One Laptop Per Child News

Knight Foundation and OLPC Association Launch Project in Miami

2012-02-10T14:13:20Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Two weeks ago the Knight Foundation and OLPC Association launched a project at Holmes Elementary School in Miami. More than 500 XOs were handed out to pupils and teachers in what is OLPC's latest effort to get a foothold in primary schools in the United States.

Reading through the press release I stumbled across a number of very interesting points:

The XO laptops, specially designed for primary school children, will be provided by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), with $245,000 in support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Seeing that $245,000 figure in combination with the earlier mention of 525 children having received laptops (and ignoring the teachers for second) makes for a per-seat TCO of ~$467. Given that the XOs themselves only cost about $200 this was an encouraging indication that the project would go beyond the mere distribution of laptops. And indeed it does:

Along with the XO laptops, One Laptop Per Child is providing in-house training at the school for parents, teachers and students on how to use the computers to advance students' learning. ... OLPC is also assisting in creating a localized curriculum to help kids meet their academic benchmarks.

While it's not entirely clear what exactly these in-house training and localized curriculum efforts entail it's certainly a good sign that the importance of training and support for teachers and parents is recognized early on. Plus more than $100,000 worth of services from OLPC Association should be able to provide a reasonable amount of support to the project.

Especially when you consider that the project could possibly only run for 11 months as the school might be closed at the end of the year:

Holmes Elementary School, which serves the majority of Liberty City residents, is at risk of closing at the end of the year if its state test scores do not improve. In an effort to boost performance, a variety of tools and resources are being used to enhance teaching and learning, including the laptops and training.

In this situation it will be particularly important for OLPC to prove that an XO-based project can indeed significantly improve test scores. In a blog post SJ Klein (OLPC Foundation's Director of Outreach) referred to this as:

...natural assessments built into the program, with a fairly short timeframe, thanks to existing conditions at the school and their risk of closure.

Since this is an area where OLPC has so far done very little work it's going be fascinating to see what happens in this particularly challening project context.

So while I would say that the announcement itself and its mention of training and evaluation components are encouraging signs it remains to be seen how things will really work out in the coming months. After all the last thing OLPC needs is another initiative like the 15,000 XO project in Birmingham, Alabama which saw its funding being cut in mid-2010, two years after the project was originally launched.

An analysis of the project in an upcoming research paper called "One Laptop Per Child Birmingham: Case Study of a Radical Experiment" by Mark Warschauer, Shelia Cotten, and Morgan Ames which is soon to be published in the International Journal of Learning and Media is fairly critical of Birmingham's OLPC project. Among other things it mentions:

Though the computers it used are the least expensive of any deployed in a U.S. laptop program, the benefits achieved at the time of our data collection appear to be minimal, thus resulting in a high cost-benefit ratio.

OLPC had better take note of such critical research efforts to improve and guide its ongoing efforts and counter with strong research evidence proving its effectiveness and efficiency compared to other educational interventions.

This seems to be particularly important when you consider the following quote by Rodrigo Arboleda (OLPC Association's Chairman and CEO) which indicates that OLPC is eager to try and start similar projects in other cities around the United States:

"We believe that partnering with foundations, the private sector and the public sector is an excellent model that can be replicated across the country."

So overall this is certainly an extremely interesting development and we'll do our best to keep an eye on it over the coming months. For now I'll leave you with a nice 3min video with some impressions from Holmes Elementary School.

Resumen en español: En enero Knight Foundation y OLPC Association lanzaron un proyecto con más de 500 XO en una escuela en Miami. Aparte de la distribución de los XO mismo OLPC Association tambien va a dar suporte a los maestros y padres. Además el proyecto viene con una componente de evaluación dado que la escuela esta corriendo el riesgo de ser cerrado al fin del año y por esto OLPC tendrá que mostrar que una iniciativa como esta puede mejorar los resultados academicos de los alumnos. En total parece que esto será un proyecto muy interesante y lo vamos a seguir en los próximos meses.

100 XO Project at St. Jacob School in Rwanda

2012-02-08T13:16:00Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Rwanda which became the site of the largest non-South American OLPC deployment in mid-2011 recently saw the launch of a second, independent OLPC project. This new project is run by a coalition of four different German organizations which distributed a total of 100 XOs at the St. Jacob School in Kigali in November:

In Germany a group of dedicated organizations have teamed up to introduce 100 of these laptops for three classes at the St. Jacob School in Rwanda. The Stuttgart-based Care for Kids e. V. has taken the initiative and took over the project management, the Hamburg-based OLPC Germany e. V. has organized the procurement of the laptops, the Stuttgart-based WCE (Germany) e. V. took over the IT implementation tasks, and the Hechingen-based Children need Peace e. V. organized the activities at the school and the children's village in Rwanda. All organizations and members also strongly contributed in funding through donations.

