If you haven’t seen it already, take 5 minutes to watch this ridiculously joyful clip from the pilot project in Nosy Komba, Madagascar, supported by OLPC France.
If you have, it’s worth watching again and sharing 
The lyrics are a popular Malagasy dancing song, carried out with XOs and other props.
A month into our olpcstories contest with Nickelodeon Latin America, we have received some friendly media coverage in Latin America (in La Crónica in Mexico, and CanalAr in Argentina) and have gotten many contest submissions.
As Christoph noted earlier this week, this is the last week to submit your entries to the contest.
Tony Forster posted videos of recent work with OLPCs in East Timor. He has been travelling around the world helping smaller deployments for much of the past year; I last caught up with him at LinuxTag this spring, and was delighted by his stories. I hope to see more visual field reports like this from the most rural schools as well.
From the Very Exciting dept. : Nickelodeon Latin America (part of MTV Latin America) is partnering with OLPC to run an international contest to design multimedia about improving the environment.
Elementary school children in OLPC schools will be challenged to develop multimedia content in an international contest focused on creating a better environment. The winner will be awarded with a trip to the Teen Nick Halo Awards, a show where celebrities give awards to amazing, accomplished and inspiring kids who work hard to make the world a better place. From our joint press release:
This initiative is in line with OLPC’s desire to enable a generation of children to think critically, connect to each other and the world’s body of knowledge, and to create conditions for real and substantial economic and social development. Nickelodeon and OLPC will work together to leverage the advantages of the XO laptop in elementary school education and promote strategies for increased access to laptops and connectivity in Latin America.
“We are delighted to partner with One Laptop per Child for this important initiative,” commented Mario Cader-Frech, Vice President of Public affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility for MTV Networks Latin America and Tr3s: MTV, Música y Mas. “OLPC has done an outstanding job of bringing technology and computer-assisted learning to kids around the world. This contest not only inspires children in the region to make a difference in their communities but also helps them to develop new skills that will prepare them to become productive members of tomorrow’s workforce.”
“OLPC is constantly looking to engage with private sector companies to achieve mutual objectives for children and education,” said Rodrigo Arboleda, CEO of OLPC – “Nickelodeon joins a distinguished group of OLPC partners that includes General Mills, Marvell, Procter & Gamble and BHP Billiton, all devoted to bringing quality education worldwide”.
Children will be welcome to participate across Latin America. We can’t wait to see the first submissions come in — and to seeing similar storytelling projects start in other parts of the world.
Press contacts at MTV Networks Latin America:
International Axel Escudero (5411) 5295-5270 axel.escudero@mtvstaff.com Miami & Colombia Argentina & Chile Marimar Rivé Vanina Rodríguez (305) 938-4910 (5411) 5295-5272 marimar.rive@mtvstaff.com vanina.rodriguez@mtvstaff.com Mexico Erick Zermeño Guillermo Reyna (5255) 5080-1729 (5255) 5080-1766 Erick.zermeno@mtvstaff.com guillermo.reyna@mtvstaff.com
This Friday at 2pm EST, Scott and others will talk about how OLPC creates student-centric learning experiences, and how the software stack could become less shallow in terms of providing a narrative and journey to those experiences.
Those interested in joining are welcome to come to OLPC’s new offices at the American Twine building for the discussion. There will be streamed and higher-res posted video of the sessions as well. See Dr. Ananian’s blog for further details.
Last year, Uruguay published Plan Ceibal, the Book (with Prentice-Hall), describing the world’s first national-scale implementation of one laptop for every child. This month they released an amazing video looking back on the first four years of the project: ”Much more than a computer“.
The 15-minute video ranges from what students work on in school, outside, and at home, and how the teaching community thinks about the classroom now. It is shot mainly outside, emphasizing working with nature and laptops as a part of everyday life. There is a lot of student work with multimedia in the background. And they share the view of this work from Ceibal as institution – what the program means for supporting schools across the country, and what it means for the influence of schools in their communities.
