One Laptop Per Child News

OLPC March Madness: 75,000 XO Laptops for India

2010-03-18T13:21:37Z

I understand that the "March madness" that comes with closing the financial year on the 31st March has brought some good news for OLPC India.

Happiness with XO madness

One industrial house has ordered 25000 laptops over the year 2010 out of which 2000 have been ordered to be in place by 31st March.
Another industrialist has offered a fully furnished office space for 10 professionals, managers and the leadership of OLPC India along with putting all the professionals on their payroll.
Yet another industrial house has ordered to roll out to 10,000 children from the 2009-19 budget and another 40,000 from the 2010-11 budget.

While there may be more, I thought of sharing with you what has been firmed up and may require many of the OLPC enthusiasts an opportunity to work with the implementation challenges this year.

S Adhikari posted this update to the OLPC India listserv

Sugar User Interface Inspired Microsoft Windows Phone 7

2010-03-17T13:50:47Z

One of the most innovative design paradigms of Sugar is the simplicity of its user interface. Mainstream UI design in personal computing currently uses complex 3D components, with a combination of useful depth perspective, and less useful animated transitions. Icons get their share of animated effects too.

Compared to this, Sugar is plain simple. No 3D effects, the UI is plain 2D, with strong contrasted colors. Icons and buttons are also very simple, a white circle with a symbol in the middle. For example the browser looks extremely simple:

Now, we may wonder if the reason for such simplicity is the audience towards Sugar is directed: Children. Possibly. However, the very same design paradigms starts surfacing in the mobile market, from a very unlikely company: Microsoft.

The same company that pushes the complex Aero in Windows Vista and 7, it is now proposing a very simple and clean UI design for the new Windows Phone 7 series. How simple? If we look at for example a screen shot of Internet Explorer, we might notice how strikingly similar to Sugar:

Note how the simple white buttons on dark background are practically the same as those in Sugar. Similar design choices are present in the home screen, which is clean and with simple colors and blocky sections.

I don't think we should call for conspiracy theories here. Probably Microsoft realized that in a small screen, sometimes simple is better. Sugar provides a very usable yet simple UI, and combined with the innovative screen, it can be arguably considered as the first multi-purpose e-reader.

I am sure it served at some point as an inspiration for Windows Phone 7. As e-reader become more and more common, we should hope that more OS manufacturers will consider Sugar's UI elements. And why not? Maybe they'll use Sugar's UI directly.

An OLPC News Rebuttal to @TMSruge's Africa 3.0 Speech

2010-03-16T11:05:21Z

At the SXSW geek fest, TMS Ruge made disparaging comments towards One Laptop Per Child. As quoted by others, he said:

"OLPC is a failed solution"... "Dead in the water"

Now you know I'm not shy about kicking OLPC in the shins when it needs a slap of reality, but TMS went a bit too far with calling it a failed solution, and I called him out on it, challenging him to a debate:

And TMS responded with the following points, under which are my counterpoints, expanded here with the benefit of contemplation and without the 140 character restriction. Both our comments have been edited for grammar and clarity.

OLPC has its supporters

TMS: It's digital version of neocolonialist topdown model of development. "we will save u!" One middle-aged (sound familiar?) guy decides "I'm going to save them, & this is only model"

Wayan Agreed. Nicholas Negroponte was following in the footsteps of Muslim, Catholic, and Christian saviors before him with the XO religion, all pronouncing that their particular solution would offer salvation for Africa. And like any religion, the individual models may have flaws, but the overall theme has value.

TMS: [OLPC] perpetuates dependencies with [its] philanthropic approach. If you give to one school, every school/org is going to feel entitled to also receive [XO's]. How long can you keep this up?

Wayan: OLPC's point is that every school should have XO's, just like each school should have teachers, desks, and the like. And governments should buy XO laptops for their students - like they do for textbooks. At OLPC News, we continue to question the economics of this model, as TMS hints, the numbers get crazy big (in the Billions!) even for small countries.

TMS What's value proposition of giving these away for free vs providing market eco-system? Assuming that Africa is poor and can't afford tech so we should "donate" it is lazy! If we can't afford anything, then why is iPhone available in 13 markets in Africa? OLPC hardware costs same as high end smartphones are on sale in Africa, why not sell it?

Wayan On this we could not agree more. In fact, I say Damn the free XO-1.5 laptops, we want OLPC sales!. Alas, OLPC claims that selling retail is too much a hassle and they're gonna stick with large-lot government sales.

TMS: Where is bottom up input from people on ground? Better yet, why no Africans on your board?

Wayan: Wow! What a great point that I never noticed. One Laptop Per Child leadership isn't African at all, thought its also not all "white" either. In fact, its very Hispanic for a USA organization.

TMS Where's research to support that giving tech away free is better model vs market solution? [OLPC's] corporate philosophy no better than Malaria No More run by cushy corner office suits. [OLPC] could make mass availability sustainable if selling them, versus philanthropic model. Yet [OLPC] gives them away. If OLPC is so great, then give it away to ANYBODY that wants one.

