One Laptop per Child

Vera Sacchetti shares a design-geek’s reflections on OLPC from Lisbon, where she recently finished writing a thesis on “design crusades”:  Two billion laptops to “revolutionize education”

Our new site design, first mentioned earlier this year, is cexercise/>lose to fruition. You can now see our alpha site online.

We are working on ways to better link the site, wiki, and blog together, and to aggregate and point to every site in the OLPC community. For now, you can add information about your own projects and websites, and links to them. We will be working on other visualizations of this data, and connecting our map of major deployments with the growing olpcmap network, over the coming month. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

A network of South Asian OLPC deployments (including India, Sri Lanka and Nepal) are working together to share knowledge and outreach. Support gang member Shirish Goyal has put together a gorgeous portal covering work in that part of the world, at olpcsouthasia.org

OLPC South Asia homepage

I felt a momentary pang of jealousy, looking at that design. But I satisfied myself with the knowledge that we will have a vibrant new look of our own soon, with the blog integrated into our main site. Here’s another sneak peek:

OLPC News

Toshiba is releasing a Libretto W100 series of laptops this fall, taking after the XO-2 in form factor and design. It’s great to see this make it to market.

Unfortunately, the many interface niceties they have implemented seem to be written only for Windows for now.

Christoph Derndorfer, widely known for his ministry to young XO pilots, fashion sense, and active speaking / writing /editing about OLPC, has recently kicked off a Latin American Tour.  (Todd Kelsey, where are your tour-badge-printing skills when we need them?)  He plans to visit all of our country partners in the region with significant deployments this summer, documenting his experience.

Christoph’s travel reports are enchanting.  Take for instance the recent photoessay from Montevideo’s  eXpO photo exhibit in Uruguay – composed entirely of photos taken with XOs by students in 4 primary schools.  And with his iconic beard, long hair, and thousand-meter stare (seen below by the pool at the Fame Factory), Christoph is becoming as known for his xoly presence as for his love of good design and Sugarized icons.

ChristophD preaching the End Times (or at least the Shutdown Screen Icons)

To stalk with him across the southern slopes, deployment by deployment, you can follow his online writings, photos, and twext.  He is looking for personal contacts along the way, especially people who have played a role in OLPC deployments, so please get in touch with him if you know someone he should meet.

Photography is a powerful medium that conveys a message through an emotional and visceral impulse in the viewer. An image can tell the story of hardships, frustrations and joys, and the immutable human spirit in a way that transcends words.

I am curating and archiving OLPC photographs from around the world – of communities, kids, teachers, and the towns and cities they live in.  I believe the best photographs portray a sense of daily life and learning. I want to collect and show a set of photographs for people who love photography. They will present an intimate portrait of the subjects that can be achieved by cexercise/>lose observation and interaction over time. They will show children and their families in daily life at home and in school, reading, studying, working, and at play.

These photographs will strive to answer basic questions about how OLPC affects children, their families, and community: How is learning valued at home?  How do children, parents and teachers work and study together, or with others?  What are their hopes for the future?  How do they share stories or ideas with other towns?  What music and videos do they like?

Here are some great photos found so far:

Boy using XO in Peru

Child and grandmother at home in Peru

Children in a classroom in Peru

Children show their XOs in Uruguay

Whole school with XOs in Sichuan

Girls sitting on gate working on XOs in Colonia, Uruguay

Child on salt lake with XO in Pilbara, Western Australia

Boys working together in classroom in Mongolia

Girl learning with XO in classroom in Gaza

Girls using laptop in field in Peru

Children learning with laptops in a village in Colombia

Boy works with XO on the ground in Uruguay

Children learn and play in Brazil

-Mike

Our design partners have been developing a new design for the OLPC website, one that draws in contributions from our partner and chapter sites around the world. I saw the latest designs this week, and loved them!  We’ll have more updates about the site soon, once everyone’s back from the Realness Summit and we’ve heard from Mike Massey, our new photo maven.

The biggest change: we’re going to convert the homepage from a big logo to a series of full-screen images from deployments, with background details and links to more information. If you have any amazing photographs or stories you’d like to see featured on our homepage, please post a link to them.

Teasers:

Here is our first take on recent events at a glance, in a new, flexible format.  This alpha edition covers milestones from our work this past year – what better time to reflect than now, as 2009 draws to a cexercise/>lose? We are sending this out as an update to our past supporters as well. 

If you want to share this, or read it on a mobile device, you may find it easier to view it on laptop.org. Enjoy these flashbacks, and have a Happy New Year!

Introducing the XO-3			Uruguay gives an XO to every child
	Rwanda plans one laptop per child by 2012		Thank you for your support. Please help us do more: give a laptop or donate in another way.