Planet OLPC

If I may… some personal observations (Yah Man)

2012-02-09T00:43:15+00:00

I have been following the journey of six OLPC contributors as they observed and assisted at two Jamaican schools: Mark Battley (Kenya), Bill Stelzer (Haiti & Nicaragua), Adam Holt (Haiti), Craig Perue (OLPC Jamaïca), Quentin Periès-Joly and Laura de Reynal (OLPC France/Madagascar’s Nosy Komba)

Craig Perue of the Mona School of Business, University of the West Indies, deployed a team in both Providence Methodist Basic School and August Town Primary.

It truly is a joy to watch the children and their teachers working together. The many photographs are top quality and reveal a great deal to those of us who have never traveled there.

photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

The OLPC France Blog posting by Laura de Reynal (http://olpc-france.org/blog/2012/02/100-kmh-down-hope-road/) discusses the differences between the two schools in terms of ages of the children, teacher energy and humor, sharing of XOs, teacher confidence with laptops and their hopes and fears in using them.

I would like to make some observations, comparing what I see from these Jamaican experiences with some of what I know of the Haitian experience. After all, the two countries are so very close geographically that it seems appropriate.

My first observation is that the Jamaican children are equally captivating! Who can resist???

photo by Laura de Reynal

Photo by Laura de Reynal

photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

Looking at shots of daily life, things appear economically better off in Jamaica, even though there are similar valid concerns about earthquakes.

Photo by Adam Holt

There is a sense of tidiness, there are sidewalks, there are people of all ages enjoying games on the streets. There appears to be general contentment and a sense of well being.

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

People on the streets are seen with books in hand. I missed seeing newspapers and magazines in Haiti.

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

The schools are nicely painted and even have louvered windows and doors. There are plenty of tables and chairs for the students.

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

It appears to me that materials for the Jamaican schools are easier to acquire or locate because language is not a huge issue. In Haiti the decision of what languages should be used for instruction is a major debate. Kreyol? French? Spanish? English? Certainly small new schools cannot deal with all of these. Many of the teachers only know one or two of these themselves. Organizations donating materials to schools for classrooms and libraries have an easier time locating English language posters, books, globes, and other materials. At Ecole Shalom in Croix-des-Bouquets Haiti, I personally must translate Pen Pal letters and game instructions.

Photo by Adam Holt

Notice the sense of humor and the colorful wall decorations too!

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

The teachers at these two schools seem to make excellent use of their resource people and volunteers.
Here you see teacher-trainer Racine with the students.

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

And here is Laura giving hints to the faculty.

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

Teachers participate in the OLPC effort and make use of the laptops in their daily activities. The XO activities in English are useful at even the beginning levels because the children are taught to write in English at a very young age. In Haiti they are still learning their colors at this stage.

Photo by Laura de Reynal

And of course the children love the laptop activities and are very comfortable with these.

Photo by Laura de Reynal

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

Photo by Laura de Reynal

I believe that in Haiti, the teachers are nervous about familiarizing themselves with the laptops and insecure about what these offer the children. They take less pride in their classrooms and decorations, and tend to watch the clock, hoping to leave school early. (And of course life IS very stressful there.) They need skills and training to become confident and better at teaching.

The Volunteers at Ecole Shalom rotate frequently. They tend to be English speaking, and so cannot interact much with staff or students on academic things. Volunteers tend to work on building, animal husbandry, micro-finance, gardening and stitchery projects. What teaching they do is done in the afternoons only, strictly in English. Of course, because the children are so appealing, the volunteers take them for walks, play some games with them and do lots of coloring.

In Jamaica, it appears that volunteers contribute to the XO learning process, and this makes all the difference.

Photo by Laura de Reynal

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

And these photos? Well, I just can’t resist shots of children!!

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

Photo by Laura de Reynal

Photo by Quentin Periès-Joly

OLPC visitors in Jamaica

2012-02-07T17:58:59+00:00

It is early February, 2012, and OLPC community members from Kenya, Haiti, Madagascar and elsewhere gathered in Jamaica to get to know firsthand OLPC schools, their teachers, their parents, their sponsors, their government, and most important Their Children. Early reports back are extremely positive:

Jamaica’s accomplishments and challenges are beyond description. Six of us here are working hard together. The talent is unmatched — an extraordinary reminder of the value of executive clarity, civic media-making, school-mentoring talent – where everyone not only talks about education – but achieves it too!

A photo journal
A wonderful new environment

Providence Methodist Basic School

students

clean your hands time!

A busy schedule for all to see.

Lunch!

Checking out Laura’s photos

Another school to see…

August Town Primary School staff

The tech support crew

Kids building their own Memorize games

Racine trains teachers at both schools

Mediamaker Mark teaches his craft

Fototoons Lesson

Working with what they’ve learned

Laura presents…

There are many posters and displays…

many topics…

And then the lovely UWI’s amazing Mona Campus

with its very own aqueduct

UWI student population is in fact ~80% female

OLPC Jamaica presentation… Craig concludes.

Everyone gathers to digest the events.

And how do we move forward? Adam and Quentin ponder the big questions.

OLPC Kenya: working towards an education alliance

2012-02-07T02:44:07+00:00

Sandra Thaxter, who has been working with some of the grassroots programs in Kenya, recently joined with others in the OLPC Kenya volunteer community, for a meeting with the the Kenyan Institute for Education on their digital learning initiatives.

Assistant Minister of Education Calist Mwatela set up a meeting between these groups, and they are planning a series of Skype meetings over the next few weeks. Sandra wrote more about this and her dream of an OLPC Kenya Alliance, as a guest post on the Eshibinga blog.

Keep up the good work!

South Africa: Building grassroots support for access to a modern education

2012-02-06T16:40:53+00:00

As noted last week, Jackie Lustig has compiled a report from our South African projects. It draws on background data from the country, and highlights work done there over the past four years.

Starting with a gift of 100 laptops from donors on Boston, and expanding through the interest of a number of OLPCorps projects in 2008, South Africa has expanded its OLPC community to almost 1500 students and teachers today.

OLPC South Africa case study, 2008-2012

(This is an 8MB pdf, so may take a moment to load)

OLPC KENYA ALLIANCE 2012 Kenyan Ministry of Education

2012-02-06T11:04:53+00:00

Greetings friends,

For those of you who have not had a report on the meeting that was setup for us by the Assistant. Minister of Education Calist Mwatela with the Kenyan Institute for Education eLearning team. He asked us to meet with them so that we could learn about what the ministry is doing for eLearning in Primary school, but he also facilitated a relationship with them for us, to be part of their eLearning strategy.

Attending this meeting were our group’s Nairobi contigent: Mark Koech, Krys Kakoba, Oscar Limoke, Sandra Thaxter, Festus Boli (brother of the minister). Tonny Omwansa was unable to attend.

So now that we are taken seriously, We will need to follow-up. The steps we have all ready proposed for our alliance, OLPC Kenya, are the right steps. The highlights of these proposals has been sent, but will be posted for the entire olpc-kenya google group.

A meeting is proposed for February 9th again with the KIE contacts.
• Oscar, Krys and Mark will confirm, and get an XO or a CD or both to John before the meeting.
• We will meet Sunday at the airport before I leave to review the strategy for this meeting and the KIE relationship. It would be great if Shedrack could be available to join you at this meeting, as he already has a relationship with these groups.
On the Agenda for the Feb. 19th Skpye meeting
• Review role and proposed assignments.
• Website planning… with John Valent. How do we make this a really professional, and informative site for those wanting and overview of OLPC Kenya
• Planning for an OLPC Project Competition to be launched during February.
• Follow-up contact: Shedrack has contacts at the National IT Innovation and Research Institute Bernard Sang. We need to fit this group into the big picture, with Shedrack’s direction.

Eric Krystall, my host for the last two days, is a principal person in Kenya Rotary. He will invite one of the Nairobi members to do a presentation on OLPC XO Kenya programs, to partner with them to launch and fund some new programs. He has your contact info.

We have some proposed roles for everyone to agree to which are noted in the attached spreadsheet of our members – all of you who have participated in building this movement.

–
Sandra Thaxter

Kevin Brooks challenges Mark Warschauer and Morgan Ames to reflect

2012-02-05T21:48:50+00:00

Kevin was recently fired up by likes Sridhar’s recent summary of Australian OLPC projects and how they are building a national education programme. He challenges Warschauer and Ames to take a look at their work. (They are known in the olpc-verse primarily for their paper framing the idea of a computer for every child as a “technocentric” “utopian vision”.)

Given the depth of information out today about the diversity of olpc programs, there is much more research to be done – not about whether to give learning tools to children (of course you should), but about how to use them as the basis for transforming and enriching a community. To paraphrase a famous educator, the diversity in OLPC implementations around the world will help us discover the most effective approaches.

A tip of the hat to OLPC Australia, which continues its truly remarkable work.

First meeting with the EFACAP teachers on solar-powered Internet deployment trip (Dec 13 2011)

2012-02-05T21:28:32+00:00

During our second implementation trip in December 2011, our team had three key large-group meetings: two with the EFACAP teachers and administration, and one with the parents of the schoolchildren. The next few posts will cover these meetings, including notes from the meetings, as well as what I found to be the important take-aways.

Meeting with the teachers, Dec 13: We took the opportunity to introduce ourselves and to explain our entire project, as well as our overall intentions in being there. We hadn’t fully realized this before, but we never had the chance to explain to the teachers about the solar system we deployed in August, because regular school was not in session when we were there, and since we finished the installation on the final evening of that trip, we just ran out of time for such an explanation, in any case. Even so, we had believed that somehow it would have been conveyed to these teachers that this solar project, which was the main reason for our involvement in the laptop project in general, was at the initiative of the Ministry of Education. It had not been.

So we started from the beginning, explaining that OLPC-Haiti, under the Ministry of Education, had asked us to design and deploy a solar powering system to charge the laptops that had been donated to Haiti, because they were unable to power them at the school. We tried to make clear that we were not affiliated with OLPC; that our involvement with the project was the solar powering part of it, which we were approached and specifically asked to do, and that we had raised all of our own funds to do this.

We asked whether the teachers had received XO laptops of their own, trying to gauge their technology familiarity and whether they were using them in the classrooms now that they could charge them. The teachers claimed that they each received a laptop as part of the program. They said they only use them at school, and sometimes they use them to prepare lessons. They pointed to my laptop that I had brought with me to this meeting, and expressed unanimously that they really wanted to have “grown up” computers for themselves.

We asked which subjects they use the XOs for in class, and were told: math, writing, social sciences, and experimental sciences.

They also see the students using the laptops outside of class for: photos, music, sounds, drawing, maze. With the younger students, they use them to play games in class.

