much time they spend on each app, and where their interests and strengths lie. Parents can even view each child’s learning progress and how their performance compares to other children of their age.

Each XO Tablet features both a front- and rear- facing camera and comes with a protective bumper case and charger. The The XO Tablet is available now on Walmart.com and is coming soon to other other U.S. Retailers, including Walmart stores. For more information, visit www.xotablet.com or the xo-learning.org blog

The upcoming XO Tablet: A parent’s perspective

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Original by sverma on Tue, 07/09/2013 – 18:56

Every afternoon, when I go to pick up my daughters from school, I ask them “What did you do in school today?” Several years into the ritual, it has become a habitual question now, and I get varying degrees of responses from them, depending on their mood, and what they feel like sharing. To me, it’s of paramount importance to hear it from them. At least until they stop sharing with me smiley 7800 miles away, the parents of Anshu in Bhagmalpur, India would like to know as well. They are curious about what Anshu does on his OLPC XO laptop all day. In Jamaica, where I now have three projects, parents of John also want to know how he spends his time on his OLPC laptop. The teachers are curious about time spent on different activities (apps in OLPC/Sugar parlance). The principal wants to know if the sudden leap in math scores has anything to do with the children playing with Tuxmath every chance they get! Feedback is important. In fact, there is now an entire field of “Learning Analytics” that is growing rapidly. If you’ve used a “dashboard” in SalesForce or Drupal, then you know where this is going.

Anshu checking his Wi-Fi signal in Bhagmalpur, India

OLPC laptops use Sugar as their learning environment. Sugar uses the metaphor of a journal to store the work of a child. The Journal allows for personal reflection on what the child does, and pick up where she left off and continue to build. Think of the Journal as a mini dashboard for the child. The concept of a file is gone. How nice! The only reason we call them “files” is because we have grown up in a world of filing cabinets (I have one in my office), with folders holding files and documents. That’s our world of metaphors. What does a child in the Amazon know of filing cabinets?!

A Sugar Journal

While the Journal is detailed enough to give the child a view of her world, as a parent, I would like to know about aggregates. How often does my daughter read a book, as opposed to looking up Wikipedia? How often does she play the Maze, Memorize, and her other favorite activities (apps)? Frequency counts are interesting in giving me a heads-up on how she spends her time. When does she read? A pattern of use across the time of day is useful too. To that end, we now have the Analyze Journal activity.  It provides a summary view of some of the items in the Journal. Think of this as yet another dashboard, but perhaps for a parent or a teacher. As a parent, I can certainly relate to this.

The Analyze Journal activity

The upcoming XO Tablet, is a significantly different product. It is also a significantly different Androidtablet. I saw an early preview back in January, but haven’t seen the finished product yet, so some of this writing is based on the video. Here are a few things I know. It does not run on Sugar, but it does have some interesting features. The Android tablet allows the parent to create accounts for the children. Each account then can have some degree of parental guidance and protection. For instance, I am not a fan of letting my daughters get on to the Internet without supervision. Heck, I don’t even let them watch Disney, without supervision! So, the fact that you can turn Internet access on or off in a profile is very useful. So is the feature of knowing what your child has been doing on the tablet.

Settings per child (screen shot from video)

The XO Tablet implements some features of the concept of a journal. Looks like it is called the Parent Dashboard. One can keep up with some of the progress of one’s child by category. I’d be curious to explore more of this feature.


Parent Dashboard (screen shot from video)

The XO Tablet also allows for switching out of this “Dreams” interface to a full-fledged Android tablet, and includes access to the Google Play store (as the video indicates. See below).

Switching from Dreams interface to full Android (screen shot from video)

The XO Tablet runs on Android, so the Sugar learning environment that we are used to on the OLPC XO laptop isn’t compatible with it. I don’t think we’ll see any of the “View Source” functionalities that we see in Sugar. Android is Open Source (Apache license), while Sugar is Free Software (GPL). The development models and motivations around those kinds of licenses are significantly different. Sugar is developed by Sugarlabs, which sees contributions by OLPC employees and Sugar developers. The “Dreams” interface on the XO Tablet is being built by MorphOSS LTD., a company in New Zealand, and as far as I can tell, the software is neither Free nor Open Source. The tablet also lacks a tactile keyboard, so a fair bit of “production” is ruled out. Imagine writing a letter to a friend on a touch keyboard. I have, and it sucks. That’s a peeve I have against tablets, so it’s not specific to the XO Tablet. Of course, one could argue that in this new age of machines, who needs to write? Simply hit record and communicate! Captain Picard’s “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” is around the corner! However, with the advent of HTML 5 applications for Sugar, and other interesting developments stemming from Android as a base (including Firefox Phone, Ubuntu Touch and others where one can run non-Android systems on an Android-derived Linux base (a different Linux distribution in chroot), I’m hopeful that there will be some degree of convergence. I realize that the XO Tablet is geared for the “first world” markets, but there are plenty of good ideas on it, and while the under-developed world will still need (note: need is different from want) water resistant, dust resistant, robust low-powered laptops – and we have the XO-4 for that – this XO Tablet should be interesting to use in the so-called developed world. It sounds like it will be available via retail outlets soon. I wish the XO-4 was available retail as well, but that’s another blog – in logistics, supply chain management and VAR channels smiley Here’s the marketing video:

You can also hear about it from Giulia D’Amico at OLPC Association: