CEO of One Laptop per Child received award “Los 100 Colombianos” from President of Colombia

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Rodrigo Arboleda honored as 2012 “100 Colombians”

Photo: Kien&Ke

Rodrigo Arboleda, Chairman and CEO of One Laptop per Child
Association) was honored last Wednesday December 5, in a ceremony presided over by President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia as a 2012 recipient of the “100 Colombians”.

President Juan Manuel Santos

The award annually recognizes Colombian-born individuals living outside Colombia for their exceptional contribution to the country and the world. Arboleda was recognized for his leadership of OLPC and for his thirty year effort to introduce IT technology in the schools in Colombia, his birthplace.

Arboleda’s first project in IT technology for Colombian children began in 1982 when he convinced then President Belisario Betancur to introduce an online learning platform developed by his classmate Nicholas Negroponte and the French government.

Rodrigo Arboleda, Nicholas Negroponte, Alfonso Ospina

In 2008 Arboleda worked with then Minister of Defense Santos to launch an OLPC 1:1 learning project in a previously FARC guerrilla controlled part of Colombia. Today through his efforts there are over 30,000 OLPC laptops in use by children across Colombia, most
recently in the town of Itagui, Antioquia, and new projects with government, non-profit
and private sector organizations are being added monthly.

Itagüi

Arboleda is also a founding member of the Give To Colombia Foundation, and an active member of their Board of Directors. He was, for 6 years, a member of the board of Trustees of Save The Children Foundation, one of the largest charities in the world.

“I have worked tirelessly for my native Colombia to improve the quality of children’s
education and the support of so many organizations has been instrumental to this
success” said Arboleda. “I am honored to be recognized for my efforts and for President
Santos’s involvement in this event. I look forward to giving back to my native Colombia
for many more years to come”, said Arboleda.

One Laptop per Child Launches Social Program with Colombian Government

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Miami, FL. One Laptop per Child Association (“OLPCA”) announced today that it
has entered into an agreement with the Colombian Government through La Agencia
Nacional para la Superación de la Pobreza Extrema –“ANSPE.” ANSPE is responsible
for the development and implementation of a strategy to alleviate the most severe
poverty in Colombia. The ANSPE initiative is under the direction of the President’s
Office and ANSPE Director, Samuel Azout.

Under the agreement, OLPCA will provide its XO laptops to children in Chia,
Colombia. The project aims to support children as the catalysts to improve the
overall welfare of their families. The children will use specially designed software
and games on the laptops to facilitate greater use of the laptops by their parents.
Through the provision of education to both children and their parents, ANSPE hopes
to find that the overall welfare of the family improves. Children will use the laptops
in school and they will take the laptops home after school. Traditionally, 70% of
laptop usage in an OLPCA project occurs outside the classroom. This is one of the
first projects that will formally evaluate the benefits to the parents and the family
from the availability and use of a laptop in the home.

“OLPCA has always played a significant role in increasing social inclusion through its
projects. To work with the national government and ANSPE on a project that could
be expanded nationwide is a great opportunity for OLPCA,” said Rodrigo Arboleda,
CEO of OLPCA. “OLPCA has a long history in Colombia, with over 30 projects in
different locations, and we are honored to be selected by the Government to start
such an innovative program for the alleviation of poverty,” said Arboleda.

OLPC Selects MyCityWay To Deliver Creative Urban Content for Kids Ages 6-12

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As part of its expansion, One Laptop Per Child, has selected MyCityWay, a mobile tech company that produces personalized mobile apps to guide people’s experiences around cities, as a core technology partner. MyCityWay will develop a platform and apps that combine MyCityWay’s signature high-tech location-aware services with a compelling interactive family-oriented education experience that helps young students explore their dream profession in context with their city and surroundings.

This partnership marks one of One Laptop Per Child’s first major efforts to develop education content and other programs for American students across the US and then worldwide in OLPC deployments, beginning next year.  MyCityWay will deliver a location-aware educational experience on Android-based devices offering multi-dimensional content on the themes of exploration and discovery related to a student’s environs.

“We see this opportunity opening up the world in new ways for young Americans,” said Sonpreet Bhatia, co-founder of MyCityWay. “This project utilizes our location content and personalization capabilities for educational purposes, which we believe will make a significant difference in the lives of the next generation of Americans.”

This is a significant U.S. initiative for One Laptop Per Child whose mission is to empower the world’s underserved children through education.  The organization’s aim is to provide each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected device.

“MyCityWay’s platform and apps offer new ideas and possibilities for American students,” said Rodrigo Arboleda, CEO, One Laptop Per Child. “We see this partnership allowing us to spark larger conversations with students and their families about the future, and realize that there is not just one path to achieving a goal.”