Wayan: Again, OLPC does not give out XO's - governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy XO laptops. Those governments give out XO's as part of their primary school educational obligation. And with the low attendance already prevalent in Africa, it makes sense to give out XO's there, as a rationale for sending children to school, rather than charging poor parents who cannot afford much.

TMS: OLPC cost same as netbooks. Result? Making computing affordable in Africa.

Wayan: Actually, OLPC begat netbooks, so you could say that it made computing affordable for Africans already. OLPC is just intent to focus on education vs. the overall retail market.

TMS: There r 450 million mobile subscribers in Africa. 99.9% of those were bought, not handouts. A growing majority of those mobile phones are smart and of more practical use than OLPC.

Wayan: The mobile phone vs. computer argument is an old one, and the results are always the same: there is a place for both. You'll not read (or write) a textbook on your mobile phone, but it is handy for short text, and for voice, its the killer app. Most of all, the XO laptop is an optimized educational tool, the mobile phone is a communications tool that can be used for education. Note the difference. Yet, wouldn't a $50 eBook reader beat both?

TMS: Stop feeding us the damned fish, sell us the fishing pole!

Wayan: Agreed, OLPC should advocate for local XO assembly to transfer skills, knowledge and wealth to local communities that buy XO laptops. Yet don't get your hopes up for actual production. Asia owns technology manufactures - even of your beloved mobile phones - and they'll not be building fab labs in Kenya anytime soon.

Overall, I though that TMS Ruge brought up good points. His main thrust is that OLPC should sell XO laptops - and it does already, to governments. They pass out XO's like other school supplies, free to needy students. This is a different model than consumer technology, like mobile phones, so it should not be compared their individual buyer model, unless TMS suggests primary school children should be working to buy school supplies as well.

Yet, we both agree that OLPC should have some form of XO retail sales, and there should be more local buy-in and economic impact. In fact, its something I've been advocating for 4 years now.

Still, TMS is no Mark Warschauer when it comes to critiquing OLPC. Though I do hope he learns from this experience. OLPC, and its supporters are a force to be reckoned with. You need to come prepared, and I have just the place to be educated.

Update!: TMS Ruge has replied to this post with Why OLPC is "..dead in the water"... still.

I applaud OLPC's attempt to have the governments pay for the laptops and distribute them to the children, but I do not see this going very far beyond a few progressive governments like Kagame's Rwanda. If the government does not acknowledge and address its poor education system, and put massive weight behind making sure that the cornerstones of their country's education system are overhauled to be inline with 21st century educational best practices, then OLPC is dead in the water.

XO Laptops Have Transformed Ntugi Mixed Day School

2010-03-15T14:09:05Z

UCC students' Ntugi school collaboration Flickr set, blog, and videos

On my own behalf and on behalf of Ntugi Mixed Day School let me thank Upper Canada College and Mark Battley in particular for helping the school to get XO laptops. The laptops have boosted the morale of both students and teachers in the school.

Some parents have transferred their kids from the neighbouring schools to our school because we are the only secondary school connected to Internet. This has raised the school enrollment from 4 classes to 6 classes. Students are using them, especially in Science and Geography. In the 2009 Science Congress, two projects scooped the best 2 positions in the District and were ranked No. 9 and 10 out of 102 in the Provincials. Previously, no Ntugi student had participated in Science Congress.

The laptops have also improved games in the school. Students have learned rules and coaching techniques. In basketball, they are always browsing for NBA and this has assisted out basketball girls' team to emerge 3rd in the district. The teams are gaining more confidence as they familiarize themselves with the games techniques.

The performance in the National exams has also improved greatly. In 2008, the school was No.17 in the district. After introduction to the use of computers in March 2009, the school moved to position 8 out of 42 schools which did the National exam in the district. In 2009, form four class used the laptops to browse for the past papers (National exams). This enabled them to perform extremely well.

Teachers and students now apply for jobs and colleges online. All teachers and almost 1/2 of the students' population have e-mails. Teachers and students use Facebook during their leisure time. After introduction of computers, two teachers have been encouraged to join higher institutions of learning. Mr. Moses Kimathi is doing Masters Degree at Chuka University College and Mrs. Florence Kaburu is at Kenya Methodist University for degree in Counseling and Education. They are always with the laptops for their research work.

The Kenya National Examination Council has started registering students for the National exams online. Schools without Internet facilities are greatly challenged. As the Head of Ntugi Secondary School, I feel very humbled for this donation (laptops) as it has made my work very easy when registering students for the National exams. (K.C.S.E).

The demand for the use of computers is so great by Ntugi and its surrounding community. Parents have been requesting for computer classes but we are limited by lack of room and more computers. Both teachers and students are very willing to teach our neighbouring primary schools, especially Subuiga Primary, the use of computers. For these outreach goals, we are seeking to build a computer lab & a community outreach centre. Apart from lack of computer lab, we are also seeking to expand our solar power capacity. During rainy seasons, the power goes down due to lack of enough sunlight.

