Making the world a more intelligent and humane place to live

Posted on by
Reply
Rodrigo Arboleda is giving a keynote address today at the International Symposium on Convergence Technologies (ConTech 2011) in Seoul, Korea – a gathering focused on making the world a more intelligent and humane place to live.   His talk is “Children as a Mission, not a Market“, focusing on the challenges of making modern education available to children in developing parts of the world, and OLPC’s lessons learned to date.

Digital citizenship and hacking: Sugar Camp Lima, Nov 18-19

Posted on by
Reply

Somos Azucar, Activity Central, and escuelab are organizing Sugar Camp Lima on November 18-19, to build a new Sugar image for Peru: complete with Aymara and Quechua localizations, and activities focused on engagement online and “digital citizenship”.  An invitation to the event can be found here, and Sugar enthusiast Yannick Warnier explains why he finds this so exciting in a call for others to join him.

The event has international support, including the Municipality of Lima, Ciudadano Inteligente, and the World Bank.  The XO image developed will be proposed to the national team as a basis for the next update implemented across the country.

If you have an activity you’re hoping to polish up and get into the next Peru image — or are interested in localization, testing, or general Sugar development, this promises to be a great event.  I hope the camp attendees will review and add to the Feedback Actividades page that Claudia recently set up, a place to gather requests and suggestions from students and teachers in the field.

 

To RSVP, or for more information, contact escuelab: contacto@escuelab.org

 

OLPC retrospective in the latest Linux Journal

Posted on by
Reply

SFSU professor and OLPC-SF organizer Sameer Verma wrote a nice project summary in the latest Linux Journal titled OLPC: Are We There Yet?  In it he discusses the state of the project, and what remains to be done before every child has access to tools for their own education.

Sameer writes from the perspective of his own efforts to promote olpc around the world, and that of the Bay-area education hackers who help with everything from testing hardware, Sugar, and peripherals (leggo my WeDo!) to supporting schools in other countries.  It’s a well laid-out piece, with pointers to how local groups can make a difference.

 

 

Make your XO Racy with lightweight PuppyLinux

Posted on by
1

Mavrothal has been promoting PuppyLinux as a lightweight OS for the XO for a long time.  Last year he began releasing polished “XOpup” builds, most recently XOpup 2.2 – providing the most light-weight desktop around for the XO-1 and XO-1.5.

Recently he published a build system that lets anyone build their favorite Puppy-distro for the XO, and has used it to package the latest release: PuppyLinux Racy 5.1.110  (currently only for the XO-1).   This 90MB build includes a softphone app, printing / camera / CD support, and the Mozilla Seamonkey suite (browser, HTML editing, email, newsfeeds, and IRC).

He’s even taking feature requests for the build – give it a spin and let him know what you think.

Book Server 0.01: Pathagar + Sheeva Plug for offline reading

Posted on by
3

Sameer Verma of OLPC-SF, as he mentiond at last week’s amazing community summit, is putting together a book server for use in rural India, with 20,000 books and audio files on it for students and teachers to use locally. He is going to deploy it at a school pilot near his familial hometown.

This is a Pathagar server implementing the OPDS bookserver standard, running on a tiny Sheeva Plug device, accessible over a local network to XOs in the neighborhood.  The Sheeva Plug is low power and has USB and SD ports that make it easy to expand such an offline library.  Here it is plugged in and in use, drawing a total of 4 Watts:

Sayamindu Dasgupta, who contributed to the design of the OPDS specification, developed the Pathagar server to implement the spec; Manuel Quiñones created the version of the server used here.  Book and audio suggestions are welcome for this particular build, and a web-based form for linking to OPDS archives suitable for inclusion in the image will be up shortly.  If you have your own Sheeva Plug, you can torrent the original disk image of this installation.

The setup was load-tested last night, using a simple build: a stock Sheeva Plug and 16GB USB key (total cost: $100). Quick statistics:

  • Power draw: 4W
  • Simultaneous downolads: 500
  • Library size: 10,000 – 50,000 books

For details, images, and a mailing list for discussion, see the bookserver project page.

OLPC and Nickelodeon contest update: winners visit LA for the HALO Awards

Posted on by
Reply

Nickelodeon Latin America and One Laptop per Child announced the wniner of their video contest focused on creating a better environment last month. Primary school children across Latin America were challenged to use their XO laptops to create videos focused on creating a better environment, and the best was judged to be a scratch video from Giuliana Violetta Pozzoli, a 10 year-old girl from Caacupé, Paraguay.

This week Nickelodeon is hosting Giuliana, her mother and teacher at its annual HALO Awards ceremony in Los Angeles — an event recognizing kids who are working hard to make the world a better place. The videos of all five finalists in the contest can be viewed online at http://olpcstories.org.

“Our partnership with Nickelodeon Latin America is a great example of how private sector corporations can work with OLPC to advance children’s education and development,” said Rodrigo Arboleda, CEO of One Laptop per Child. “We look forward to other successful collaborations with Nickelodeon and MTV Networks Latin America, as well as the U.S., in which we continue to inspire children to use their creativity and skills to make a difference in their communities.”

“We are thrilled to have partnered with OLPC on this initiative,” commented Mario Cader-Frech, Vice President Public Affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility for MTV Networks Americas. “The response from kids throughout the region to participate in this contest was amazing, and we are delighted by their desire to want to make this world a better place.”