"Family picture" after handover of the laptops and the responsibility to the school

It will be very interesting to see how this project develops over the coming months and years. Given that the government itself is running the aforementioned 100,000 XO project which it plans to expand to 200,000 XOs by mid-2012 this will also be a great opportunity to compare the two different OLPC projects taking place in the country. Plus I'm sure there will be many opportunities for both efforts to learn and benefit from each other.

Resumen en español: En Ruanda, donde el gobierno está ejecutando el proyecto más grande de OLPC fuera de América Latina, se lanzó un nuevo proyecto independiente en noviembre del año pasado. Una coalición de cuatro organizaciones alemanas compró 100 XO para la escuela St. Jacob School en Kigali. Será muy interesante observar el desarollo del proyecto en los proximos meses y años y además es una buena oportunidad para hacer una comparación entre los dos proyectos distintos en el país. Aparte de esto estoy seguro que habrán muchos aspectos donde los proyectos pueden beneficiarse mutuamente.

OLPC Improves the XO's Membrane Keyboard

2012-02-06T14:43:05Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

One of the most frustrating aspects of my 2010 journey through Uruguay, Paraguay, and Peru was seeing how many children had to use XOs whose keyboards were broken. Uruguay seemed to be particularly hard-hit by this issue. From what I gathered this is due to the fact that they received many XOs which were produced fairly early on when OLPC had yet to implement changes to make the membranes of the keyboards thicker and thereby more robust.

As such I was very excited when I saw this photo showing off a new and seemingly much improved membrane keyboard which is the standard option for the upcoming ARM-based XO-1.75:

A comment on the wiki page of the photo refers to this as a grid style keyboard. As you can see the gaps between the individual keys are now protected with a plastic cover. This should really go a long way in reducing the number of broken keyboards and the associated maintenance hassles and expenses.

It will also be interesting to see whether OLPC will make these keyboards - or rather the whole bottom portion of the XO - available to deployments. That would allow them to gradually replace the machines hit by this issue rather than having to purchase XO-1.75s. Though of course one question here is at what cost such a replacement (parts plus shipping/handling and actually repair procedure) would be available to Uruguay and other projects.

In any case it's great to see this improvement become standard for future XO-1.75 owners.

Resumen en español: Una fuente de frustración durante mi visita en 2010 de los proyectos en Uruguay, Paraguay y el Perú fue el número alto de alumnos que que tenían XOs con un teclado roto. Por esto me emocioné mucho cuando vi la foto arriba que muestra el diseño nuevo del teclado que será la opción por defecto en los XO-1.75. Ahora el espacio entre las teclas individuales esta protegido por una cubierta de plástico que debería ayudar mucho en mejorar la resistencia del teclado.

Walter Bender to Talk About OLPC and XO 3.0 at mEducation Event in D.C. on February 10

2012-02-03T13:50:13Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Yesterday the Mobiles for Education Alliance - which includes many big players such as USAID, U.S. Department of State, Peace Corps, World Bank, IADB, UNICEF, UNESCO, and others - announced an upcoming event with Sugar Labs' Walter Bender.

The topic for the February session of the mAlliance's Seminar Series is "The OLPC Project, Learning and the XO 3 Tablet" and according to the invitation it will focus on:

The move to a tablet device for OLPC
The relationship between device design and learning
The OLPC model and the Sugar operating system

The invitation also mentions that:

An interactive and informative discussion will follow Walter's presentation, and attendees will be invited to explore hands-on the XO 3 tablet and the soon-to-be-released XO 1.75 and XO 1.75 touch.

The event will take place on Friday, February 10th between 9:30 - 11:00 a.m. (EST). For those of you who are based in D.C. the physical address is Ronald Reagan Building, North Tower, 1300 Pennsylvania, Suite 700 but there's also an option to follow the presentation virtually. In either case mAlliance asks that you RSVP to mobilesforeducation@gmail.com.

I'll do my best to attend the virtual presentation as this is certainly promising to be an interesting session.

Resumen en español: El 10 de febrero Walter Bender estara dando una presentación enfocado en OLPC, el aprendizaje y el XO 3.0 en un evento en Washington, D.C. Felizmente tambien hay una forma virtual de seguir el evento de la distancia y voy a intentar de verlo así. Hay más información sobre el evento en la invitación (en Inglés) y para regitrarse hay que mandar un correo a mobilesforeducation@gmail.com.