The school thanks all those who have contributed to help change the face of Ntugi Mixed Day Secondary School. Let me appeal for more support to help us achieve our goal of contributing a new computer lab and installing more solar panels.

In collaboration with Upper Canada College & the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, Ntugi will be a school to watch in both Academics and Co-curricular activities in future. If you'd like, you can follow us on our own Ntugi School blog.

Thanks and may God bless you.
Yours Faithfully,
Ithinji P. Mbaabu
Principal
Ntugi Mixed Day Secondary School
PO Box 3202 - 60200
Meru, Kenya

OLPC Kenya Video: OLPCorps Kibwezi XO Deployment

2010-03-12T16:26:01Z

Kibwezi is a small rural town located in the arid region of Kenya, about half-way between the capital of Nairobi and the coastal city of Mombasa. Many of the students come from the surrounding farms. Their families survive on subsistence agriculture and many do not have electricity or running water in their homes.

The access to XO laptop computers stirs emotions of pure joy inside of the children as you can see by this video:

Read more about this deployment XO laptops on the OLPCorps Kibwezi blog.

Removing the XO Laptop keyboard motherboard controller [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:17:43-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

Mike Lee and Wayan Vota inspecting a torn XO-1 keyboard membrane [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:17:35-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

Disassembly of X0-1 laptop keyboard from OLPC [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:17:28-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

OLPC Learning Club DC XO Laptop Repair Workshop [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:17:20-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

Beth Santos using a really big orange screwdriver on OLPC laptop [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:17:14-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

Luke calling a friend for help with XO keyboard repair [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:17:06-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

Beth inspecting Luke's screw placement on XO laptop [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:16:52-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

OLPC Learning Club DC Repair Day [Flickr]

2010-03-10T17:16:46-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Learn more about XO laptop repair at OLPC News Forum

The XO Laptop with Handle Almost Removed

2010-03-10T10:15:52-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

XO Laptop Repair Bench at OLPC Learning Club DC Meetup

2010-03-10T10:15:46-08:00

Wayan Vota posted a photo:

Helping an OLPC Deployment in Gabon

2010-03-10T15:04:05Z

Pass saturday, I met with the team that will go to Libreville in Gabon, Africa this month to deploy 110 XO laptops in a school. You can have more details about the OLPCorps LavalUniversity Gabonproject.

The team launched a call for help to the local LUG for helping them be sure that everything is alright before they got there. They want to confirm that all the hardwares, softwares, procedures, etc are good and without error. The project team did a really good job and I think they are ready to go there but a validation before leaving is a great initiative.

What impress me is the answer they got from the community. In a short time, all the aspect of the project was covered! The project is heavily based on wireless architecture so a local group ZAP Québec jump in and offer their help to validate this part of the setup. For the software part (School Server, XO install, etc) and procedures, Rene and me will do the validation.

I was really impressed that many groups joined their efforts and gave their free time to help such a good project. I also like the impression we gave of our community to the project team. We often hear that the free softwares community is a place where people help each other. I am happy to have seen this in action and do my part.

Jeff Saucier wrote OLPC deployment in Gabon and its republished here with his permission

One Laptop Per Child Works - With Teachers

2010-03-08T15:06:57Z

One of the major innovations of OLPC consists in the idea that a computer given to a single child (also called 1:1 computing) is the best way to enhance the pupil's ability to learn effectively. It's called ONE-laptop-per-child after all.

In a recent article in ScienceDaily, strong evidence is presented that shows that 1:1 computing allows students in these programs to outperform their peers in traditional classrooms. According to findings of studies published in the Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment:

1:1 laptop use works

Students who have participated in 1:1 computing report higher achievement and increased engagement. This new collection of articles brings together some of the best evidence to date on the implementation and impacts of 1:1 computing.

All of the studies that examined the impact of 1:1 computing on student achievement found that students in the 1:1 settings outperformed their traditional classroom peers on English/Language Arts standardized tests by a statistically significant margin. Study authors also reported on evidence of increased student motivation and engagement, as well as changes in teachers' instructional practices.

This is great news for OLPC. So far the evidence of the effectiveness of 1:1 computing was circumstantial and anecdotal. These are the kind of studies that OLPC should have not only follow closely, but also actively sponsor, and possibly enhance with their own on-the-field experiences and surveys. Although that was never done, it is never too late for OLPC to back up such studies, and to provide additional supporting data.

Teachers matter in 1:1 success

Regardless of the OPLC involvement, the outcomes of these studies is clear. Is this a clear strong, although indirect victory or endorsement for OLPC? Not really. The article clearly states:

"One of the most salient findings was the critical role that teachers played in the success of each 1:1 program," Bebell said. Additional factors critical to student success across 1:1 technology settings included:
Having a strong commitment from school leadership
Developing consistent and supportive administrative policies
Creating professional development opportunities for teachers, particularly the sharing of best practices

This doesn't work

It appears that the key for success of the 1:1 computing initiative are teacher involvement and a strong school commitment. In other words, handing out laptops to individual students and let them to learn independently, is not what is found to work effectively. Teachers' involvement, training and professional development is the real key for success. Unfortunately, on a global scale OLPC performs poorly in this regards.