These teachers claim to have no problem with the fact that the students learn technology faster than the teachers do. (This was a surprise for me! Usually teachers express the opposite!)

The teachers claim that both the students and the teachers use the laptops to do work outside of class.

The EFACAP school teaches grades 1-9, and grades 7-9 do not have laptops, and they very much want them. There’s a sense that they don’t understand why the younger students would get the laptops when the older students get nothing. (I’ve certainly witnessed this sentiment before.)

The teachers further reported that they use the laptops in the classroom about 2 hours per week. If the computers were in the classroom permanently, they feel they’d be able to use them all day.

We next inquired what would they like to be able to do with the computers. They’d like to be able to use the Internet. They were thrilled when we told them we were bringing the Internet, and they set up a separate meeting with us two days later, for us to teach them how to get online. That was a very interesting experience, to try to teach adults who had NEVER used the Internet before, to do so on the XO laptops….so I will save that for a future post.) They also find the XOs too slow, and reiterated their wish that they could have real computers.

Finally, we gave them a tour of the solar system, and asked if they’d be willing to teach the students about solar power, and they said yes.

They also told us that they all wanted to come to the US. They said they’d organize everything in terms of passports and organization of when to come, but they really wanted to all make a group trip to the US, to see how we live there. They also were very strongly pushing that I bring them grown up computers the next time I come. I explained to them about how all of the work we had done so far was mainly funded through two large grants we had applied for and were successfully awarded. They let me know that, since I had had so much success before, they were confident I’d be able to get a grant to get them computers.

We have another idea for a computer lab for the EFACAP school–so stay tuned!

Taking Map Activity to amazing Eshibinga Pupils

2012-02-04T07:50:49+00:00

Am seated on a pikipiki enjoying the ride from Khumusalaba to Eshibinga .Its the C39 road and I have mixed emotions on the ride. I am excited to be on way way to teach kids about maps, excited that I am ridding on this road that I worked on as an intern three years ago but am saddened and disillusioned just like the local as I suspect about the state of the road. Hardly a year after it was commissioned, the road is already in a sorry state. Am not shocked because as an intern, i witnessed first hand blatant impunity and unethical practices. it saddens me and i chuck out my Ideos phone to tweet about it…tweeting, riding..

As we alight at Peter Amunga, I relish in the he fresh air and I quickly throw myself on the lush grass as I wait for Sandra. apparently our host strictly instructed the pikipki guy not to0 over-speed. I wish he only new how she is a need for speed lady . Soon she arrives and we are in no time unpacking and packing our XOs, GPS units and off we cross the road to Eshibinga Primary School. We are met by an eager audience of both teachers and learners. I am more taken with the learners who had been briefed of our Map Activity the previous day. The pupils here are simply amazing: they all have some sketches of their community maps. I have a feeling these kids are going to impress me.

True to my expectation, as i take to the chalk board, am not disappointed. As I take the pupils through the Map elements, the (x,y) staff, the l(at,long), the Greenwhich Meridian, the equator and finally the GPS, the pupils were all but amazing. In fact they took charge of the lesson and I felt bad having to go to JKUAT for a whole half a decade to study GeoInformatics yet here are this pupils who know at at such a tender age. Their attention amazes me and I am so happy to take them a little too far by explaining to them what GPS means, how it works all the satellite staff in a mild way. I have a strong feeling that this pupils are going to be great Geographers some day, I tell them that and with that I have nothing much but to tell them ” go yee and make maps!”

I hope Mark Warschauer Reads This! : )

2012-02-03T17:42:05+00:00

Mark Warschauer, as some of you may remember, was pretty critical of 4 OLPC deployments around the world. I think, however, he would approve of what OLPC Australia is doing, and I certainly mean him no disrespect (just trying out a catchy title). Below is a reposting of Sridhar Dhanapalan’s email to the IaeP (it’s an education project) list.

Hello everyone,

You may be interested in a review I have written of the OLPC Australia
education programme:

http://www.dhanapalan.com/blog/2012/02/01/creating-an-education-programme/

It contains the video of a talk I gave at the linux.conf.au conference
in January, and a more detailed explanation of that talk.

Some of the key points:

* We have a comprehensive education programme that highly
values teacher empower?ment and com?munity engagement, with a focus
on building sustainability.
* The investment to provide a connected learning device to every
one of the 300 000 children in remote Australia is less than 0.1% of
the annual education and connectivity budgets.
* For low socio-economic status schools, the cost is only $80 AUD per child.
* Our programme is available to any school in Australia, for $380
AUD per child.
* Our programme is schools-centric, with a strong focus on the teacher.
* A teacher must undergo training and earn a certification to
qualify to receive XOs for their class.
* Training is conducted online, and hence scales very well.
* We have an online community to provide peer-driven support,
assisted by OLPC Australia personnel.
* Technology development and deployment is guided by the principle
that it must be manageable by non-technical personnel.
* Our technology platform is open and not locked-down, providing
maximum opportunity for children to learn and empowering
schools/communities to own the deployment for themselves.
* We are seeing real educational results from our efforts, and are
engaged in longitudinal and detailed evaluation.
* Our supporters include corporations and members of parliament at
state and federal levels, but we can always use more help

Please have a read if you are interested, and contact us if you would
like to take part in our mission.

We will be releasing more information on this educational programme in
the coming months.

Sridhar

Sridhar Dhanapalan
Engineering Manager
One Laptop per Child Australia

Signs of the Times…Part 2

2012-02-03T02:39:46+00:00

Signs from December and onward…

A plant nursery:

A barber shop:

A clinic:

Upcoming case study : South Africa

2012-02-01T19:39:34+00:00

OLPC South Africa is preparing to publish a case study of it’s entirely grassroots growth – from 100 students and mentors in Klipotwn in early 2008 to a network of 1400 students in 5 cities, all sharing training and class experiences.

Support for these programs was a combination of individual donations, local purchases, government support, OLPCorps, and support from other international NGOs. Some are traditional school projects, while others such as at the Kliptown Youth Project involve a combination of community, school, and peer mentoring.

The full study should be up on Friday. Here are a few quotes:

South Africa spends a larger share (5-6%) of its GDP on education than any other African nation. Education is compulsory for all children between the ages of 7 and 15 (grades 1 to 9) and access to primary education, the UN’s second Millennium Development Goal, is now nearly universal.

However, as recently pointed out by Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s National Planning Minister, South Africa ranks 137 out of 150 countries in math and science and is one of the bottom 25 performers on the African continent.

…

As of early 2012, there are a total of 1,400 XO laptops in South Africa. The Kliptown Youth Program provides technical and training support for all these deployments.

…

The first priority was getting people to understand that the XO is not a toy – it is a resource for education. Many children in Kliptown have difficulty learning to read so it is important to get them excited about reading. The children like reading from the XO screen because it makes learning fun and cool.

Bufferbloat demonstration videos

2012-02-01T15:23:56+00:00

If people have heard of bufferbloat at all, it is usually just an abstraction despite having personal experience with it. Bufferbloat can occur in your operating system, your home router, your broadband gear, wireless, and almost anywhere in the Internet. They still think that if experience poor Internet speed means they must need more bandwidth, and take vast speed variation for granted. Sometimes, adding bandwidth can actually hurt rather than help. Most people have no idea what they can do about bufferbloat.

So I’ve been working to put together several demos to help make bufferbloat concrete, and demonstrate at least partial mitigation. The mitigation shown may or may not work in your home router, and you need to be able to set both upload and download bandwidth.

Two of four cases we commonly all suffer from at home are:

Broadband bufferbloat (upstream)
Home router bufferbloat (downstream)

Rather than attempt to show worst case bufferbloat which can easily induce complete failure, I decided to demonstrate these two cases of “typical” bufferbloat as shown by the ICSI data. As the bufferbloat varies widely as the ICSI data shows, your mileage will also vary widely.

There are two versions of the video:

A short bufferbloat video, of slightly over 8 minutes, which includes both demonstrations, but elides most of the explanation. It’s intent is to get people “hooked” so they will want to know more.
The longer version of the video clocks in at 21 minutes, includes both demonstrations, but gives a simplified explanation of bufferbloat’s cause, to encourage people to dig yet further.

Since bufferbloat only affects the bottleneck link(s), and broadband and WiFi bandwidth are often similar and variable, it’s very hard to predict where you will have trouble. If you to understand that the bloat grows just before the slowest link in a path, (including in your operating system!) you may be able to improve the situation. You have to take action where the queues grow. You may be able to artificially move the bottleneck from a link that is bloated to one that is not. The first demo moves the bottleneck from the broadband equipment to the home router, for example.

To reduce bufferbloat in the home (until the operating systems and home routers are fixed), your best bet is to ensure your actual wireless bandwidth is always greater than your broadband bandwidth (e.g., by using 802.11n and possibly multiple access points) and use bandwidth shaping in the router to “hide” the broadband bufferbloat. You’ll still see problems inside your house, but at least, if you also use the mitigation demonstrated in the demo, you can avoid problems accessing external web sites.

The most adventurous of you may come help out on the CeroWrt project, an experimental OpenWrt router where we are working on both mitigating and eventually fixing bufferbloat in home routers. Networking and ability to reflash routers required!

DC Learning Club repeats solar-only experiment

2012-02-01T14:29:07+00:00

The OLPC Learning Club DC repeated the experiment of running an XO-1.75 on a solar panel, with no battery involved. They tried this on a cloudy late afternoon, rather than a sunny early afternoon, and had to switch to a larger panel, but were able to make it work for some 20 minutes.

I look forward to further creative power tests and batteryless setups! And to any additional power-saving tweaks. (these tests have been run with suspend off. another interesting stat would be howl ong it takes to charge the battery while actively using the XO with suspend on.)

Creating an Education Programme

2012-02-01T12:34:34+00:00

OLPC Australia had a strong presence at linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat, two weeks ago.

I gave a talk in the main keynote room about our educational programme, in which I explained our mission and how we intend to achieve it.

Even if you saw my talk at OSDC 2011, I recommend that you watch this one. It is much improved and contains new and updated material. The YouTube version is above, but a higher quality version is available for download from Linux Australia.

The references for this talk are on our development wiki.

Here’s a better version of the video I played near the beginning of my talk:

I should start by pointing out out that OLPC is by no means a niche or minor project. XO laptops are in the hands of 8000 children in Australia, across 130 remote communities. Around the world, over 2.5 million children, across nearly 50 countries, have an XO.

Investment in our Children’s Future

The key point of my talk is that OLPC Australia have a comprehensive education programme that highly values teacher empowerment and community engagement.

The investment to provide a connected learning device to every one of the 300 000 children in remote Australia is less than 0.1% of the annual education and connectivity budgets.