Talking About OLPC and Negroponte's Helicopter Deployment on The World Tech Podcast

2012-02-01T14:16:44Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Even though it was widely reported when Nicholas Negroponte first mentioned that he was planning a new deployment model based on dropping laptops or tablets out of helicopters, few media outlets have bothered to follow up on the idea since then. The one notable exception is New Scientist which conducted an interview with Negroponte in early December where he revealed a few details and the fact that pre-pilots were scheduled to start in January.

Now, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we have tried to keep a close eye on the relevant developments. As such I was more than happy to speak with Clark Boyd, the host of PRI's The World Technology Podcast, when he got in touch just before Christmas to discuss Negroponte's idea and the overall status quo of OLPC.

You can find the resulting 9 minute piece in episode 351 of the podcast (direct MP3 download), it starts about 15min 45sec into the show.

On a related note: I hope to learn more details about how the aforementioned pre-pilot project is going during my upcoming visit in Boston in the last week of February.

Resumen en español: Antes de navidad hice una entrevista con The World Technology Podcast donde hablaba sobre el estado de OLPC y la idea de Nicholas Negroponte en cuanto a la distribución de laptops y tablets con helicópteros. La entrevista se encuentra en episodio 351 del programa (descarga directa del archivo) y la parte sobre OLPC empieza en 15min 45sec.

Isaac Asimov Speaks About Computer-Supported Education in 1988

2012-01-30T13:54:46Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

I saw the following interview thanks to a volunteer who shared it on the olpc-uruguay mailing list. In it Isaac Asimov - most widely known for his science fiction writings - spends several minutes talking about the use of computers and what is essentially a description of the Internet in education.

While that in itself would already be noteworthy the fact that the interview took place in 1988 makes it all the more interesting. It's not hard to find similarities between what Asimov described 24 years ago and ongoing projects such as Khan Academy, Wikipedia, and indeed OLPC. Interestingly enough some of the questions the interviewer asks are also very similar to the ones often heard around aforementioned projects.

In any case I think the first few minutes of this video are well worth watching:

Resumen en español: Este video muestra Isaac Asimov - más conocido por sus obras de ciencia ficción - hablando sobre el uso de computadoras en la educación en una entrevista en el año 1988. Lo interesante es que muchos proyectos actuales como Khan Academy, Wikipedia o OLPC estan parecidos a ideas que el describió hace 24 años.

IIT Empowering Haiti Successfully Deploys XO Charging Station

2012-01-27T14:30:22Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

A team of students from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago has been working on a charging station for XO deployments in developing countries. Like the laptops themselves, the design needed to be rugged and inexpensive, but also simple enough to be reproduced in their area of deployment. Using a three-legged PVC structure, hardboard shelves, and dulled nails for support, the final cost of each charging station ended up being under $1.00 per XO when constructed in the US; and when using a simple jig, the construction time is under an hour for a station with 20 shelves.

In August 2011, the team installed a solar power system at a primary school in Lascahobas, Haiti. Upon returning in December, the site was updated with, among other things, the new charging station design. Previously, all 400 XOs had been stacked in piles of ten, which proved to be a mess (as seen in the first picture below). With the new stations installed, the children were able to easily find available charging cables and plug the XOs into the system.

An assembly guide for building these XO laptop charging stations is available in two different versions: 11x17 one-pager / multiple 8.5x11 pages.

IIT Empowering Haiti is a team of undergraduate students at the Illinois Institute of Technology who, with the support of faculty and industry advisers, are working to improve the conditions of education in Haiti. For more information you please visit the team's Web site or contact them at contact@iitempoweringhaiti.org.

Resumen en español: El equipo de IIT Empowering Haiti construyo un sistema de estaciónes para poder recargar los 400 XO en una escuela en Haiti. El costo del sistema es menos que $1 por XO y existen un guia para que cualquier otro proyecto puede replicar este sistema: una página / seis páginas.

Buy OLPC Laptops for $90 or less!

2012-01-25T13:36:02Z

While we all lust for OLPC's new XO 3.0 tablet computer, don't forget that XO-1 laptops are selling for cheap on eBay and the prices are dropping fast.

As you can see by the closed auction above, XO laptops are going for $90 or less now. Three years after Give One Get One, OLPC has finally achieved the $100 laptop goal - get yours today!