Teachers' training and professional and curricula development is left to local groups and and it happens countries where the role of teachers has been recognized. It should not be a surprise to note that in these countries the OLPC initiative is known to have been the most effective. When such local involvement of teacher' training and curricula development was missing, the program has not shown any significant sign of success.

Therefore, having a global push for sharing experiences, promoting teachers' collaboration and training is the determining factor for the success of the overall OLPC effort.

It is unfortunate and heart shuttering to witness OLPC lack of recognition of the relevance of teachers involvement in the learning process. A laptop will never be able to replace a teacher. It will only be an effective tool for students to improve their learning and teacher to extend their teaching. Scientific evidence now backs this strongly. Let's hope OLPC will follow.

How Open Learning Exchange Nepal is Changing Lives

2010-03-05T15:08:23Z

Wow! Watching this video from OLE Nepal I am so happy for them and sad for One Laptop Per Child. The success of OLE and the failures of OLPC are so self-evident:

See how OLE Nepal is focused on empowering the teachers? Hear how they're working with the established educational system? That's the path to XO laptop success - using technology as an enabler of educator evolution, not a bludgeon to force change.

Better yet, did you see the shoutout to the Teachermate? Yeah, OLE is the real education project.

Critical Success Factors in OLPC Afghanistan Deployment

2010-03-03T15:03:05Z

Our goal here is to dramatically and quickly improve educational outcomes. Unfortunately that process doesn't happen magically by itself. There's a myriad of cultural and reality on the ground matters that need to be taken care of. We need to understand concretely the problem we are attempting to solve and how our intervention is going to lead to solving it.

Empowering girls' education

So the reality on the ground in most Afghan schools here is that students and teachers really don't have enough time in class. Typically 30 mins for lessons that they would really need one hour for. Teachers often have to find additional hours to do other jobs to make ends meet.

Going back to that lack of time, sometimes capacity difficulties, they often can't provide feedback to student work, homework, etc. Without feedback, hints, etc. which parents and teachers can't provide learning results naturally suffer. Finally against this backdrop providing opportunities for group work / soft skills is tricky to say the least.

Creating a blended learning experience can effectively increase the amount of time that children have for learning. Identify which parts can be engaging self study through mini games, video, audio and quizzes. Provide self test reasonably framed not as tempting as flipping the book pages quizzes with hints and feedback on incorrect answers to provide the feedback to learning that children need. We can then use some of that freed time to construct a window for projects and further learning. But to get there we have to round off all the corners and engage all stakeholders.

XO digital library index in Afghanistan

This is what we're engaging now with three subjects: Science, Maths and Religious Studies. Creating complete interactive text books with the interactive tools (gathered from Java sites, scratch, Karma, what we developed) built through ExeLearning so that they can run offline anywhere anytime (we're coding some improvements to add Scratch, Iframe, and HTML 5 support).

In Afghanistan we are fortunate that there is a strong cultural emphasis placed on learning, and great respect for teachers in society, based on Islamic values and the importance the Koran places upon learning and education. On the other hand it means that we need to remember the position of the teacher cannot be undermined, and we need to deal with things like what to do when the kids ask questions that the teacher doesn't know the answer to.

Whatever pedagogical model might be applied; in most cultures, and particularly in cultures such as S. Asia where teacher prestige is vital, the most important bottom line critical success factor is teacher confidence. If the teachers are confident with the new technology, then results will flow, if not, we're asking for disaster. No - explaining binary code does not really have a practical use day to day for the XO laptop. But it did improve teacher confidence.

We did that in a number of ways. In addition to the normal teacher training (5-6 days) we also identified champion teachers who were more enthusiastic (Roughly 3 out of 10 teachers). We then did another 5-6 days with them. They then become the go to people in the school. Then find a local computer science student or such and have them visit. Even if computer science possibly is not the most relevant subject in the process, it is the part that addresses insecurities more often than not, and it creates a social web of go to people, which is the same way that other challenges are typically solved here.

We need to remember that connectivity ain't cheap. Not at all - satellite bandwidth is extremely expensive. Typically satellite based dedicated bandwidth runs at about $3,000/month for 1 Mbps. Which is why we base pretty much everything on using the local school server and we run our own digital library (built using our own Simple Digital Library Index). We copy those websites (like wikipedia snapshots, language websites, health contents, etc) that we want for reference onto the school network using mirroring tools. Also avoids any cultural sensitivity problems.

Finally we need to consider that we're still learning. So we need to rigorously assess what we're doing, we need to engage stakeholders, we need to get their feedback, run ideas by them, engage teachers, children and parents in the whole process. We find a very positive reception from children (of course), teachers, and just a few percent of parents complaining that their children were a bit too interested in their XO. We found around a 22% increase in standardized testing results over 2.5 months after introducing the laptops. We have indications. Soon it will be time to find more definitive answers.