For low socio-economic status schools, the cost is only $80 AUD per child. Sponsorships, primarily from corporates, allow us to subsidise most of the expense (you too can donate to make a difference). Also keep in mind that this is a total cost of ownership, covering the essentials like teacher training, support and spare parts, as well as the XO and charging rack.

While our principal focus is on remote, low socio-economic status schools, our programme is available to any school in Australia. Yes, that means schools in the cites as well. The investment for non-subsidised schools to join the same programme is only $380 AUD per child.

Comprehensive Education Programme

We have a responsibility to invest in our children’s education — it is not just another market. As a not-for-profit, we have the freedom and the desire to make this happen. We have no interest in vendor lock-in; building sustainability is an essential part of our mission. We have no incentive to build a dependency on us, and every incentive to ensure that schools and communities can help themselves and each other.

We only provide XOs to teachers who have been sufficiently enabled. Their training prepares them to constructively use XOs in their lessons, and is formally recognised as part of their professional development. Beyond the minimum 15-hour XO-certified course, a teacher may choose to undergo a further 5–10 hours to earn XO-expert status. This prepares them to be able to train other teachers, using OLPC Australia resources. Again, we are reducing dependency on us.

: Certifications

Training is conducted online, after the teacher signs up to our programme and they receive their XO. This scales well to let us effectively train many teachers spread across the country. Participants in our programme are encouraged to participate in our online community to share resources and assist one another.

: Online training process

We also want to recognise and encourage children who have shown enthusiasm and aptitude, with our XO-champion and XO-mechanic certifications. Not only does this promote sustainability in the school and give invaluable skills to the child, it reinforces our core principle of Child Ownership. Teacher aides, parents, elders and other non-teacher adults have the XO-basics (formerly known as XO-local) course designed for them. We want the child’s learning experience to extend to the home environment and beyond, and not be constrained by the walls of the classroom.

There’s a reason why I’m wearing a t-shirt that says “No, I won’t fix your computer.” We’re on a mission to develop a programme that is self-sustaining. We’ve set high goals for ourselves, and we are determined to meet them. We won’t get there overnight, but we’re well on our way. Sustainability is about respect. We are taking the time to show them the ropes, helping them to own it, and developing our technology to make it easy. We fundamentally disagree with the attitude that ordinary people are not capable enough to take control of their own futures. Vendor lock-in is completely contradictory to our mission. Our schools are not just consumers; they are producers too.

As explained by Jonathan Nalder (a highly recommended read!), there are two primary notions guiding our programme. The first is that the nominal $80 investment per child is just enough for a school to take the programme seriously and make them a stakeholder, greatly improving the chances for success. The second is that this is a schools-centric programme, driven from grassroots demand rather than being a regime imposed from above. Schools that participate genuinely want the programme to succeed.

: Programme cycle

Technology as an Enabler

Enabling this educational programme is the clever development and use of technology. That’s where I (as Engineering Manager at OLPC Australia) come in. For technology to be truly intrinsic to education, there must be no specialist expertise required. Teachers aren’t IT professionals, and nor should they be expected to be. In short, we are using computers to teach, not teaching computers.

The key principles of the Engineering Department are:

Technology is an integral and seamless part of the learning experience – the pen and paper of the 21st century.
To eliminate dependence on technical expertise, through the development and deployment of sustainable technologies.
Empowering children to be content producers and collaborators, not just content consumers.
Open platform to allow learning from mistakes… and easy recovery.

OLPC have done a marvellous job in their design of the XO laptop, giving us a fantastic platform to build upon. I think that our engineering projects in Australia have been quite innovative in helping to cover the ‘last mile’ to the school. One thing I’m especially proud of is our instance on openness. We turn traditional systems administration practice on its head to completely empower the end-user. Technology that is deployed in corporate or educational settings is typically locked down to make administration and support easier. This takes control completely away from the end-user. They are severely limited on what they can do, and if something doesn’t work as they expect then they are totally at the mercy of the admins to fix it.

In an educational setting this is disastrous — it severely limits what our children can learn. We learn most from our mistakes, so let’s provide an environment in which children are able to safely make mistakes and recover from them. The software is quite resistant to failure, both at the technical level (being based on Fedora Linux) and at the user interface level (Sugar). If all goes wrong, reinstalling the operating system and restoring a journal (Sugar user files) backup is a trivial endeavour. The XO hardware is also renowned for its ruggedness and repairability. Less well-known are the amazing diagnostics tools, providing quick and easy indication that a component should be repaired/replaced. We provide a completely unlocked environment, with full access to the root user and the firmware. Some may call that dangerous, but I call that empowerment. If a child starts hacking on an XO, we want to hire that kid

Evaluation

My talk features the case study of Doomadgee State School, in far-north Queensland. Doomadgee have very enthusiastically taken on board the OLPC Australia programme. Every one of the 350 children aged 4–14 have been issued with an XO, as part of a comprehensive professional development and support programme. Since commencing in late 2010, the percentage of Year 3 pupils at or above national minimum standards in numeracy has leapt from 31% in 2010 to 95% in 2011. Other scores have also increased. Think what you may about NAPLAN, but nevertheless that is a staggering improvement.

In federal parliament, Robert Oakeshott MP has been very supportive of our mission:

Most importantly of all, quite simply, One Laptop per Child Australia delivers results in learning from the 5,000 students already engaged, showing impressive improvements in closing the gap generally and lifting access and participation rates in particular.

We are also engaged in longitudinal research, working closely with respected researchers to have a comprehensive evaluation of our programme. We will release more information on this as the evaluation process matures.

Join our mission

Schools can register their interest in our programme on our Education site.

Our Prospectus provides a high-level overview.

For a detailed analysis, see our Policy Document.

If you would like to get involved in our technical development, visit our development site.

Credits

Many thanks to colleagues Rangan Srikhanta (CEO) and Tracy Richardson (Education Manager) for some of the information and graphics used in this article.

Haiti School Photos from 2011

2012-01-31T21:41:21+00:00

There are schools EVERYWHERE in Haiti. Schools of all kinds. Here are but a few. This is a collection of my favorites from this year.
Everywhere you turn there is a school of some kind.

Posters abound encouraging you to send your children to school.

The kids are thirsty for knowledge, whether on a beach

or in a town with teachers BUT without a building

or on a mountaintop

or downtown or around the corner

at a cyber café,

or maybe in a strip mall.

And don’t forget the highschools

and universities too!

Each day begins with the raising of the flag.

Words to the songs in Kreyol are written on the board for all.

The school I know best has introduced OLPC laptops to their teaching program. It is wonderful to observe and the teachers are pleased with the program too.

Teachers attend professional development activities as well.

They can participate in Learning Innovations sessions in several locations as well as listen to guest speakers. Here is one session at the Cyber Café in Croix-des-Bouquets last December where teachers learned to quickly repair laptops.

The parents attend monthly meetings as well as social activities.

Volunteers help with many activities. They do some afternoon teaching, help with building classrooms, dig gardens, assist with a microfinance program and animal husbandry too. The volunteers try to bring things to help the teachers, like chalk

educational games

and new books too in English, Kreyol and French.

It is fun to see all the activities that take place! There are clapping games and singing,

Pen Pal letter exchanges

that are fun to read and reply to.

There is outdoor fun too.

There are Kreyol classes for visitors,

But there is classwork

and exams too!

But like everywhere, good work pays off!

Christmas Gifts came in the form of new xo’s and 8 Bikes

2012-01-31T08:30:43+00:00

Just around the time Sandra arrived at our school to check on us and encourage us, we received more good news. Friends of Sandra and Jane had raised some money and collected second bicycles and shipped them to us. Our school received 8 bicycles.
We are planning a great ceremony to celebrate the arrival of the bike.
Two days ago we had a discussion as a class on what we will do with the bikes. We have around 30 pupils in the xo class. We all cannot get a bike each. So we have to share.
We have our youthful teacher, Mr. Jackson. We all feel he can get a bike to help him come to school every morning. Jackson also comes to school over the weekends to open the computer room for us to use. We don’t want him to come late. So it is decided. One bike goes to Jack.
We feel we can have four bikes used by kids in our group on rotational basis. This is how we plan to do it.
Every week four new guys will get to use the bikes. But we shall keep the bikes in Mr. Amunga’s house for safe keeping.
The other three bikes, we plan to rent them to boda boda riders. Boda boda is a bicycle taxi that is very popular in our area.
We shall ask the boda boda riders to pay us Ksh. 50 per day. Each day we can raise Ksh. 150 which is about 2 dollars. We can use that money to charge our xo laptops and repair our bikes.
What do you think?

Google RISE Awards says “no” to us, yes to other great projects.

2012-01-30T19:43:18+00:00

Google RISE Awards.

No RISE award for Fargo XO this year, but we will try again next year. If the OLPC and Sugar communities worked together on a project, that might show more impact and clout, although $30,000 wouldn’t go very far, either. Comment below if you are interested in exploring this possibility.

Win One | Give One | Any Kid Can Help

2012-01-30T13:46:02+00:00

Win One | Give One | Any Kid Can Help.

I bought a box of fruit snacks for my kids without looking at the box too closely (bad dad). When I got it home, the kids got excited, not b/c of the snack but because of the XO on the front and the South African boy with his on the back.

We have now entered the contest but didn’t win the “shuffle” round which would enter us; we are invited to play everyday until July 31. What’s going on here, procedurists? Marketing majors?

We haven’t explore the site yet; I suppose that is part of the pull. Definitely interested in learning about the Rwandan deployments featured.

Solar test with the XO-1.75 beta laptop

2012-01-29T21:39:59+00:00

I decided to try to duplicate the impressive no-battery solar panel test that Richard Smith and Chris Ball shot on video recently in Cambridge, MA.

I couldn’t get everything set up until 3:15 pm today here in Wheaton, MD (just north of Washington, D.C.), so the 10 watt OLPC panel wouldn’t power the batteryless XO-1.75 B1 laptop because the sun was too low. Skies were partly cloudy on this Sunday in winter.

Switching to a 20 watt HQRP panel with a charge controller, I was able to boot and run the laptop. I had to move the setup several times to dodge tree shadows as I’m in a wooded area. And the sun became too dim by 3:40 pm for the 20 watt panel to work at all.

Even though this test was with a larger panel than the OLPC standard, it’s still impressive that I can run the laptop in dim winter sunlight with no battery. The XO 3.0 tablet will have the same performance as it has a similar mother board.

Here are short video clips of booting up and surfing the web.

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

2012-01-29T13:47:38+00:00

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years.

Yesterday’s post was about a web-based service for learning Python; today’s post is about a very realistic 10 year plan for truly learning how to program.