Una calesita diseñada para cargar las XO

2012-01-23T13:19:36Z

English summary at the end of the article

Gracias a un post en la pagina de Plan Ceibal en Facebook vi este video sobre una calesita que se diseño para cargar unas XO en una escuela del departamento de Flores en Uruguay:

La calesita surge de un proyecto escolar iniciado en el 2010 por niños de 3er año de escuela en conjunto con una maestra, la directora y un voluntario de RAP Ceibal. Durante dos años estuvieron trabajando para concretar su proyecto. El mismo permitió nuevos abordajes de temáticas referentes a ciencia, energías renovables, medioambiente, entre otros.

Ya hemos visto muchos proyectos interesantes en cuanto a la produción de electricidad para las XO:

Lo que me encanta en particular sobre este proyecto es la participación de los alumnos en la construcción de la calesita y creo que también se nota su interés en el video:

English summary: Over a two year period pupils, a teacher, a principal, and a volunteer at a school in Uruguay built a carousel which can charge several XOs when in-use. This is just the latest example of a series of interesting projects to design alternative ways to charge XOs and I particularly like the pupils' involvement here.

OLPC is a Spiritual Experience in Learning

2012-01-20T13:56:48Z

Zunia, the public information channel for Development Gateway, is now conducting interviews with thought leaders in development and they've just recently published a great interview with Satish Jha of OLPC India Foundation. In the interview Satish has a great response to the question of "Why OLPC laptops?":

Giving them OLPC laptops, not just any computer, transforms their world beyond what a teacher and a regular computer could achieve together. My experience is that wherever we have OLPC deployed, virtually anyone visiting those schools has almost had an "spiritual" experience of what learning learning can be.

How children can be engaged in learning by themselves, as a class and engage the teachers as well... It transforms the school from a place where children are forced to go into a place they don't want to go away from.

I agree with Satish - seeing a child's eyes light up when they get a computer is magical. And their capacity to astound you with simple pleasures of exploration and learning humbles even hardened critics like myself. Which is why seeing discarded, dust covered laptops is so soul crushing. Yes, I have actually cried when shown a stack of un-used computers.

In this time of hardware hype and geek lust, may all of us in ICT4Edu be religious about usage so we can find god in a child's eyes and not the devil of disuse.

Great Video of Haiti's Solar Installation For Powering 500 XOs

2012-01-18T12:04:30Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Last August we ran a piece about a large solar installation which a team from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, Green WiFi, and Haiti's National OLPC Coordinator had setup at EFACAP school in Lascahobas, Haiti. With the system having been designed and built to power 500 XO laptops it was - and very likely still is - the world's largest single-school solar laptop charging deployment.

Recently I spoke with Laura Hosman, one of the project's leads and an assistant professor at IIT, about another very interesting power-related project her students have been working on. In the process she also mentioned the following 12 minute video which provides a great overview of their project in Lascahobas and is well worth watching:

Resumen en español: En agosto del año pasado presentamos este proyecto (artículo en ingles) hecho en Haiti donde se instalaron paneles solares en una escuela para para proveer electricidad a 500 XO. El video arriba muestra el proyecto y su instalación.

San Francisco State University and OLPC Association sign MoU

2012-01-16T14:37:50Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

In early January Sameer Verma (Web site, Twitter, Google+), who is a professor at San Francisco State University and one of the heads behind the OLPC San Francisco community, announced that his university and OLPC Association signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Article I of the MoU (full PDF) reads:

OLPC and SFSU will use their best efforts to establish a long-term cooperation and collaboration in the field of 1:1 computing in certain primary schools in California and around the world. OLPC is interested in pursuing opportunities in the areas of Education, Technology and Outreach.

The Parties agree to work together to support the San Francisco Bay Area volunteer community through its monthly meetings, lending library and annual summit. Further, the parties agree to support faculty research, community service, student projects and internships in the OLPC context. These may include, but are not limited to pedagogical approaches, content generation, software development, hardware testing, network analysis, community outreach and other related topics that go towards ensuring the sustainability of OLPC in different parts of the world.

As SJ Klein (OLPC Foundation's Director of Outreach) explains in a blog post it's possible that we'll see more such MoUs in the future:

This may be just the first of many MOUs with universities in the US, as we develop a network of supporting organizations working with OLPC on international projects.

Here's to more MoUs such as this one! After all other universities and professors (and not just in the United States) such as for example Stephen Jacobs from Rochester Institute of Technology and his students have also done some great work related to OLPC. Having a more formalized process for universities, faculty, and students to establish working relations with OLPC can only help such efforts.