The XO thus can be the key to unlocking amazing possibilities and improving education, but to realize the potential of the investment and achieve our objective of massively improving learning outcomes we have to work with the culture, with stakeholders, and deliver without the need for massive recurring bandwidth costs the educational content that children and teachers need.

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Was OLPCorps 2009 an OLPC Failure?

2010-03-01T15:09:04Z

When Beth Santos presented at OLPC Learning Club DC about her OLPC São Tomé experience, her description of the OLPCorps deployment had me asking one very intense question:

Beth Santos: OLPCorps savior

Was OLPCorps São Tomé a failure?

When Beth first went to Sao Tome to volunteer with Step Up, she didn't expect to work with XO laptops. She just wanted to help the São João school. On arrival, she found XO laptops stored in a closet, unused since the OLPCorps volunteers left.

This should not come as a surprise. We predicted that abandoned XO laptops would be one legacy of OLPCorps. Technology adoption, in any culture, requires enthusiastic supporters with a long-term commitment to change. By parachuting in volunteers for a few weeks one summer, OLPC was setting up OLPCorps to have a temporary impact at best.

Beth's surprising opinion

After Beth finished her talk, I asked her if she thought the OLPCorps program was a failure, especially since she found few XO skills or OLPC knowledge in the community when she arrived. She surprised me by saying OLPCoprs in São Tomé was not a failure because they did the groundwork that made her experience possible.

OLPCorps found the local organizations, like Step Up, schools, and people that would be excited about an XO laptop deployment. They also did the initial hardware setup and XO familiarization that allowed the school to accept the XO laptops in the classroom.

But OLPCorps São Tomé was not there long enough to get the XO laptops into the classroom during the school day. It took a follow up visit by Beth to get actual educator adoption and student ownership. It took at least six months of daily in-person interaction to effect change at Sao Joao

XO deployment critical success factor

Kim Toufectis asked Beth a great follow on question: what skill or knowledge did she bring to São Tomé that was a critical success factor? While Beth didn't think she had any unique advantage for XO deployment success, I believe she had one that's the most needed in any XO deployment: determination.

She had the will and the drive to make things happen. She wasn't going to let 100 XO laptops languish in a closet even if she didn't have a clue about OLPC or one-to-one pedagogy. She's a go-getter and OLPC Sao Tome was lucky to have her.

She also proves that if OLPCorps is to be a success, it needs to invest in communities with the right volunteer for the long-term. It needs more Beth Santos to stay on site longer.

Damn the Free XO-1.5 Laptops: We Want OLPC Sales!

2010-02-26T15:47:16Z

One Laptop Per Child has announced they're starting to distribute C2 Test Model XO-1.5 laptops through their Contributors Program.

This is great news for hardware and software developers who are looking to code and test for OLPC. But it pretty much sucks for everyone else.

There is not a week that goes by without someone asking me how they can get XO laptops for their community-based project, their small deployment. XO-1, XO-1.5, and to my amusement, XO-2 and even XO-3 laptops - any XO laptop! They are shocked that OLPC will not sell XO's to them and confused when told about the Contributors Program.

Why? Because the Contributors Program is still a mysterious process where some groups get XO's and others don't, based on... Whim? Chicken bones? Negroponte's fancy that day?

They seek a clear, transparent process. Some way, any way to get XO laptops with certainty.

And let's be clear - this isn't retail sales. We don't need OLPC on Amazon, though that would be the best. A simple, organized XO laptop eBay sale would be enough. Oh and please don't give me that "limited staff, resources" ine - that's just an excuse. ilovemyxo proves that you can sell small batches of XO gear to committed buyers.

So the Contributors Program is nice and all, but it really should be called "XO's for the cool kids," as it just frustrates everyone else.

New Millenium Learners Conference 2010 - Day 3

2010-02-24T22:58:12Z

Today was the third and last day of the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010". Since the conference ended at 1PM only the keynote, a single session and a closing panel took place. However it turned out to be a really strong finish which made for a perfect ending for what was truly a great conference.

Looking forward to NMLC 2012

After yesterday's constant crashes and issues I was very happy to see that ustream.tv worked like a charm today. The only thing that was slightly annoying is that my conference WiFi account ran out 10min before the actual end of the conference, hence the last few minutes of the last session are missing from the recordings.

As you can see below I've decided to structure this post a little differently then the two previous ones. You'll find the embedded recordings of the sessions with my comments and thoughts on the particular session below it. My overall conference summary can be found at the very bottom of the article.

On a related side note: The conference organizers said that audio recordings of all sessions will be made available in the near future. I'll make sure to let you know once they are online.

Keynote speech: Looking into the future: the importance of applications and quality content by Miguel Nussbaum (P. Universidad Católica, Chile)

There's really no way to do Miguel Nussbaum's justice in words so I'd strongly recommend you to look at the recording above. Some of the most memorable things he talked about where "one mouse per child" efforts in India whereby up to 40 pupils (each with their own mouse) used a single PC that used a video-beamer as an output device. You can get a pretty good impression of how this concept works in this YouTube video from Microsoft.