Spring Term Shenanigans

2012-01-29T04:06:18+00:00

There haven’t been too many updates this year, but the Ghana team continues to plow ahead as we are looking to travel this summer and close the project in the fall. Our subteams this year are Computers, Cataloging, Anthropology, and Education. We will soon be starting work on a monthly newsletter to send to the library to countdown to our visit, and we received our serial adapters over winter break so OLPC refurbishing should start on February 12th. Travel applications have just gone out, and the travel team will be decided by the middle of February. This past month has been pretty busy with finals, but we are ramping up for a solid semester.

Digital divide game

2012-01-29T03:48:57+00:00

The California Association of Independent Schools (http://caisca.org) has a series of events as part of its professional development program. I will be at one of their events representing OLPC San Francisco and the the OLPC project in general. From their site:

Technology Professional Day

February 15, 2012 10:00 am - 2:00 pm

Location:	St.Matthew’s Episcopal Day School 16 Baldwin Ave San Mateo, CA 94010 View Location Web Site
Cost:	$40
Registration Deadline:	Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Late Registration Cost:	$50

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE GAME: DEVELOPING 21ST CENTURY SKILLS USING TECHNOLOGY

This workshop will highlight and showcase “The Digital Divide Game.” Instructors and Administrators will learn how the game sets the stage for 21st century skills and also allows students to exercise those skills while playing this life skills game. In the game, students are forced to make alliances, assess risk, trade and share resources, make tough decisions and assume leadership roles in a hands-on simulation of cultures impacted by the digital divide: a global issue that focuses on the divide between those who have access to technology and those that don’t.

Sameer Verma from One Laptop Per Child ( OLPC SF) and Tina Lee, Director of Learning and Innovation, from Zero Divide San Francisco will be presenting, and will help us see this global issue through an educational lens. While observing the game in action in a classroom with middle school students, attendees will also have an opportunity for hands-on time with the game. Lunch will be provided. For more information contact Jennifer Gaspar-Santos at (650) 342-5436 or jgs@stmatthewsday.org.

Click here for more information.

Here's a sample of their game from some time ago: http://vimeo.com/15887958

Online Python Tutor: Learn and practice Python programming in your web browser

2012-01-28T14:54:23+00:00

Online Python Tutor: Learn and practice Python programming in your web browser.

This online tutorial got some positive comments on the IEAP list. An excerpt from another list also seemed to be talking about using E-toys to build a Rosetta Stone styled language learning activity, but one list member lined to Wikiotics online. It’s a straight up online reverse engineered RS, except that it localizes to NYC. That’s probably a great idea, but we would need to localize to Fargo.

HCMC/Saigon and Foss Asia — Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

2012-01-27T21:34:55+00:00

HCMC/Saigon and Foss Asia - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Where I stayed
<divclass> Au Lac Hotel Ho Chi Minh City

(Ho Chi Minh City hotels)

I am in HCMC/Saigon for the FossAsia Free and Open Source Software Conference. Oh this city is an adventure for sure!

My first impression of HCMC from the taxi from the airport was that of a modern city with some lovely architecturand relative affluence, and lots of neon. I booked the Au Lac Hotel (2) Saigon in District 1 on Agoda. I chose it becaue it was newly opened and the neighborhood looked to be quieter than some, on the map. I had arranged an Airport transfer directly with the hotel. The very nice Au Lac Hotel Van and driver met me with a sign with my name on it. The hotel is lovely, and only a few months old. My room is bright and cheery. The modern central AC is very quiet & works great. The shower is also very good, very hot, but you do have to let the water run for a while for it to become hot. The staff is very attentive & the breakfast buffet is ample. Choosing lodging in Saigon was intimidating. I feel lucky as I prepaid all 5 nights and I am happy with my choice.. That's a good travel tip: New hotels are usually clean, and the staff, while sometimes still learning, are very earnest to please the guests.

When I arrived at the hotel, Jonas (the Debian developer from Denmark was waiting for me. I had come in a day early so it was a pleasant surprise to have an enthusiastic colleague to share dinner with.

We walked to the night market area and found a sort of Pho restaurant. We ordered vegetarian noodles Pho, broken rice, & spring rolls with rice noodles. Yes, it was a lot of rice with our coconut water.:) But it was fun! The next afternoon I took a 1/2 day city tour which helped me learn my way around. I am being warned to be careful of muggings walking alone and am being extra cautious, taking taxis and tours in lieu of my usual style of exploring on foot for hours on my own.

The Foss Asia event began on Friday evening with a gathering in the rooftop at The Spotted Cow in the District 1 backpacker area. We were able to meet the other participants in an informal setting. It was great to finally meet Lilly who had brought a laptop over for me last year, and Mario who originally organized the OLPC Vietnam website. There are many student volunteers from Von Lang University warmly welcoming us. I was excited to see 11 attendees from Cambodia, 2 from France, 2 from Hanoi, 1 from Singapore and I know I've missed a few too. Thank you Hong Phuc for organizing a great party!

We began this morning at Van Lang University, gracious hosts of the 2 day presentations and workshops. We had a full schedule of presentations by speakers from all over the world! I presented early in the schedule and spoke about the OLPC mission and the XO laptops. I gave an overview of the Vung Vieng Village XO project and our OLPC Vietnam group, And introduced the Undercover UXO Health Risk Landmine Education Game.

We "Speakers" are being treated as royalty and I am totally enjoying every minute. Lunch was served in one room, and we have a "resting room" with water, coffee, tea and sweets, where we can gather informally.

In the afternoon, I manned a very popular table with XOs to demo. Many students were interested and excited to see and handle our cute rugged green laptops. I was busy all afternoon. I had great helpers. Several of the student FossAsia volunteers helped in many ways. They manned my table with me, quickly learning the XO, giving good demos and explanations in Vietnamese. That's something I couldn't do! Thank you Hiew and friends for all of your help!

The day culminated in a most interesting delicious banquet of traditional Vietnamese foods. This was held at a beautiful restaurant not far from the University. The multi-course meal provided time for a lovely social evening. I had the honor and pleasure to be seated with Mr. Tam, the Founder, Vice President, and Rector of the Van Lang University. He and his university colleagues warmly welcomed us. We can see that the University staff is thoughtful and passionate about offering their students exposure to many avenues of learning. I know I speak for all of us when I say thank you for the warm welcome and lovely dinner evening.

We have another full day planned tomorrow. I have to mention how impressed I am with how professionally this conference has been organized. For Hong Phuc, who has been in charge, Mario, Lilly and everyone else who has helped, your hard work and thoughtful preparation shows. Today was wonderful for everyone attending and presenting! Thank you!

Day 2 at Van Lang University was equally successful! In the morning, I participated in the Women and IT meetup! So many confident students shared questions and concerns about whether VN companies will hire women IT graduates or not, out of concern that women will quit to have & care for children. There was a lively discussion about the need to balance home, family and work, issues that are common also to professional women in the west. Each student presented their reasons for choosing the IT course and I have included some of their photos.
In the afternoon, I had a strange wifi problem with one of the XOs. I could swear that the wifi worked on that previously XO. I reflashed and it still didn't see any networks. With help from Kevin Mark on OLPC IRC help, we ran the hardware diagnostics and the wifi was fine. Lam came to the rescue, working in terminal to replace the missing wifi "network" file by copying it from via a USB drive from another XO.

I am pleased to send 3 XOs that were re-donated in the USA for Vietnamese children with Hong to Hanoi. Adding those to the 3 previously delivered, perhaps the Hanoi OLPC volunteers will start a small project in a shelter or orphanage to teach children who would not otherwise have the opportunity to learn with a computer. A project in or close to Hanoi can be more easily supported by volunteers with open software skills than in a remote location. Phu, my new friend who teaches at Van Lang U in HCMC, will receive the 2 old XOs that Mario has, for use with his University students on translation projects. They may even tackle localization of the Undercover UXO game, and that would be the first translation outside of English and Khmer.

Saturday evening we met for dinner at Lilly's cousin's place and once again had terrific Vietnamese food. We celebrated Jonas' birthday with a beautiful cake.

On Sunday, I enjoyed walking on the Dong Khoi, window shopping. I had really good french food at Cafe Ciao and I recommend that restaurant for both food quality and atmosphere!

Oh, And I made PC Magazine ONline Vietnam. You can see the article at:
http://www.pcworld.com.vn/articles/quan -ly/nguon-luc/2011/11/1229091/fossasia- 2011-tu-do-sang-tao-dem-lai-loi-ich-cho -cong-dong/

The FOSSAsia conference was so very successful. I am grateful that I was able to attend and participate.

OLPC and Knight Foundation launch digital literacy program in Miami school | One Laptop per Child

2012-01-27T18:47:37+00:00

OLPC and Knight Foundation launch digital literacy program in Miami school | One Laptop per Child.

Great project for the Miami area school. I wonder if they need some consultants from Fargo to come down in the next couple of weeks. : )

I hope the schools share some of their best practices.

IIT Empowering Haiti Successfully Deploys XO Charging Station

2012-01-27T16:31:47+00:00

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: 11 x 17 one-pager / multiple 8.5×11 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.

(this post was written by IIT Empowering Haiti team member Simon Brauer and is reposted from OLPCnews.com)

OLPC and Knight Foundation launch digital literacy program in Miami school

2012-01-27T14:30:45+00:00

This semester, the Knight Foundation and One Laptop Per Child are launching a digital literacy effort at Liberty City’s Holmes Elementary School. Video from the school is up on Vimeo. And here is the joint press release:

Every student will receive their own XO laptop today, in an effort to level the digital playing field for more than 525 kids at the school. The XOs will be provided by OLPC, with $245K in support from the Knight Foundation. Community advocates will present the laptops at 9:30 a.m. today.

“Access to the Internet and digital skills are vital for success in today’s connected world,” said Jorge Martinez, who leads Knight Foundation’s Universal Access Initiative. “We hope the laptops help these eager young minds at Holmes Elementary to become digital natives who are more informed and engaged in their classrooms and their community.”

OLPC will provide in-house training at the school for parents, teachers and students on how to use the computers to advance students’ learning. The laptops have tools that let students and teachers to work more closely together. Students can follow their teacher’s work on their laptop, or work collaboratively on projects. OLPC is also assisting in creating a localized curriculum to help kids meet their academic benchmarks.

“We are pleased to be working with Knight Foundation and the Miami-Dade County public schools on this new OLPC education initiative in the U.S.,” said Rodrigo Arboleda, chairman and CEO of the OLPC Association. ”We believe that partnering with foundations, the private sector and the public sector is an excellent model that can be replicated across the country.”

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 program.