“transformamos un privilegio en un derecho” —Plan Ceibal
The OLPC Bhagmalpur project, which Sameer started in 2008 with support from the Digital Bridge Foundation, is finishing a renovation that will provide regular power from a generator at the local school, and cexercise/>lose to giving the students there their own XOs. They visited with the students recently, one of whom is featured in our second Mission video, to show them how many people are following the school’s progress.
A talk from the London Business Forum on ’Imagination strategy‘: Where do new ideas come from? And, what environment generates them?
Rodrigo Arboleda spoke about OLPC at TEDxRio this week to a crowd of 800, with 7000 people watching online. The conference was a big hit in the Brazilian blogosphere, and one of the top trending topics in the world that day. TEDx has really captured the essence of TED without much of the overhead, and it’s great to see it flourish. Everyone there felt they were discussing how to contribute to human knowledge and development, and they left wondering how they could follow up on the event in more rural parts of the country – a great audience for an olpc talk.
The session will be up online soon, and you should watch it; for now, an image from the floor:
"Children are a mission, not a market"
Bastien recently posted a video of the evolution of the code for Sugar’s Write activity. It’s a lovely visualization, and worth a look.
We have had an incredible 1.5 days thus far at the OLPC San Francisco Community Summit 2010. Mayor Gavin Newsom declared October 23, 2010 as One Laptop per Child Day in San Francisco!
There are some lovely photos online from the events and sessions, thanks to Mike Lee and
TuxWingsGroup.
You can join us online today at 11:30AM and 13:45pm Pacific online with our live ustream video stream, and the notes from all sessions are now online on the wiki schedule.
Saturday’s OLPC Repair Fest clinic and training was a HUGE Success! Thanks to all those from around town who attended. Check out several videos & photos of the event care of Azamat Abdymomunov.
Tech Crunch TV interviewed Maureen Orth recently on the introduction of OLPC in rural Colombia on their tl:dw videocast.
This was a timely reminder that Colombia has been building a network of supporting pilots and foundations in the years since this first urban school began implementing OLPC. The largest projects are in Medellín (perlas), in Caldas, in Altos de Cazucá, and in Itagüí (1, 2). Some of these are much more rural, and required helicopter drops to get them underway.
Caldas also produced this great video.
Children relaxing outside of class at the Marina Orth school
The Maureen Orth Foundation‘s Medellin pilot is not very large, but she talks about connected laptops as “the most wonderful tool they could possible have”.
Network World compiled this montage of clips and interviews with Nicholas about the XO-3 and our latest Marvell collaboration. If you didn’t pick it out of the original announcement, it’s worth a watch — and it’s a good short summary of where we are heading.
Pixel Qi is showing off at Computex this week in Taipei, and Charbax just posted a detailed interview with Mary Lou Jepsen from the floor. Look for the “Qi” button at 0:25, and serious geeking out on the physics and fab process starting at 5:00… and for the rest of the video! (For a quicker soundbite, he also posted this side-by-side iPad / iPhone / 3Qi comparison video yesterday.)
Notion Ink's Adam tablet, with 3Qi screen
Pixel Qi are having a good quarter. They are offering a variety of display options, including wide-view, anti-reflective coating, and a capacitive touchsreen. And they have started winning industry awards. More details, and a Notion Ink interview (they say their Adam tablet will release on time in a few months), after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
Yirkalla is being well-covered by Australian media. TEN Digital devoted part of a weekend episode to the deployment, including this video from the classroom during the first day of the deployment. They catch a priceless expression on this child’s face 1:10 in, as he either learns to play Maze (as the shot suggests) or discovers Rick Astley for the first time.
|
|
|
I was looking through Uruguayan videos online for a recent full-length TV episode on Ceibal. I didn’t find it, but here is the tireless Miguel Brechner presenting at TEDx in Buenos Aires last month – well worth a watch. And there was a news episode on Argentine television late last year.
I also found this surprise: “Aprendiendo con Ceibal“, an unusual half-hour post-modern classroom experience…
(hat tip to Bob Hacker)