He also mentioned that one of the main challenges when it comes to using computers in education is the integration of conventional and digital learning resources into lesson plans. Hearing this it was impossible not to think of OLE Nepal's inspiring efforts in this area.

Another important aspect that was discussed is the fact that technological networks really have to support social networks and other factors within a classroom. Some of the examples mentioned here included PDA based learning projects that Nussbaum had been involved in.

He also presented a three-stage model when it comes to the implementation of 1:1 computing in education:

find a model that works (being effective)
replicate it in several other places (being transferable)
scale to the desired size (being efficient)

Not entirely surprisingly it was mentioned that in almost all cases the biggest challenge is stage 3 of that model. Definitely some good food-for-thought!

Last but not least he emphasized the fact that there are a lot of hidden costs when it comes to implementing computers in education. This topic came up repeatedly in the follow-up discussions and during previous sessions and it was really interesting to hear the many different view-points that people had on this issue.

The follow-up discussion with the audience turned out to be fascinating as well. The topics which were being discussed included:

the distinction between digital inclusion and classroom integration
the notion that bringing 1:1 computing into education on a large scale is similar to running a start-up company as one doesn't have blueprints in many cases
the fact that the additional costs of deployments also very much depends on the existing infrastructure in a school, city, region or country

Session 1: Is 1-to-1 worth the investment? How does this policy align with other educational policies? chaired by Michael Trucano (The World Bank) with presentations by Franz Kühmayer (Austria), Oystein Johannessen (Ministry of Education, Norway), Alejandro Piscitelli (Argentina), Robert Fogel (Intel) and Charles Fadel (Cisco).

After the morning session being extremely inspiring and engaging and therefore setting the bar very high the next session had somewhat of a hard time keeping up. However two of the panelists did give really great talks.

Alejandro Piscitelli from Argentina had prepared a powerful presentation that included a great video prepared by students which consisted of the famous "Another Brick in the Wall" music video combined with statements by Seymour Papert and Sir Ken Robinson's must-see TED talk.

He also expressed his surprise about the fact that nobody at the conference had really mentioned Sugar and so he spent quite a bit of time talking about it and Sugar-on-a-Stick. He went as far as to say:

"The most important innovation from One Laptop per Child is the Sugar interface."

The last speaker of the session was Charles Fadel from Cisco who offered a somewhat skeptical view of things which in my opinion was a refreshing counterbalance after the majority of the conference had often seemed overly enthusiastic. One of the most interesting aspects was that he also separated learning in the context of ICT into three stages:

learning through ICT
learning with ICT
learning about ICT

Fadel ended with a slide that asked people to consider reframing the discussion and think about it if it were really pedagogy-centered. He also mentioned that just focusing on knowledge probably wasn't enough and that skills should be considered as well.

The following discussion turned out to be very interesting as well since it quickly moved away from specific 1:1 computing in education topics to broader political issues and economic issues that have quite a lot of influence on relevant initiatives and efforts.

Again I'd really recommend you to take a look at the video recordings yourself as the two presentations mentioned above and the following comments and discussions are really well worth seeing.

Closing session: lessons learned and next steps with contributions by Eugenio Severin (IDB), Michael Trucano (The World Bank), Francesc Pedró (OECD), and Christian Dorminger (Austrian Ministry of Education). [As mentioned above here the recording unfortunately ends in the middle of Francesc Pedró's summary.]

The speakers of the clossing session provided a good summary of some of the main topics and issues discussed during the conference. It allowed for some reflectation of the broad variety of aspects presented during the past 2 1/2 days. Francesc Pedró also provided some interesting insights into OECD activities over the coming 12 to 18 months and I think it's safe to say that we've got many exciting things to look forward to in the field of 1:1 computing in education.

Conference summary

If you have made it this far and have also read my summaries from day 1 and day 2 and/or my tweets you probably won't be surprised to hear that I enjoyed the conference a lot and found it to be extremely inspiring. Apart from the many things I learned through the fruitful discussions and the various presentations it was great to catch up with old friends and meet so many new and interesting people.

As with every event there are always things that one could do better but admittedly I can't think of too many. Aspects that do come to mind are the almost complete lack of mention of open-source software and open learning materials and content. I also would have liked to see academia being more strongly represented to both broaden and deepen the discussions between what will normally be an audience consisting of many practitioners. Last but least some people pointed out that the format of the conference was very much an old millenium style. So I think that experimenting with things like a more modern barcamp approach could definitely yield interesting results.

In the end I want to thank all involved people - but particularly the organizers - for their hard work and enthusiams that made the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010" a very memorable event indeed.

New Millenium Learners Conference 2010 - Day 2

2010-02-24T08:25:01Z

It's safe to say that day 2 of the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010" was at least as interesting as yesterday, if not even more so.

TeacherMate

The day started with an excellent keynote by Peter Baumgartner (German Web site) from the Donau-Universität Krems, Austria. He generally spoke about learning and education and focused on 1:1 netbook projects that are currently taking place in Austria. One very memorable quotes from his presentation was:

"If it only were about content we would only need libraries and no schools."

