”Enhance Learning through Technology” conference in Rwanda

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From 5th to 7th august 2012, Rwanda held an international conference on technology in education with the theme ”Enhance Learning through Technology”. This conference took place at Kigali Serena Hotel. Professor Nicholas Negroponte (founder and chairman of One Laptop per Child); Rodrigo Arboleda (Chairman and CEO of OLPCA) and Sergio Romero (Vice President of Operations and Africa) were invited to attend this conference of technology in education.

In his presentation, Professor Nicholas Negroponte, mentioned that as you cannot compete with world food program  (WFP) which feeds bodies, you cannot compete with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) which feeds children’s brains. He also emphasized on OLPC as an educational project not a computer project as some would think. In his presentation he also talked about a research being done in Ethiopia about what could happen if technology is brought in the hands of illiterate children.  “These children proved to work by themselves to use the tablets, to read and to learn.” he said. 

Kagabo Callixte, a 12 years, grade six, from a local school presented his project using an XO on pollution. He used Scratch activity to describe different causes of pollution and how to prevent it.  The participants were amazed and happy on how this 12 year child presented confidently in front of older people. He mentioned how the XO laptop is important to his life and how it fits in his dreams of becoming a future engineer. Watch Kagabo presentation on YouTube.

After the conference, OLPC officials, together with NKUBITO Bakuramutsa (OLPC Rwanda coordinator) went to Smaldone Primary School (a deaf and mute primary schools that use XO laptops). At the school, the officials observed how children were using the XO laptops  in different activities. Children mentioned how happy they are with the laptops and thanked professor Nicholas and his excellence Paul Kagame to think about them in releasing them from loneliness. When asked by Professor Nicholas about what they could change on the XO laptop to suit their needs, the children mentioned that visual activities could be more useful since they cannot hear.

The conference was ended by a Gala dinner, where a cultural dance troupe entertained the participants, a gift of recognition was handled to professor Nicholas Negroponte as a key note speaker.

by Intwali Parfait Jimmy; OLPC technical and learning Officer

 

“Why I hope kids in Ethiopia can teach us something profound about education.” by Nicholas Negroponte

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I believe that we get into trouble when knowing becomes a surrogate for learning. We know that a vast recall of facts about something is in no way a measure of understanding them. At best, it is necessary but not sufficient. And yet we subject our kids to memorizing. We seem to believe that rote learning is akin to physical exercise, good for their minds. And, quite conveniently, we can test whether the facts stuck, like spaghetti to a wall. In some cases knowledge is so drilled in that you know and hate a subject at the same time.

The closest I have ever come to thinking about thinking is writing computer programs. This involves teasing apart a process into constituent parts, step-by-step functions, and conditional statements. What is so important about computer programs is that they (almost) never work the first time. Since they do something (versus nothing), just not what you wanted, you can look at the (mis)behavior to debug and change your code. This iterative process, so common in computer programming, is similar to learning.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit association that I founded, launched the so-called XO Laptop in 2005 with built-in programming languages. There are 2.5 million XOs in the hand of kids today in 40 countries, with 25 languages in use. In Uruguay, where all 400,000 kids have an XO laptop, knowing how to program is required in schools. Estonia just did the same. In Ethiopia, 5,000 kids are writing computer programs in the language Squeak.

OLPC represents about $1 billion in sales and deployment worldwide since 2005—it’s bigger than most people think. What have we learned? We learned that kids learn a great deal by themselves. The question is, how much?

 To answer that question, we have now turned our attention to the 100 million kids worldwide who do not go to first grade. Most of them do not go because there is no school, there are no literate adults in their village, and there is little promise of that changing soon. My colleagues and I have started an experiment in two such villages, asking a simple question: Can children learn how to read on their own?
If you want to learn more about this research, read the original post here.

 

Itagüí: Educational Revolution

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Itaguí’s Municipal Administration in partnership with the University EAFIT began a technological modernization project in Educational Institutions

On Tuesday September 4th, Itagüí’s Municipal Mayor, CARLOS ANDRES TRUJILLO, officially handed over the first massive installment of XO computers from One Laptop per Child (OLPC) to teachers of basic primary education official institutions of the municipalities. The main event took place at the Southern Cultural Auditorium in Itagüí (Antioquia, Colombia).

Thus, Itagüí began a process of educational revolution in the implementation of the use and appropriation of technology information and communications  that are planned for the education sector and that is being conducted in partnership with the University EAFIT. The project also seeks to raise awareness and ensure the appropriate use of new technologies among all students and make full use of these tools by teachers for the continuous improvement of the teaching process, which will be reflected in management plans  within the 24 official educational institutions.

Photo by rededucativaitagui

The project includes in its first phase leaving a defined strategy that allows for the proper implementation of technologies in the classroom, for which, activities such as training of teachers, school administrators and adequacy of the infrastructure necessary for the operation thereof are being carried out. To do this, educational institutions with XO laptops have already been endowed; in each of the classrooms a whiteboard was installed, each of them gas given a video beam and they installed a central database (CPU) with keyboard and mouse. Additionally, an educational software that allows students to create new experiences, innovate and develop their intellectual capacities and technologies facing the globalized world has been prepared.