“With this project, every child will carry learning in the palm of their hands and we will be one step closer to leveling the educational playing field in Miami,” said Atunya Walker, Holmes Elementary School’s principal. Holmes Elementary has been selected because it is already working with Knight-funded Teach For America to change student performance. Knight provided funding to triple the amount of Teach for America teachers in Miami-Dade – bringing the number to 350 – in a group of inner city schools that includes Holmes.

See the video about this project.

There are natural assessments built into the program, with a fairly short timeframe, thanks to existing conditions at the school and their risk of closure. And I am honored by the involvement of the Knight Foundation, which has been thinking about issues of access to tools and information in the US for a long time.

The Web Comes to Ecole Shalom, Haiti

2012-01-27T02:22:29+00:00

One Laptop per Child
OLPC’s director in Haiti, Adam Holt, has been working closely with a special volunteer, George, to bring internet access to Ecole Shalom in Croix-des-Bouquets. This is important to volunteers who are used to internet access at their homes, but further down the road, especially exciting for the students themselves.

To do this, a 3G Natcom modem was installed. Various plans were tried, and presently they are using a $20/month package. This may increase to a $35/month, for unlimited internet access. The speed is faster than the internet access that Ecole Shalom has from its current Internet Service Provider.

Working together, they set up a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.

This will allow George to access the school server from the USA, and maybe do the setup that is necessary, so that eventually they can let the kids begin to use the internet. They will need to set up content filters, local storage for frequently accessed pages, etc.

George says that “the fun part was learning to set up a server in Amazon’s cloud. This involved setting up a very small service on one of Amazon’s many servers whose job is to listen for requests from the Server in Haiti, and from people like me, wanting to get secure, private access.”

Much work still has to be done configuring DansGuardian (web filter) expanding web access for teachers and establishing online learning opportunities for kids in this semi-rural community, but one can’t help but be thrilled that the technical infrastructure is moving forward in ways that were just not possible (or affordable!) mere months ago.

The near-universal positive community response to Ecole Shalom’s OLPC program from all teachers has been breathtaking, a true credit to all volunteers who made this happen.

Changes in the Blog

2012-01-25T20:30:04+00:00

The new Blog

Originally this blog was intended for the project that I made last year in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. I am currently living in France for new learning experiences, I am working with the Xo and specifically with Sugar and Scratch.

The new idea for the Blog, is to make this place a global contribution for the education of the XXI century. On my side, I will be posting the entire experience with the Xo and Scratch from two schools in southern France. I will also be inviting people who are working with the 3 Xo’s that we have in Bolivia to post the progress of this new project in Bolivia as well as people that I know from around the world, who do research or work in the areas of education, technology and art to publish in this place.

Experience in France

The picture above is a picture that represents the work that I’m doing in France. It is here that I am working in two schools, one in Perpignan, and another one in a town near to Perpignan: Saleilles. What I do is teach Spanish to children who are between 7 and 11 years old, to complete this task I use the Xo with Sugar and Scratch.

I am in contact with about 250 children in these two schools, basically what we started to do was animation with characters taken from the Internet with the voices of the children in Scratch, and now what I will be doing is encouraging the children to create their own characters with their own voices in Spanish (each child will draw his character and import it into Scratch).

One of the main objectives is to show how we can learn more easily and interactively other languages (in this case Spanish) with an Xo with Sugar and Scratch. The other objective is to show teachers, how powerful are these technological tools for education.

Challenges in Bolivia

In Bolivia, there are 3 of our Xo’s, Mario Cesar is the person who is assisting in this regard, and gave me the good news that one is already in use and gave me some progress of the project that they have in mind . I will also talk to other people in Bolivia involved in education issues, and I think one of the poorest countries in South America could be starting to create something big in education .

Whoa! Go: check out this year’s Win One Give One site

2012-01-25T18:39:48+00:00

General Mills has rolled out their new gorgeous WinOneGiveOne campaign for their ongoing partnership with OLPC, this year supporting programs in Rwanda and Nicaragua. They’ve designed some fine art for participating food packages, and their ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi put together great commercials and PR interviews for the program.

Haiti Learning Innovations Community – Part 2

2012-01-24T15:59:36+00:00

Last Saturday’s meeting of teachers, directors and other participants began early with a Tap-Tap ride from Croix des Bouquets with transfers along the way to Petionville.

But by 10:30 in the morning, everyone had arrived in Petionville for the start of the session.

Jean Ruben Magloire welcomed everyone and opened the meeting.

Earnest discussion began quickly over the late breakfast.

There were about 15 people in attendance.

Junior Monrose translated some quite existential challenges for all!

Among the topics was the OpenStreetMap project. An important question was how the map of Haiti was made without paying the people who worked on it. Jaakko, one of the participants explained that the projects he works on and respects are headed by a leader willing to throw his/her heart into the cause, risking failure if things don’t work out. The audience seemed quite moved by this.

The discussions ended around 1PM and then it was out into the light in Petionville.

Petionville's flower market

Then, onward into traffic!

Lots of joking on the ride back.

And them home again in Croix-des-Bouquets.

Arduino and the XO laptop

2012-01-22T19:13:27+00:00

The Freetronics Leostick is a low cost Arduino board. (It is presumed to be low cost, it was cheap enough to place into the satchels of the attendees of LCA2012.) The XO-1.5 already has 2 channel analogue input, an Arduino board can add a lot of extra input and output channels.

This could facilitate a number of low cost science and robotics experiments in schools, experiments at a cost suitable for developed and even developing countries.

There are a number of ways such a board could be used:

from the Arduino IDE
from TurtleArt, Firmata running on the Arduino

The second version is probably the most practical for classroom use. Once the Leosticks are loaded with Firmata (and this could even be at the factory) all that is requited is TurtleArt drag and drop programming.

Installing the Arduino IDE onto a XO-1.5 laptop (OS880)
In terminal enter the following

sudo yum install arduino

This installs an older version (0021), more importantly it installs all the dependencies including Java and avr-gcc. It is a 60MB download which expands to 200MB of storage, be warned it uses up a lot of precious space.

The IDE can be started from the Gnome menu or with the command

arduino

but it does not have the permissions to see the Arduino board on the USB serial port so start it as root (maybe why)

sudo arduino

The IDE can then be upgraded to version 1.0. This is the version recommended for the Leostick. Download version1.0 from http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
The file arduino-1.0-linux.tgz uncompresses with the Gnome archive manager. Uncompress it to a convenient location, if for example if you uncompress it to Documents, you will find a directory arduino-1.0 in this directory.

You now have 2 versions of the program, 1.0 (at /home/olpc/Documents/arduino-1.0 ) and 0021 (with components at /usr/share/doc/arduino-0021 and /usr/bin). The later versions 1.0 uses the dependencies installed with the earlier one 0021.

As described at http://www.freetronics.com/pages/leostick-quickstart-guide uncomment the following lines in /home/olpc/Documents/arduino-1.0/hardware/arduino/boards.txt

(or in version 0021 you would need to add them)

leonardo.name=Arduino Leonardo
leonardo.upload.protocol=arduino
leonardo.upload.maximum_size=28672
leonardo.upload.speed=1200
leonardo.bootloader.low_fuses=0xde
leonardo.bootloader.high_fuses=0xd8
leonardo.bootloader.extended_fuses=0xcb
leonardo.bootloader.path=diskloader
leonardo.bootloader.file=DiskLoader-Leonardo.hex
leonardo.bootloader.unlock_bits=0x3F
leonardo.bootloader.lock_bits=0x2F
leonardo.build.mcu=atmega32u4
leonardo.build.f_cpu=16000000L
leonardo.build.core=arduino
leonardo.build.variant=leonardo

Launch the Arduino IDE (sudo /home/olpc/Documents/arduino-1.0/arduino), and select Tools > Board > Arduino Leonardo.
to select the Leonardo hardware

select Tools > Serial Port
a new device appears with Leostick plugged in, dev/ttyACM0, select it.

You can now upload example programs, eg blink, to the Leostick.

NOTE: this will overwrite the program that came with your Leostick that plays a tune, watch
http://forum.freetronics.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=167
for the original program

Controlling the Arduino with Turtle Art
Load Firmata software into the Leostick, this can be done on an OLPC, another Linux PC or Windows. Once this is done the Leostick can be used as a I/O expander for Turtle Block drag and drop programming. No Terminal or Gnome work would be needed.

http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2010/10/arduino-fork-of-turtle-art.html

The version here works for older Arduino boards on Sugar 0.88 It needs patching at TurtleArtActivity.py, line 834 as described in the link above. The baud rates of Turtle Art and Firmata need to be patched.

Sugar 0.88 (Fedora 11) recognises an older Arduino board as as serial device but not the Leostick. Later Arduino boards are dev/ttyACM0

This version is hard coded to dev/ttyACM0, that means it only works the first time the Leostick is plugged in and not at all for older Arduino boards. It is patched and works on Sugar 0.94.

The quick and dirty patches are:
Turtleartactivity line 835
self.palette_buttons[i].set_tooltip('thing')
line 868 commented out
# palette_toolbar_button.set_expanded(True)
serialposix.py line 273
# self.fd = os.open(self.portstr, os.O_RDWR|os.O_NOCTTY|os.O_NONBLOCK)
self.fd = os.open('/dev/ttyACM0', os.O_RDWR|os.O_NOCTTY|os.O_NONBLOCK)

see also:
http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2010/10/turtle-arduino-display-inputs.html
http://tonyforster.blogspot.com/2010/10/turtle-arduino-digital-write.html

OLPC Dragon says: Happy Chinese New Year!

2012-01-22T17:39:13+00:00

Courtesy of OLPC Asia’s Richard Lai: a New Year’s Dragon made out of XOs, making the rounds near Hong Kong! To the delight of the passengers (and library visitors).

Teaching Bukokholo Kids GPS and Maps

2012-01-20T19:24:36+00:00

It has taken me lengthy and sleepless nights pondering over this day and how I am going to do it. I am going to teach kids the things i have learn at University level! Sounds crazy haaaa! Anyway I have volunteer and am happy as step on the pikipiki and take off from my small village to a place I have no idea of.But fisrt I have to meet my friend in town and grab one for the road,just to make sure I will have the courage of the most feared animal in the jungle.

As I check in on the matatu to Bungoma, I am feeling on the top of the world and am all set. I arrive an find Sandra and Fred awaiting me in probox.. As we take off,I can only think of the lenghty and exciting days ahead.We drive on the smooth tarmac for a few kilometers as we exchange a few pleasantry with my Odiero friend. We soon turn into a dirt road that takes us a bout 3hours to get to Bukokholo. as i check on my phone, I am reminded that I am now using Musevenis network,MTN. My geography tells me am barely a few kilometers to Uganda.

We enter our “Hotel” ( our Hosts home ,Juma) and we are greeted and met by a whole village. i am dog tired and i quickly grab a few bites of Ugali an head to bed.I get to meet the OLPC kids the following ddaya and they are just amazing in using XO laptops.They were talented in Rapping and they clearly blew me with their music.