From an OLPC perspective it was great that he mentioned Sugar (though without using the name) as an example for an innovative approach in software for its focus on collaboration and the network view. Also when he talked about a "learning log" it was impossible for me not to think of Sugar's Journal.

Other interesting things he mentioned is that he considers netbooks to be 5P-computers (portability, power, performance, price, providing world wide access via 3G connectivity) and the fact that only some years ago laptops only allowed for "battery life-long learning".

I was also intrigued by the use of a closed micro-blogging solution which pupils of the netbook classes were encouraged to use in order to get a better understanding of when, where and how the netbooks were being utilized. That also demonstrated the belief that by using netbooks a lot of learning can actually take place outside school, be it at home or on the bus to/from school.

All in all this was definitely a very inspiring talk that provided lots of food-for-thought.

The first real session of the day was called "The transformation of teaching and learning: are there new learning models or environments emerging?" and unfortunately turned out to be a bit dull for my taste. The one presentation that I did enjoy a lot was the one by Roger Doucet from Nouveau Brunswick in Canada. One key thought to take away from his talk was that it takes time to actually see a real impact from 1:1 computing projects in education. In his case it took 5 years to see "wonderful results" and that "one should be prepared" for what definitely won't be an easy wait.

Due to some scheduling conflicts the second and third session were swapped so the first presentation of the "Impact on equity: does 1-to-1 help to bridge the digital divide in education?" session was held by Cecilia Alcalá from Paraguay Educa which is implementing OLPC in the country. Having heard quite a bit about the project beforehand the talk didn't contain too much new information for me. It was however great to hear that the teachers received approximately 100 hours of teacher training before the project (currently ~4000 XO-1s) was started.

The next presenter, Angela McFarlane from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom turned out to be another highlight of the day. What I particularly liked about her presentation was the focus on children's achievements whereas the majority of the talks interestingly focused on teachers. She also brought a much needed broader perspective to the whole discussion which, as I already mentioned yesterday, was generally slightly too narrow and not critical enough in many ways.

The remaining two presentations in that session weren't particularly exciting from my point of view. The one quote that I will however probably remember from that session was Ian Halpin (Becta, United Kingdom) saying that:

"Investing 1 pound into ICT for children who don't have access to ICT now will pay back more than 5 pounds to the UK economy over the course of that child's life."

After a much needed coffee break the third and last session of the day "Impact on student outcomes: does 1-to-1 improve student results?" ended on a high note. Unfortunately I didn't catch too much of the first talk which was given by Jordi Pàmies (UAB, Spain) as I was battling with software problems.

The second talk was split between Paolo Ferri from the University of Milan and two of his PhD students who are writing their thesis based on experiences collected during extensive visits to Project Ceibal in Uruguay: Francesca Scenini and Andrea Mangiatordi. With 10min split between 3 people you can imagine that there was little to no time for really diving into their respective topics. Luckily I had had a chance to talk to them during Monday's reception so I was particularly intrigued by Andrea's work when it comes to accessibility within the context of OLPC and Sugar.

In the next talk Patricia Sierra from the Fundación Piés Descalzos in Colombia reported on some of her organization's early work with XO-1s. Currently approximately 900 XO-1s are used in the country, most of them by members of displaced communities. Interestingly almost a third of these XO-1s is running Windows XP. I didn't have a chance to inquire about any relevant findings comparing the experience of the pupils using the XO-1s with Sugar with ones running Windows XP but I do hope to do that tomorrow.

The last speaker of the day was Richard Rowe from Open Learning Exchange (OLE) and his talk turned out to be another highlight of the day. Having had a chance to talk to him on Sunday and Monday I basically knew what to expect but to see the energy and passion he brought to the room at the end of the day was really inspiring.

One of the most interesting things he mentioned is that OLE would run a trial comparing the educational impact of 500 XO-1s and 500 TeacherMates in Rwanda. His mention of "leadership" and the critical importance of defining expections when it comes to 1:1 computing projects in education were also important aspects that few other speakers had mentioned. In terms of the most memorable quote from what was a truly excellent presentation my personal winner is:

"Let's stay stay away from faith-based approaches."

Last but not least I really liked his reminder that even talking about the concept of 1:1 computing in education really focuses on the technology rather than education even though everyone is claiming to do quite the opposite.

During the coffee breaks I had a chance to spend some time talking with Oscar Becerra (OLPC Peru), Fernando Brum (Plan Ceibal) and Cecilia Alcalá (Paraguay Educa). Needless to say these discussions yielded some interesting, exciting and challenging pieces of information and impressions. Overall I really have to say that talking to these people is a really encouraging experience!

Unfortunately ustream.tv was a royal pain in the rear yesterday and while I did manage to livestream the majority of the sessions I had to deal with many crashes, odd lockups and a general inability to record the stream for later viewing. Some short recordings did make it to my ustream.tv page (under "archived videos") but frankly speaking I'm not convinced they are very useful for most people.

