Nicaragua: Fundación Zamora Terán expands to the legendary island of Ometepe

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Fundación Zamora Terán recently expanded the work of OLPC Nicaragua to include the community on the beautiful and legendary Ometepe, an island formed by the two volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua.



Teachers play a key role in the use of the XO laptop, incorporating it into daily planning and classroom activities. Maria Josefina Terán Zamora, its founder, said of their new island initiative:

“During the past two years, we’ve been working hard to ensure that our OLPC project is one of the best in the world and delivers the maximum benefit to our children. Today we are very happy to include the children of Ometepe and connect them to the rest of Nicaragua and to the world.”

The Fundación coordinates and executes XO purchase logistics and installation and provides a high level of technical support. A pedagogical training plan has been developed with the support of a qualified educational team that facilitates the integration of the XO into the existing Ministry of Elementary School Education Curriculum. Schools participating in the OLPC project must meet specific selection criteria.

The Ometepe initiative has been supported particularly by contribution from the LAFISE-BANCENTRO Bank, and brings to 25,000 the number of XOs distributed to children in schools across the country.

You can read the official press release.


Sri Lanka completes first stage of national OLPC plan

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Sri Lanka is a good example of collaboration between government, ngo’s, and international bodies.
They began an OLPC pilot in 2009, with support from World Vision Lanka, to see what a national laptop initiative might look like. This month they have finished deploying XOs to the last of their 13 pilot schools, chosen from each region of the country.

The program has been supported by the faculty at Colombo University, with educators working on a digital curriculum, texts that are included on every XO, and over 80 software programs (in Sinhala and Tamil) for students in grades 1-5.

Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena, overseeing the program, sees the XOs as “an ideal solution for the underprivileged schools which do not have electricity supply”. Now the ministry is considering how to expand this to the nation’s other primary schools.

Costa Rica prepares for a 25K laptop program

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Costa Rica has had many experiments with OLPC over the past years, including support from Costa Rica University.

Recently the Education Ministry, working with the Fundación Quirós Tanzi and national retailer Gessa, has launched the Conectándonos project to connect young students to the Internet. The program started this month with a deployment of 1500 XOs to students and teachers, and is scheduled to reach 25,000 students by 2013.

They have engaged teachers and community leaders in the development of the project so far, and seem to be planning quite a well-balanced and integrated program.

Costeau Collective auctions off their creative advice to benefit OLPC

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The 10-person creative team @ the Costeau Collective is auctioning two days of marathon designwork for any project at all; proceeds to benefit OLPC.   A cool idea.

Update: The auction raised over $9,000 — enough to support an entire classroom! A hearty thanks to the Collective for their creative support. (So who was the lucky winning bidder?)