Resumen en español: La Universidad Estatal de San Francisco (San Francisco State University) y OLPC Association firmaron un memorando de entendimiento sobre los esfuerzos actuales y futuros proyectos en cuanto a OLPC.

Video of an XO-1.75 Directly Running Off a 10W Solar Panel

2012-01-13T13:50:18Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Earlier this week Chris Ball (OLPC Foundation's Lead Software Engineer) posted a great video of Richard Smith (OLPC Foundation's Director of Embedded Engineering) demonstrating an ARM-based XO-1.75 laptop running directly off a 10W solar panel. And before you ask, yes, they did remove the battery of the laptop to show that it's indeed only powered by the sun.

This video certainly makes a great demonstration of what Richard previously said about the XO-1.75's reduced power-consumption and versatility when it comes to accepting alternative charging solutions. These improvements should make solutions such as the massive solar power deploymenty by IIT, Green Wifi, and OLPC in Haiti quite a bit easier to implement.

If you're interested in more details about the power consumption and charging requirements for the XO-1.75 as well as the much-discussed XO 3.0 tablet (which uses almost the same hardware) then I'd also recommend you to read Richard Smith's extensive e-mail update from earlier in the week.

Resumen en español: En un video de OLPC Foundation en Boston se muestra una XO-1.75 (basada en la plataforma ARM) que se alimenta exclusivamente de un panel solar de 10W. Esto sirve como una demostración muy buena de la reducción del consumo de energia de la nueva generación de XO y su flexibilidad en cuanto a aceptar soluciones alternativas de carga.

Plan Ceibal's 4-Year Cost Increases From $276 to $400

2012-01-10T13:26:13Z

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a great presentation which Plan Ceibal's president Miguel Brechner gave at a festival in Madrid in early October. Upon re-watching it over the holidays I caught an interesting detail which I had previously missed: The figure for Plan Ceibal's 4-Year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) went up from $276 to $400 over the last two years.

The first slide below is taken from a presentation which Brechner gave in Washington, D.C. in late 2009:

Red circles added for emphasis.

The second slide comes from the aforementioned talk in Madrid in early October 2011:

Red circles added for emphasis.

I'm not surprised about this increase and had actually expected it as I outlined in a message to a colleague regarding the $276 figure back in May of 2011:

Personally I'd take this number with a grain of salt as it's from relatively early on in the project and seeing how Plan Ceibal has changed in many ways (e.g. different maintenance system, more extensive teacher training, etc.) I would assume the current figure to be higher.

Speaking to some Plan Ceibal folks about this they also explained that besides the changes mentioned above there have also been significant investments in fibre optic Internet connections for urban schools, a system for managing educational content, a digital library, and the expansion of the project to secondary schools.

Considering the fairly recent expansion of Plan Ceibal's new maintenance system and its many other 2011 plans (e.g. around robotics and online evaluations) it's quite possible that this figure will continue to increase, at least a little bit.

I would really like to see comparable data from other OLPC and 1-to-1 projects which have been going on for several years. It's not like we haven't had a lot of discussions about the TCO of such projects here on OLPC News and in many other places. However as an IADB report from earlier in the year points out:

"there is still surprisingly little data on the costs of One‐to‐One models in developing countries" (emphasis added)

Plan Ceibal is in somewhat of a unique position to start providing such data. Therefore it would be great for them to break down that $400 figure and explain how the individual changes and investments impacted educational use. This would enable other countries and initiatives to learn and thereby benefit from Uruguay's experiences.

OLPC XO 3.0 Tablet Video Hands-On at The Verge

2012-01-08T21:05:20Z

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern) over at The Verge seems to have beat the rest of the tech world by being the first one to publish a fairly extensive report and video with hands-on impressions of OLPC's XO 3.0 tablet (formerly known as XO-3) from CES 2012.

I've embedded the video for your viewing pleasure below but I'd also really recommend you to read her article which contains some additional information.

Oh, and if you still haven't gotten enough of the XO 3.0 after that then you can also head over to Engadget for a short article and slightly more hardware focused 5min video.

Update (#1): More XO 3.0 coverage and hands-on impression from CES 2012 can be found over on Gizmodo, ARMdevices.net, and TechCrunch TV.

Update (#2): My friends over at Netbooknews.com have also published a 6min video with their impressions of the XO 3.0.

Resumen en español: En el CES 2012 en Las Vegas OLPC esta presentando los primeros prototipos del tablet XO 3.0 (antes llamado XO-3). El video y los links contienen primeras impresiones sobre el prototipo de varias publicaciones de tecnologia.