MyCityWay

Founded in 2009, MyCityWay, based in New York City, is a mobile tech company that produces self-learning, personalized mobile interfaces and apps to guide people around cities.  Today, the company’s apps service has grown significantly connecting with consumers in more than 85 cities around the world. MyCityWay’s platform delivers unique mobile apps and targeted engagement for major brands in media, travel & hospitality, and events.  For more information visit our website

Occidental Mindoro pupils enjoy world connectivity

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From the Office of the President of the Philippines

A laptop for every pupil of Occidental Mindoro is now a looming possibility. Thanks to the mayor who dared to dream and the governor who is turning that dream into bigger reality.

Mayor Juan Sanchez of Lubang, Occidental Mindoro is a hands-on town executive who sees to it that the elementary school children in his municipality are equipped with the latest technology to improve learning. Thus, the “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) project was born to benefit Grade IV pupils of Lubang Central School and Maligaya Elementary School in 2010- becoming the first OLPC adoption in Southeast Asia.

Now on its second year, Lubang’s OLPC project has provided 210 XO laptops units – 100 from National Computer Center Community Outreach and another 110 XO laptops from Sanchez’ friends who chose to remain anonymous. These were distributed to another generation of grade IV pupils in the same pilot schools. Last year’s recipients are now computer-savvy.

The XO is extremely durable, functional, energy-efficient and fun.

Sanchez observes – which the teachers confirm – “the use of the XO laptop has given the pupils not just computer-literacy but better appreciation for education.” They learn, share, create and collaborate. The XO laptop is designed for the use of children ages 6 to 12-covering the years of elementary school.

Education Secretary Br. Armin A. Luistro FSC said: “We need a broader collaboration to reach our school children through the social investment of individuals and business communities. We see this as a key step in what could eventually lead to an information communication technology (ICT)-enabled education for the youth of Occidental Mindoro.”

The XO has been designed to provide the most engaging wireless network available. The laptops are connected to each other, even when they are off. If one laptop is connected to the Internet, the others can follow to the web.

Children can share information on the web (if provided with internet access), gather by videoconference, make music together, edit texts, read e-books, take photos, make videos and produce projects using Sugar software.

Encouraged by the many benefits of OLPC, Occidental Mindoro Governor Josephine Y. Ramirez –Sato has decided to expand the project to include the provision of XO laptops for Grade IV pupils in the remaining ten municipalities of the province.

North Carolina teachers and students will now have access to Common Core aligned lesson plans

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Charlotte, North Carolina teachers and students will now have access to Common Core aligned lesson plans that emphasize the use of The Sugar Learning Platform.

In early 2013, over 2,500 teachers and students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Project L.I.F.T. Zone will receive a connected XO laptop with the latest Sugar Learning Platform software. Nearly 200 exemplar lesson plans and onsite pedagogical support will accompany these laptops.

This collection, available free of charge, includes lesson plan samples for teachers and students from kindergarten to fifth grade. Math and reading lesson plans are aligned with the recently adopted Common Core, a national blueprint for teaching and learning that has now been adopted by 45 states and three territories. The Core aims to ensure that all students, no matter where they live, are prepared for success in postsecondary education and the workforce. Science, social studies and arts plans will be accessible and aligned with North Carolina Essential Standards.

Project L.I.F.T. Zone Superintendent Denise Watts recognizes this collection as “the beginning of a new way of teaching and learning.” Watts, a former educator herself, sees these tools as “the support teachers need to ensure effective implementation of technology into the classroom.”

Continue to visit the site for new, innovative approaches to teaching using The
Sugar Learning Platform. Professional development communities will continue to
work throughout the year to perfect lesson plans and project ideas.

Sugar 0.98 with touch support in the UI is the new version of the Sugar learning platform

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The release of Sugar 0.98 also incorportates many improvements to the GTK3 port. The Sugar Developer Team deserves a resounding celebatory cheer of thanks for their effort.

OLPC has been incorporating Sugar 0.98 in the 13.1 series of builds, available for download to run on the XO.

What is new for users?

Alphabetical ordering in the Home View

The icons in the Home View are now ordered alphabetically. This change has been applied to the favourites view and the activities list view.

What’s new for developers?

Activity Authors guidelines

The most important change is that the GTK+ 2 based sugar-toolkit has been deprecated since Sugar 0.96. Newly written activities should use sugar-toolkit-gtk3, which is based on GTK+ 3 and Pygobject3, now. There will be only bug fixes being available in the future for the old toolkit no new features will be made available for it and it will probably go away at one point completely. Detailed guidelines for porting existing activities can be found at Features/GTK3/Porting.

Tutorials

There is a brand new step-by-step guide for developing Activities under Fedora 17.

For more details click here.