A recent blog post from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD), UNESCO and UNICEF makes excellent recommendations for providing quality early childhood learning opportunities to every child. According to the article, 50% of preschool-aged children do not participate in early childhood educational opportunities. In low income countries, the percent of children without access to early childhood education increases to 85%. These children are missing critical opportunities for learning and development.

One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to provide quality preschool learning opportunities to every child. In order to meet this goal, experts from the OECD, UNESCO and UNICEF met in December 2018 to discuss this crisis and to make recommendations for providing quality early childhood learning experiences to every child. The experts urged governments to increase funding and to work across sectors to achieve universal preschool education for every child.

You can read more about the recommendations HERE.

OLPC applauds this effort to join forces across sectors in order to ensure that every child has access to a quality early childhood education. Together, we can ensure that every child has an equal opportunity for learning in order to create a brighter future for all.

Scratch 3.0 has arrived and the Scratch team announced an updated Creative Computing Curriculum Guide! The Guide will share ideas and suggestions for facilitating creative learning and computing. It will be available in the next couple of months. We’ll be sure to post it as soon as it is complete! In the meantime, the Scratch Ed Team has updated the second version of the Guide which reflects many of the updates to Scratch 3.0.

Every OLPC Laptop comes with Scratch as part of the Sugar Learning Software. It is a wonderful way for children to learn animation and programming in a fun and engaging way.

You can access the guide HERE.

Happy Creative Learning!

Get updated activities for our XO-1, XO-1.5, XO-1.75 and XO-4 laptops. Use the Software Update icon in My Settings.

Or to install afresh, see the release notes for OLPC OS 13.2.10.

Some of the updates are a mirror mode for hairstyling with Record, use an external USB microscope or camera for Record, a ticking Clock, a samples button for Physics, paste unformatted and grid creator with Write, and new keyboard shortcuts for Jukebox and Record.

Our thanks to Sugar Labs developers; Yash Agrawal, Walter Bender, Rahul Bothra, Ibiam Chihurumnaya, Sanatan Kumar, Emily Ong, Sam Parkinson, Ezequiel Pereira, Lubomir Rintel, and Zeeshan Khan.

Our thanks also to translators; Chris Leonard, Berend, Božidar Putanec, Mariana, Besnik Bleta, Paulo Francisco, Yaron, nabil509, Mariana, juanpabl, MIkusan, and scootergrisen.

On behalf of the OLPC team and the communities we serve, we wish you a wonderful 2019! Thank you for supporting the OLPC mission to provide every child with a quality, innovative education.

With the holiday season now here, we’d like to take a moment to ask for your support for the OLPC education program. Each donation received helps support education for children around the world. As you make your holiday preparations, please consider a gift to support the education of a child through the One Laptop Per Child education program.

Thank you for supporting OLPC around the world!