Learning how to learn – Rodrigo Arboleda at TEDxCMU

Rodrigo Arboleda is Chairman and CEO of One Laptop Per Child Association (OLPCA), a not-for-profit entity seeking to provide equal opportunity of access to knowledge to small children in Developing Nations and in some communities within the USA. OLPCA’s mission focuses on socio-economic and cultural change via education, with primary interest in children of 3 years and up. Arboleda is in charge of worldwide operational issues related to the project. More than 2,700,000 laptops have been distributed so far to children in 41 countries and in 21 languages including many indigenous languages. Arboleda has been also a Visiting Scholar at the Media Lab of MIT, where he worked on the Digital Nations Consortium project and on the Education for Peace initiative, E4P. He has served also as a Board Member of the 2B1 Foundation, which made possible some of the projects developed at the Media Lab. He was born in Medellin, Colombia and completed his Bachelor Degree in Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in 1965.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Khan Academy videos and OLPC

Uruguay’s Plan Ceibal has a group of teachers and students that have been subtitling and using Khan Academy videos in Spanish over the past year. You can see some of the resulting videos here.

Sam Seidenburg has some suggestions about how we can improve learning with such videos: writing Activities that could be written to support math tutorial and physics tutorial work, or making similar format videos to help people get started with eToys.

Neil Dsouza at teachaclass.org has offered to help anyone who wants to start using Khan Academy videos in their classes.

 

Newsletter, take 2: update for January 25

The latest issue of the new OLPC newsletter is out. I’m trying out different layouts for an archive, including having select past stories show up each week at the end.

As always, feedback on design and story selection are welcome. Current requests include a way to browse the newsletter online without leaving some sort of story navigation (with some sort of floating TOC?)

For the early-Feb edition we will try to gather & discuss stories and images in advance in the OLPC newsroom.  Please submit your muck-raking, globe-trotting, xo-loving ideas and links there.

January 25, 2010
About the OLPCorps program OLPCorps 2010:

apply now

2010 Internships: in Rwanda, Paraguay, and Peru Summer and year-long internships available
OLPC for Haiti Support relief efforts in Haiti OLPC in rural Peru New video:

XO is for Hope

Peru-tube

C. Scott Ananian just posted a bunch of videos from Peru’s MiniEd on his exciting, sporadic blog.

My favorite is the Children’s Song (ogg), which sings about the joy of learning with an XO. The first Peru program (ogg) contains the song subtitled in English, which some of you may enjoy more:

Check out the original post for more videolarity.  Further updates in English and Spanish are coming later in the week — the Peruvian and Uruguayan blogospheres have been hopping recently.

Recruiting: OLPC Social Media Warriors

Thanks to Joshua Gay of CK-12 for his help in crafting this posting!

Help us spread the joy of education to children all over the world by becoming a Social Media Warrior. At OLPC, we have the tools, the educational materials, and learning resources to help transform the lives of millions all over the world. To do so, we need thousands of volunteers to understand what we have and what we are capable of doing for the lives of children everywhere – and we need three of you to help us get the word out to them using the social networking and media sharing sites that pervade our lives.

Video Ninja

  • We’ll hand you the keys to our YouTube, dailymotion, flickr-video, and myspace-tv accounts; work with our marketing team and branch out to other video networks at your discretion.
  • Promote videos from media.laptop.org, olpc.tv, and other sources, including training resources for volunteers and staff in third-world deployments.
  • Track down celebrity speakers for original source material and permission to use it.

Facebook Rockstar and Myspace Maven

Details after the fold.

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