As I stepped into the makeshift class to introduce the abstract concepts of GPS and Coordinates, UTM and WGS, I am a bit scared if the concepts will sink home. Casually and comically, I start gently by introducing the kids to the Cartesian plane( woe unto me for thinking it was a simple concept ), the (x,y).

Taking kiods through the basics of GPS and the Globe

Am surprised at how long it takes me but am happy at the end when I drive home the (lat,long) and the GPS concepts.I am more than thrilled as I take the kids out and they start to collect the GPS coordinate date from the Garmin etrex Unit and using the Write activity in XO, they record the same together with attribute data. I sigh with relief and let them carry on as I sit down under tree to catch some fresh air.

I am however shortly bombarded by a crowd of students who demand ” something ” from me too.Looking into their shiny and expectant eyes, I cannot afford to let them down. I take out my Ideos phone and recollect my Scout days. the activites we did to keep jovial come in handy. I start my teaching them some a few corrupted songs, take them through the Kitendawili sessions ,Mchongoano and before I put on Merimela an let them dance .

A Mchongoano session in progress

They are realy excited and so am I. so far so good an I can only sigh with relief as the end of break bell (a thick mettalic plate placed on a tree) rings …..I drift off and cant wait for lunch.

Haiti Learning Innovations Community – An Invitation

2012-01-20T14:38:24+00:00

December meeting of educators in Croix-des-Bouquet's Cyber Café

On the third Saturday of each month eager educators of all stripe join together for informal discussion, asking how they can help strengthen education in Haiti in a rapidly globalizing world. They strongly welcome passionate education innovators inside and outside every type of school and university, and engage in spirited and civic roundtable discussions, with occasional guest speakers.

This Saturday’s suggested topic is Emerging Trends in Free and Universal Education, Worldwide and in Haiti.

http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-4664-haiti-education-reginald-paul-took-stock-on-the-free-school.html
http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-3742-haiti-education-free-schools-latest-official-details.html

Can you make it Jan 21? You set the agenda on arrival, around your table, and let us know your interests, and suggested topics for future meetings – be that courseware, multilingual methods, environmental/outdoor exploration, ebook and traditional book choices, Khan Academy video-learning, GPS citizen mapmaking, online/offline library construction, new community methods, innovative after-school programs of all kinds, project-based discovery, digital storytelling, diverse training/staffing approaches, volunteer/internship coordination, tablet/4G technologies, even broken learning management systems!

Inspired by their success this past autumn in semi-rural Croix-des-Bouquets, this group continues to bring teachers, directors, parents, and volunteers together to talk about different schools’ progress that they have been seeing. This professional learning community is now also meeting in Petionville, inviting you to bring a few more policy-level ideas into the discourse:

Café Bouchara
48 rue Clerveau, Petionville
Saturday January 21, 10AM

Breakfast is very inexpensive at Café Bouchara and we strongly encourage you to support this excellent café, allowing open/civic discussions like ours to flourish.
Invite a friend & RSVP, thanks — all languages are welcome!!
Adam Holt & Jean Ruben Magloire

Rodrigo visits Colombia; Physics in Sudan

2012-01-19T16:50:52+00:00

Sandra Barragán posted a photoset from Rodrigo’s visit to Colombia yesterday.

And the Fargo team develops some game-like projects around Physics and Etoys.

Playing with Physics

2012-01-19T15:44:31+00:00

Our Sugar Labs team will be heading back to Madison Elementary on January 24th–a 7 week schedule with emphasis on Physics and Etoys. We didn’t use Physics last year, during our pilot, so we are breaking new ground this time around. We haven’t found curriculum guides, so we are just going on intuition and 20+ years of teaching experience. We want to gamify the process a bit, so we are going to try this:

Level 1.

Start physics and name the activity level one before doing anything else. Then simply try out most of the tools. Draw 3 lines: one straight, one with a single bend, one with two bends. Then draw circles, squares, triangles in S, M, and L sizes. Finally, draw a pentagon, hexagon, and heptagon (or just funny shapes with multiple sides. Try to keep all the objects on the screen. When you have completed level one, raise your hand and we will note your accomplishment on the game board. Then, on your computer, go back to home, open Write and name this activity “Physics Notes.” Write what you did, learned, and liked about Physics so far.

Level Two

Go back to Home again after writing in your journal, and click on Physics, but try not to launch your existing project. Get the drop down menu that gives you a chance to “Start New”. Start a new Physics module and call this activity “Level Two.” The goal this time is to make teeter-totters. One challenge is to make it with as few objects as possible (only two is very hard), and one is to make it with 10 objects, any configuration that you like. When you have completed level two, raise your hand and we will note your accomplishment on the game board. Then, on your computer, go back to home, open the Write Activity called “Physics Journal,” and name this activity “Physics Notes.” Write what you did, learned, and liked about Physics in level two.

We think those two levels can be covered on day one; we’ll sketch the other two days ASAP but would love to see or hear about other approaches to Physics.

Protecting Internet freedom

2012-01-18T05:01:26+00:00

Thousands of web sites across the Internet are shutting down today to protest proposed U.S. laws (SOPA and PIPA) that would make it difficult for websites to host community-generated content on the Internet.

Please take a moment to learn more about the bills and why they would be harmful to the open Web, to open education, and to present and future collaborative projects.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other non-profit organizations dedicated to preserving freedom on the Web have ways that you can make your voice heard in the national and international debate about these proposed laws.

Eshibinga Jiggers Research Project XO Club Activity

2012-01-17T21:58:21+00:00

Eshibinga Jiggers Research Project XO Club Activity
What Kids Said About Them
On 16th and 17th January 2012, Sandra our visitor from the USA and founder of small solutions big ideas organization took time to talk and interview the Eshibinga primary school pupils on the jigger menace. The pupils went out and interviewed several villagers and school mates on the jigger infestation in the area. They came back and reported to Sandra what they had found out. Here are their findings.
They are parasites and feed on our blood.
They make our lives unhealthy
They bite our legs
They are white and make me feel uncomfortable
They hop from one leg to another.
Jiggers kill people
They are found in latrines that are dirty
They are round and disturb many people
They are a small white insect, and crawl around to other places
They make it hard for the person affected to work.
They are found in dirty places
They lay eggs in your feet.
The can be controlled by cleaning the environment.
Homes without cement floors have jiggers.
You must remove jiggers from your feet or hands by using a needle, burn it and dig out the jigger.
To avoid jiggers, stay clean, clean latrines and wash your feet and then put them in “deep”.
Jiggers are in our school yard, but we cannot see them.
If we had shoes we would not get jiggers.
They hide in dirty nails, so keep your nails short.
The school doesn’t have the money to spray and even water the school yard to reduce the danger of jiggers.
If you have jiggers, you feel ashamed. Jiggers affect your school work.
Jiggers affect general health.
Some children have deformed legs or are lame from jiggers.
They can spread to your whole body.

First meeting of 2012: Updates on Sugar, XO-1.75 and XO 3.0

2012-01-17T17:24:30+00:00

We are back at Gallaudet University this Saturday to discuss the recent announcements from OLPC on the XO 3.0 tablet and XO-1.75 laptop. Jeff Elkner will also demo Sugar running on Trisquel GNU/Linux 5.0. We will do some planning on our agenda for the May 19th, 2012 Scratch Day event.

What: Family XO Meetup
When: Saturday, January 21, 2012, 10 am to 1pm
Where: Gallaudet University [map, aerial photo], Student Academic Center
in computer lab SAC 1211, Washington, D.C. 20002

The room may actually change, but we’ll post a sign. Let us know if you need help upgrading your XO laptop and we’ll be sure to bring a USB drive with the necessary files.

Temples and Landmines in Siem Reap — Siem Reap, Cambodia

2012-01-17T16:31:07+00:00

Temples and Landmines in Siem Reap - Siem Reap, Cambodia

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Where I stayed
<divclass> Frangipani Villas Phnom Penh

Frangipani Villa Hotel Siem Reap

(Phnom Penh hotels)

What I did

Banteay Srei Siem Reap

Land Mine Museum Siem Reap

I arrived yesterday afternoon and met Robert, a Peace Corp Volunteer who teaches 10th grade in Battenbang. Robert had recently sent an inquiry to OLPC asking how one start's a new XO laptop project. Since I was going to be in the neighborhood anyway, we arranged to meet. From Robert I learned that in Cambodia there are primary schools in most villages but only regional secondary schools. The children in Battenbang, which is a large province, do not learn computer skills at all in the public schools. There are no computers in the elementary schools, none in the middle schools, and none in the high schools.

We talked about what might be possible, what might make sense, and how very poor the people in Cambodia are. Siem Reap is not representative of Cambodia. Even I know that. And in Siem Reap, I am once again stunned by the poverty. The needs are so great.

I hired a capable driver, Sri Piten to take me to some of the temples and to the Landmine Museum. Sri Piten is studying to be a certified tour guide and he speaks acceptable English. He works out of the airport with a legitimate company. If you are planning a trip and wish to have your own driver, Sri Piten is dependable, knowledgeable and very pleasant. You can hire him for the day and he will pick you up at your hotel at the appointed time, take you where ever you want to go and wait for you for however long. You can email sripiten@gmail.com or call him at (855) 979994391.

We headed out towards Banteay Srei about 8:30 AM. We first stopped at Temple Pre Rup (Sunset Temple) on the way out to Banteay Srei. It was still early, not very crowded, and very special to be there. In the late 10th Century, Pre Rup was one of the first temples that King Rajendravarman II built as his "state temple" when the capitol moved back to Angkor from Koh Ker. The style is a classic temple-mountain with 5 towers and it is built of the red brick, laterite and sandstone that is common to this area.

Banteay Srei used to be an out of the way temple site, as the road was still mined. It has been cleared now and a "proper tourist infrastructure" has been built. This definitely changes the temple experience. It's not quite Disney World, but it isn't old Angkor anymore either. While the trip out there provides a good view of life in the countryside, through small villages and rice paddies, Banteay Srei is definitely no longer off the beaten path.

These archeological sites are amazing, both for the sheer number of temples and the vision of the past they provide. I first visited Angkor Wat almost 6 years ago. Certainly then, there were other visitors but now, the experience with so many tourists is much different. I arrived by 10:00 AM, and the parking lot was already crowded with buses. It is definitely a different experience this visit, but still, it is a treat to experience these magnificent historical structures, even with lots of other tourists and amongst the many tour buses.