However just like on Monday I and several other people tweeted a lot so I'd recommend you to look through the tweets with the #1to1Viena hashtag to see what people wrote about the conference. The fine folks from the Interamerican Development Bank have also written a good overview blog-post with many links to the speakers and their respective projects who were on-stage on Tuesday.

New Millenium Learners Conference 2010 - Day 1

2010-02-22T19:06:42Z

If you have been following my live tweets today you will know that day 1 of the "New Millenium Learners Conference 2010" taking place here in Vienna at the moment was really interesting.

Vienna, February 22-24

The opening session led by people from the Austrian Ministry of Education introduced some of the projects that the Ministry has been working on in Austria. Our small Austrian OLPC project in Graz was also mentioned but unfortunately due to time constraints the information on all the projects remained relatively superficial.

The first presentations focused on "Opportunities and risks of 1-to-1 in education: international perspectives" with the speakers being Carla Jiménez (IDB), Michael Trucano (The World Bank) and Francesc Pedró (OECD). All speakers gave interesting overviews on what their respective views of the current state of 1:1 computing in education were. What I particularly liked was Michael Trucano ending with leaving the last of the 10 points he structured his talk around open to emphasize that there are still many unknowns and questions to be discussed when it comes to these kinds of initiatives.

The first real session "Monitoring use and results: how countries know what is going on in the terrain?"

To me the most interesting presentation there was undoubtably the one by Oscar Becerra from Una laptop por niño in Peru. Some key pieces of information which so far had been hard to confirm were discussed:

Currently 300.000 children in Peru have an XO-1, 10.000 teachers have been trained and 6.000 schools have received XO-1s. At the end of the year Peru wants to increase these numbers to 600.000, 100.000 and 20.000 respectively!

The lunch break was spent hanging out with various people involved with OLPC and discussing some of the ongoing efforts and projects and ideas for future events and undertakings.

The second session was called "Supporting users: how teachers and pupils are supported?"

Here I found all four panelists to present very interesting projects going on in Argentina, Catalunya, Portugal and across various countries of the European Schoolnet. One thing I'll have to follow-up on is a promising report called "Insight Report, 2010" which the European Schoolnet hopes to publish over the coming weeks.

This session resulted in some interesting follow-up discussion with good questions from the audience and the session chair. One of the key takeaway from this session for me was the phrase that "learning resources go beyond content".

The third and last session of the day was "The policy expectations: why countries are investing on 1-to-1?" and included presentations about projects in Maine (probably the most famous 1:1 computing in education project), Uruguay, Portugal and Canada. Additionally Rodrigo Arboleda from the Miami based OLPC Association presented his view of things.

To me the most interesting slide of that session was a list of findings with results from a 1:1 notebook project in New Brunswick:

Empowers students
Engages students (and teachers)
Personalizes learning
Improves student achievement
Promotes inclusive education
Enables and accelerates the 21st century shift

I hope that as 2010 progresses we'll see similar results from surveys and evaluations of OLPC projects around the world.

One thing I was generally a bit surprised about is that there was relatively little disagreement during the panel discussions, by and large most participants seemed to agree on the majority of issues and topics mentioned.

In-between the sessions there was plenty of time to socialize and talk to the various conference participants including some of the core OLPC folks who arrived in Vienna coming from Brussels, Miami, Boston, New York and Kigali.

I managed to livestream and record almost all the sessions via ustream. Just head over to my ustream.tv page and look at the "archived videos" to find the recordings there. A handful of people are also twittering from the conference and you can find these tweets by searching for the #1to1Viena hashtag.

Overall I have to say that I really enjoyed day 1 as I learned a lot and got to talk to many people I hadn't seen in many months (or even years) plus of course I met many new people. Now I'm already looking forward to tomorrow which will focus on the theme of "Benefits and barriers. Research evidence and gaps." but first I'm off to the "Welcome Reception" by the Austrian Ministry of Education and the City of Vienna...

Katha Implements a Small OLPC India Deployment

2010-02-19T15:25:30Z

Katha is an organization that connects grassroots work in education in India, and it has driven its education model on a single powerful idea: Children can bring change that is sustainable and real, which is in strong alignment with the goal of OLPC.

Katha runs 71 schools in slum communities with more than 200,000 children. XO laptops were deployed at Katha Khazana, one of the school setup by Katha in a slum community at New Delhi.

The school is marked by its distinctive atmosphere creating a rich learning experience for students ranging from pre-nursery grade to 12th grade, which was further enriched when OLPC India distributed XOs to the school children on 21st January.

The OLPC Team was present there, introducing them to OLPC's XO. The students were quite surprised to see that these green boxes were really laptops! Some of them were considering it to be sort of game/toy or even a lunch box!

Students, pumped with new ideas, as the team says, were so fascinated with the experience that when the teachers began collecting back the laptops, they kept on pinging the team about when will they get them again. As there are only 30 XOs compared to large number of students, they have scheduled a turn-wise time for each group.

More info one the OLPC Katha Chronicle wiki page

Abhishek Indoria is the lead for the BoomingBang project an writes about OLPC India.