Photo by rededucativaitagui

The Municipal Administration has been working hard in order to improve school environment and provide new tools that allow the education sector of the municipality move forward and become a national model framed in change and transformation of education.

Photo by rededucativaitagui

OLPC Update

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One Laptop per Child has grown and suceeded over the years in part due to the efforts
of an extraordinary unpaid volunteer community who have dedicated their time and
energy into developing OLPC projects around the world.

One such volunteer is Satish Jha who has devoted years of effort to soliciting interest in
one-to-one laptop computing from various branches of the Indian Government. OLPC is
grateful for all of his efforts and commitment to the OLPC mission.

As OLPC continues to evolve, we are placing greater emphasis on soliciting project sponsors from the private sector and foundations. Such an approach requires a new
team and a new approach in India. Future projects with any branch of the Indian
Government will be directly handled by the OLPC Association based in Miami, Florida,
USA.

Therefore, as of August 31, 2012 Satish Jha no longer represents OLPC in India or
elsewhere. We thank him for his contribution to the OLPC mission.

Any inquiries with respect to new projects in India should be directed to
countries@laptop.org. We expect to announce a new head of the OLPC project in India
in the near future. The OLPC India website (http://olpcindia.net/en/) should no longer be considered an authoritative source of information on OLPC in India or elsewhere.

Teacher from Nicaragua shares her experience with the XO

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My name is Reyna Flores. I teach a combination of multigrade grades third through sixth at the little school Miguel Larreynaga in Tipitapa.

I hope that, like me, other teachers could have the opportunity to have the XO valuable pedagogical tool for improving the education of our children.

When working with the XO I tell my students that this computer is our “green little friend.” It includes great applications we call activities. We use them in any subject, and something else… We already have Internet! which allows us to enter the world of information.

Now, I want to share the pedagogical aspect in class:

As I teach four grades, the XO has been very important to increase the ammount of information, documents and materials that reinforce learning. I used to have difficulties when I taught geometrical bodies to third graders because there are children who have no geometric kits, then the activity called Paint Activity allows them to draw them.

When learning language arts, we use information obtained from Wikipedia and the children of the upper grades elaborate didactic schemes with the Maze activity as an alternative to reading techniques.

In physical education a stopwatch is needed to record the time-distance speed according to each student’s age. The XO has one.

In cultural and artistic expression we have no access to a marimba or the sounds that the student must know so here we come to the TamTamMini activity.

In science class, using the Record activity, children make their community tours taking pictures of what they believe is part of the environment and even pollution issues.

I also believe that the XO supports students who have some learning difficulties. For example, a child in third grade had pronunciation problems with the consonants L and R, so I asked him to write a list of words using the Sara activity, this way, the student could improve his diction.

At the end of each period, children take their homework and they relax with activities and Games that help them increase skills and mental agility.

Courage, dear colleagues! Let work for the children in Nicaragua. Lets focus on endeavor, affection, good will and the mystique that has always characterized teachers.

I invite other teachers to participate in the column “Teachers speak” because we must all learn from others’ experiences.

* Teacher at Miguel Larreynaga school, Tipitapa.

Are you working with XO laptops that need an upgrade?

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By Martin Langhoff, Software Architect – OLPC

Part of our focus is to support deployments that have made a long term commitment to work with us. When we have new models, we work hard to provide them as an upgrade.

This means that if you have today XO-1 or XO-1.5 laptops you can purchase an upgrade kit that will turn it into an XO-1.75. It does require that you perform the motherboard replacement, but the savings can be significant.

XO-1.75 with grid membrane and mechanical keyboard. Photo by Sandra Barragan

With this upgrade you get a modern ARM CPU, much lower power consumption (it runs long hours on each battery charge, and performs fantastically well on solar panels). Depending on options, you can get larger RAM and storage. You can also choose to get the new grid membrane keyboard.

If you are thinking of doing this, get in touch with us. If you know the SKU number of the laptops you have, which you can find in the battery compartment, that will make the process easier.

For each variant of the XO you need a slightly different upgrade kit, so it is important that we get it right. Our engineers have done quite a bit of work to plan the different upgrade kits.
Do you know of any laptop manufacturer that supports upgrading 5 year old models to the latest and greatest with a motherboard change, and at a fraction of the cost?

At this time, there is a minimum order quantity of 100 kits. If you are interested in ordering 100 upgrade kits or more, please contact Leah@laptop.org  at OLPC for further details. Make sure you indicate the SKU of the units you want to upgrade.

Unfortunately, due to packing, shipping, customs and warranty logistics, OLPC is currently unable to offer upgrade kits for orders under 100 kits. The costs of shipping individual components packed properly is high.

Order quantities of 1000 kits and larger can be processed faster and at lower cost.

If you have an early XO laptop and would like to see it run better and faster, our latest Operating System release can give it a new life, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_notes/12.1.0 .

We thank you for your interest in the OLPC project.