Banteay Srei is a (relatively) smaller temple. This temple, the "Citadel of Women" is said to have some of the finest carvings in the world. Like Pre Rup, Banteay Srei was built in the late 10th
century. It is unusual in that it is the only temple that was not built under the authority of the King. It was a Brahmin advisor to King Rajendravarman, Yajinyavaraha, who built the Banteay Srei complex and dedicated it to Shiva. The soft red sandstone carves like wood, and just about every bit of wall space in this temple is covered in exquisitely detailed carvings. I saw geometric and floral patterns, in addition to male and female gods, Naga (the snake), the story of Parvati and Shiva, and more.

This temple is probably not on the "if you have only one day in Siem Reap" must see list, but it has the most detailed and intact carvings of any I have seen and it would be on "my" do not miss in Siem Reap list. Be sure to check my photos to study the carvings and for clues to how the archeological restoration is done.

Next we went to the Landmine Museum. A new pet project of mine is the Undercover UXO Game designed for the xo Laptop. http://www.UndercoverUXO.org This intriguing "health risk education game" is designed to teach children in land mine affected countries to avoid the risk of unexploded ordinance. It was developed by a Team then at Michigan State U in the USA, with a grant from the US State Department and support from Humanitarian West, and the OLPC Contributors Program, and M.I.N.D Lab. The project team includes Dr. Corey Bohill, now at University of Central Florida, Dr. Charles Owen at MSU, and Dr. Frank Biocca, now at Syracuse University.

Since I am traveling in SE Asia anyway, I decided to try and help to get the word out about the game to landmine affected countries here, when I can. UndercoverUXO is designed to be easily translated from one language to another and I thought if we can save even one life or limb, then this is a really important project! I have the game and have been showing it to many people. I wanted to learn more about the landmine problem in Cambodia, and about Landmine education for children and adults. The Landmine Museum outside of Siem Reap on the road to Banteay Srei was an excellent place to start.

An American volunteer, William Morse was giving an informational tour. Bill works with the Landmine Relief Fund http://www.Landmine-Relief-Fund.com and with http://www.CambodianSelfHelpDemining.or g

The museum has an extensive collection of landmine casings that the museum founder Aki Ra has collected in his work de-mining the Cambodian countryside. The museum raises funds to support 50 children that live on the compound. These child victims, or children with parent victims are being given a better chance at life through the museum organization's work. I had a good conversation with Bill about the landmine problem in Cambodia and around the world. Not surprisingly, Afghanistan and Iraq are hot spots. I did not know that Columbia, South America, is heavily mined and that Peru has quite a problem too. There are lots of XOs in Peru. I think we'll have to get the UndercoverUXO game localized, translated into Spanish very soon.

I enjoyed the lovely and reasonably priced Frangipani Villa Hotel. I had a refreshing swim in the hotel salt water pool, did some shopping at the Old Market and Tourist market and had a relaxing dinner at the very fine Paris-Saigon Restaurant, near Wat Bo Road and my hotel. That was a real treat. Tomorrow I am off to visit a village that has had XOs for quite some time. I look forward to meeting the children and older students too.

Be sure to look over each photo here carefully. The stories are in the details!
Best to all,
Nancie

Funding

2012-01-16T22:54:53+00:00

Funding remains both a personal and a project issue. After requesting funding from over 200 people on Facebook specifically for this project, I received not a singly reply.

Since I am not in the business of fundraising, I will need an assistant to take care of these activities in order for the project to progress further.

Know of someone who would be able to assist with this? Please leave a comment.

Reverse engineer Rosetta Stone? Maybe not

2012-01-16T21:01:38+00:00

We’ve been wondering what it would take reverse engineer Rosetta Stone, or just come up with our own Sugar-based ELL program, but this recent study of RS and one other commercial piece of software confirms the obvious–very few people can stick with these programs in order to make them worthwhile. For the hefty price, the return will be small. Which means, the $9.99 apps will probably be a more economical and viable “solution.” Very few people are going to learn English from a piece of software (8 hours a day, 5 days a week), but they might improve their vocabulary by using an app 15 minutes a day.

Us Sugar users would probably do well to encourage people to build word lists in Memorize; I also wonder if there is any way to build up a library of Memorize flash cards. Not very constructivist of me, but hard to construct language skills without them.

SIMON’S REPORT 13: 2012 Begins!

2012-01-16T15:15:00+00:00

Monday: Ntugi Secondary

We started the term well at Ntugi Secondary. The target of this term will be to integrate the OLPC’s Sugar OS Activities with the syllabus in the school. This will be possible by engaging the Activities (application programs) I had been teaching last term with the syllabus as an aid to help in deep understanding and creating more interest in learning. Last term, I started at Ntugi by engaging the Memorize activity. The computer club members learned how to create custom Memorize games and the had to create a game that matched each piece of lab equipment with its name. This will help the coming Form Ones (Grade 9) in learning lab equipment which they currently have problems with. It will also help the students master creating games and making them even better.

Tuesday: Ngare Ndare Secondary/Lewa Primary

I was supposed to be at Ngare Ndare and the Lewa School but could not make it, so I spent the whole day at the Conservation Education Centre with Ephantus. We had students from Githongo Secondary who had a chance to use the XO laptops to evaluate the field work they had done. Although many had experience with laptops before, they were happy to use a different OS (operating system) and machines of different type. They wished to have the same in their school.

A student at the education center using a laptop to play a memorize game.

Wednesday: Subuiga Primary

At Subuiga Primary, the teachers were very busy scheduling for the term and we were not able to do anything with them. They promised to try and have the day free for next Wednesday’s visit.

Thursday: Conservation Education Centre

At the CEC we had different students from Githongo with a lot of curiosity and eagerness to experience the OLPC XO’s .I think it was due to the message spread by the others who had come the day before. I had time to teach them how to do basic tasks in the Sugar environment like quitting an activity and shutting down.

Friday: Leparua Primary

At Leparua, before the end of year break, I had left a FotoToon project in progress and the goal of that project was to accomplish it as quick as possible. The students had created a basic sample of a picture illustration/cartoon and I used this first experiment as a base to help the improve their next project to something of better quality. One area where we are working on improving is was to use shots of different sizes and different angles.

A Leparua student learns to take a MCU (Medium Close-Up shot)

I spent the day at Leparua teaching this. They got the concept and I left them take specified photos to create another story. I will be checking this on next Friday.

Post by Simon Mwangangi

Flash vs Webkit

2012-01-16T14:26:07+00:00

A nice piece from one of the IGM Grad Project classes of interest to both FOSS and Game folks

http://www.cardkingdomgame.com/2012/01/13/who-needs-flash/

How do the Reaksmy Children Use the XOs? — Kâmpóng Thum, Cambodia

2012-01-15T21:48:04+00:00

How do the Reaksmy Children Use the XOs? - Kâmpóng Thum, Cambodia

Kâmpóng Thum, Cambodia

What do the kids do with their XOS?

The Reaksmy Primary School has about 350 children that come to school. About 160 of these children participate in the English computer studies classes in the 3rd to 6th grades. Any child of any age who with their parents agree to and meet the attendance requirements is welcome to participate. It is not unusual to have older children returning to school in the youngest class.

These early XO-1s have a keyboard with Khmer option built in, but the children use them with English keyboards in the English studies Computer skills program. At first the children participating received and owned their own laptop. Those children still in school are now in secondary school and still use them. Because of the finite number of XOs and the large number of children who wish to learn with the XOs, in order to reach more children, the XOs are numbered, shared among different grades and kept in school. Each child is assigned their own laptop number and uses the same laptop each day. There are 8 classes of 20+- students a day. The students do sometimes take laptops home for out of school homework assignments, rotating by class. The sharing system seems to me to work fine.

The school has limited electricity. Many homes in the village have none. It is rare in the world today to see a place where there is not a tv in every home and without electricity, and where the light of day determines daily schedules. Those who an afford it have generators or buy power from someone who sells it. The school building is used during daylight hours and the precious electricity is turned off during the school lunch break and every evening. The children start school at 7:00 AM and finish at 5:00 PM with a 2 hour break fro lunch during the hottest part of the day.

The school’s power supply comes from a combination of solar and generator power, and and more recently from electricity purchased from a local man who has a big generator and has installed some delivery lines. It is fairly new that the school and residents can buy power from overhead lines. The school’s power is purchased with funds from the NGO that the Negropontes started: http://www.cambodiapride.org/

In the classroom, whenever the children use the XOs at their desks, they are plugged into power strips. This is how the XOs are kept charged. The electricity is turned off whenever class is not in session. The dedicated computer teacher, Channa says this procedure works well for them, saves after school power use, and eliminates the necessity to have an after school recharging procedure. Be sure to take a look at the photos of the classroom storage station! Those are the original styrofoam packing crates that the laptops arrived in and they have held up very well.

When the Negropontes began the XO project out here, they arranged for an Internet connection which is beamed by satellite from Thailand and Laos. It is shared with one other western organization working in the same general area. The Internet does not always work and the speed varies from a slow crawl to acceptable. Channa has found that it is not reliable or fast enough to download large files including the new OS builds for the XO when they are released. I had brought working downloads of 11.2.0 on a flash drive and we were both excited to get the new build with some Activities they had not seen, working!

During my visit, someone finally arrived from Siem Reap 4-5 hours away, to diagnose and try and improve things.The school had been waiting for this person already for more than a month. He looked at the satellite, and the young mango tree that provides some shade in the hot schoolyard, and said that the tree limbs were likely blocking the signal. The idea was that if trimming was done immediately while the technician was on site, then they could assess whether in fact that was the problem or whether it was something else indeed. So out came a machete, and a limb trimmer, and first, Elaine's wonderful driver and general helper, Vanny shimmied up the tree to do some trimming. Vanny upset a huge nest of large red ants and got bitten all over and had to stop. So Channa, in his professional "teachers" clothes, white pants and all, climbed the tree to finish the job. Everyone watching on the ground, including me had red ants showered upon us. Oh it is never boring in Reaksmy. I am still not sure that this improved the problem. Perhaps it is a bandwidth issue from the source.

Channa teaches 8 one hour classes each day, 2 each for the 3rd, 4h, 5th and 6th grades or forms. The forms are divided into Level A and Level B, so that the children in one grade who are more proficient can progress and so that those who require more time or assistance won’t get discouraged.

The classroom XOs are all numbered. Each child is assigned an XO by number. Some of the same numbers are shared by children in different grades but each child in each grade uses the same XO every day. This is a clever system for sharing and I hope people from other projects might find my description helpful. So even though 4 to 8 students might be using the XO in class, their work can be saved in the Journal and it can then be accessed the next day so that the children can pick up where they left off.

I saw that all of the children, even the little ones who began he XO program just this year, know how to use the XO appropriately, to open and close Activities and use the proper “Shutdown” method. In the 3B class, the youngest children do not yet know their ABC's. The English language teacher (in the best of worlds) works in tandem with the computer skills class. At the time of my visit, the children had only been introduced to 6 letters of the English alphabet. With these children, Channa chose the GCompriis Activity. It has a 'space invaders" type shooting game with ABC letters (or math) and Channa had the children saying the letters out loud when they appeared on the screen. It was noisy and hard to hear. I had brought a dozen pair of inexpensive cute headphones with me for the classroom and they came in handy. The ABC memory game is a good Activity for this level also. These youngest children might not yet know all of their ABC's but, I was impressed to see that they already know how to use the XOs, and that they were careful to open and close Activities and to use Shutdown to preserve overall battery life.

The 4th graders were learning Scratch. Scratch is probably the most popular activity and I see that Channa has found ways to make it very versatile also. The children were drawing with the paint tools and color. When I arrived, the children had made a video (with audio too) to welcome me using Scratch. I had been wanting to learn Scratch but had not had time to play around with it so on the first day, I sat down with the children and tried to draw my own picture that I could later learn to animate. I figured if a 4th grader can do it...but it was hard and my first effort was embarrassingly primitive in comparison to the kid's work. By learning to draw with Scratch, the children will acquire the skills necessary for using computers for graphic arts. They are learning many related English words every day too. Their skills transfers easily to the Sugar “Paint” Activity and this skill set will transfer to Desktop Publishing on PCs and Macs. I hope that at least some cases, the ease with which these children use computers will open employment doors as the children grow up. How could it not?

The Reaksmy Primary School Project does not stop in Reaksmy, or at the primary school. Prior to the XO program, very few children continued their formal education. The success of the XO computer and English classes has motivated more children from the primary school stay in school. The children needed a secondary school, and so, in 2008-2009 Elaine and Cambodia~p.r.i.d.e. built the ”Junior High School.”

The Junior High School in Robeing has about 280 kids and draws from several area primary schools. When the Reaksmy children arrived with XO laptops that others did not have, this did create some problems. CAMBODIA~p.r.i.d.e. provided generator electricity and the XO library in
the secondary school. Now, they are looking for a technology teacher to live in Robeing and hold a proper class. Since the graduating children from Reaksmy no longer own their own XO, perhaps the library will need more XOs. Well, that will be a good problem to have!

I asked how many kids from the English and computer classes are continuing on to secondary school and to high school, and how does that compare to the statistics of children from classes and schools without the XOs. I don’t have the answer yet but Elaine agrees that this is an important statistic to gather. She will work with Channa on it and let me know.

Not long ago, using their XO skills learned in classes with Channa, the Junior High School students created & “published” a newspaper. They envisioned and produced something like a school newspaper but one that could also bring news to and benefit the community. The kids were very excited with their newspaper report and it was so professional that the Government censors and bureaucracy quickly killed the effort. I heard that for the children to continue reporting the local goings on in town, they would be required to make formal, expensive applications for approval and licenses. The kids loved doing the newspaper. They learned about reporting and writing, and graphic design. There is talk about trying again with a “school report” not called a newspaper. Perhaps they can write a blog about their school and about their Computer classes.

Having the same "technology" teacher for several years brings many advantages. Channa has developed expertise and tools for teaching which include projecting/enlarging the XO screen for teaching. This day, in the 5th grade, the children were learning as a group and once again practicing how to Save their Scratch drawing projects so that they could return to work on them some more on the next day. I can see how important the "teacher" and teaching is. Especially in this culture, it is hard for many kids to learn what to do with the XO, without formal instruction. Again, please check the photos.

On my next day, some of the younger kids had a mystery sound assignment. First Channa introduces the English words and concepts for the lesson. What is a “sound.?” The children were supposed to take the XOs outside around the school and using Scratch, record a “mystery” sound that could be played back in class. The students would then all listen and try and guess what sound was recorded. This active and fun lesson took 2 days, because as it is the English class, the instructions are given almost exclusively in English. sometimes there are communication errors.

The kids (& I with my camera) headed outside with their XOs. I first saw a child drum her hands on a steel drum and record that. Then a few others did that too. They spotted the school bell hanging nearby and made a good racket with that. Next, one child talked an adult with a motor scooter into revving that up to be recorded. The kids loved this Activity and I was impressed that they were doing this in Scratch, not in Record. I enjoyed seeing the XOs being used outside and the children’s smiles and laughter were priceless.

Back in class, Channa discovered that the English word “mystery” had been “lost in translation.” Everyone had such a good time, but now it was time to playback and guess the sounds. Most of the kids had the same sounds so the game was too easy. The children sat around Channa in a circle. He had a sound amplifier and speakers wired so that each XO could be plugged in and the recorded sound played. After each sound, the children all clapped for one another. And then Channa explained the game more clearly. At the end of school, the children in this class would stop by and pick up their XO and take it home, and record just one sound that might be hard for the rest of the class to guess. And the next day, indeed, the class was fun. There were sounds of animals, of cooking, and of scraping and sawing. The kids were very creative and most of the sounds, could have been one of several things and were hard to guess. I can tell you that the children are excited with their XO classes!

I mentioned that the classroom has a few Panasonic "army specs" Toughbooks' donated or bought used and refurbished. And that Cambodia~p.r.i.d.e is always looking for more of these for the older kids. Should your local police or fire department ever be getting rid of old ones, please contact CAMBODIA~p.r.i.d.e. or get in touch with me and I'll steer you to someone that can help! Like the XOs, the Toughbooks seem to be one of the only computers that can withstand the harsh environment, the dirt and sand, wet weather and heat out there.I saw the 5th graders working intently on quite sophisticated Scratch drawing projects to turn into films and games, and the 6th graders using a combination of XOs and Toughbooks for research Assignments using Google in English on the Internet.

On Fridays, there is some free time to choose Activities. Some of the kids were working to perfect their Scratch drawings and others were playing games. Channa also holds a Friday Repair class with the older kids. I had identified some XOs that I thought I might be able to fix and while I was working in the classroom on them, some kids from each class were really interested. I encouraged some of the children and let them help me put disassembled XOs back together. Several boys had never before used a screwdriver. It only took them a second to learn. Frankly, their little fingers and sharp eyes (to find dropped screws) were a big help. I loved working directly with the kids!

I hope this verbal snapshot together with my photos will give you an idea of what an XO project can do in one of the poorest rural places in the world. Even with the many daily challenges that the extreme poverty in this location present, the Reaksmy kids have opportunities, beyond those of their peers who don't have XOs or any type of computer education.

There are many obstacles to success. The extreme poverty of this location presents daily challenges and the financial needs are great. As with other XO projects in poor locations around the globe, the Reaksmy children and their community benefit from the XO project. Even if the children here will become rice farmers, (and someone needs to grow the rice), they need to learn about the greater world they live in. With access to the Internet and the skills to use it, the children will have the tools to learn. They can learn and teach about business, farm (agricultural) science, health and nutrition. They will be better qualified to compete for jobs. Some may continue their studies and become more proficient farmers, or teachers, or doctors. All will have a “head start” to a better future.

Elaine is modest and does not seek publicity for her work. I want to respect her privacy but I must mention that her personal contribution, fundraising for CAMBODIA~p.r.i.d.e, traveling to and living in Cambodia for months at a time, being present and persistent, advising teachers and parents and students of all ages, and always tackling hard problems with determination, has effected great change already. I think that sometimes she does not see the overall accomplishments and progress being made, because there are so many immediate daily needs and challenges. Elaine is one terrific example and role model for the community, as is Channa, the gifted teacher she inspires. No doubt she has inspired others there too, as she has me! How fortunate I feel to have had the opportunity to visit Reaksmy.

Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions about details that might help you with your own XO Projects. I'll try and get the answers for you.

I apologize in advance for any errors or misstatements. The errors are my own and I will be happy to make corrections.

If you would like to help the Reaksmy children please contact http://www.cambodiapride.org/

SANDRA’S VISIT TO ESHIBINGA

2012-01-15T21:04:07+00:00

Wow! We have no words. On 12th January 2012 the director of Small solutions big ideas inc, Sandra arrived in Eshibinga to assess the achievements so far of the xo laptops. We had been anticipating her arrival. She did not disappoint. She had with her four new xo laptops to add on the 4 we already had. She had some gifts for the Eshibinga kids. But more so she came with one Oscar. An IT wizard who was set to take the kids through a new activity on the xo’s. Mapping.
Sandra Thaxter was born in 1943 and currently live in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She is the founder of the small solutions big ideas organization. But when you look at Sandra you may be mistaken to think she is in mid forties. After her arrival in Eshibinga, she took time to meet the teachers, the school administration and members of the Eshibinga Computer club who are the recipients of the xo laptops. She worked with the kids for over four hours. Despite all the traveling and teaching she worked through the night working on her blogs and emails. Amazing. Below we just wish to quote some of her tweets and observations.
Sandra was excited by the IT kids at Eshibinga primary school. The pupils are eager to learn, creative, innovative and have a good command of the English Language. Oscar who was teaching the Mapping activity commented the kids for thier prowess in IT skills and ability to think and create maps. As we walked into the school one ting that touched Sandra’s heart was this student, John. John like most of the kids in Ershibinga come to school bare foot. But John’s case is different. His feet are infested with jiggers. Sandra wondered out aloud. ” How can we help him? How does he sleep? Isn’t he in great pain?” We had no immediate answers to her questions. Later that night Sandra wrote onher blog,

“ Greetings Kenyan Friends of OLPC,

I am now in Kenya. I will spend the first part of January in
western Kenya, and then the second down in the Taita Hills area. In
between I will have some time in Nairobi to meet with those of you in
Nairobi. I wanted to visit the Usahidi innovation center. Would
anyone like to meet me there maybe tomorrow Thursday???.

If you would like to get on my schedule, please contact me, phone
(0707 280 559) or email. I’d like to meet some of you and see what we
can do together to improve the collaboration between OLPC sites and to
gain more visibility for our programs.

Email is also a good way to contact me.

We have an OLPC group meeting on Jan 15th at Kisumu Girls school for
those of you near Kisumu, please email me of your interest.

Sincerely yours, Sandra.

Kenya is beautiful, this year so green and the sun is bright!!
To tell the story we have loaded several photos. Hope you will enjoy.

Visiting the Reaksmy, Cambodia OLPC XO Project — Kâmpóng Thum, Cambodia

2012-01-15T02:45:42+00:00

Visiting the Reaksmy, Cambodia OLPC XO Project - Kâmpóng Thum, Cambodia

Kâmpóng Thum, Cambodia

Where I stayed

Homestay

(Bavet hotels)

I started out in Siem Reap this morning on the Mekong Express Bus. I booked the bus through the hotel reception and was picked up promptly at the appointed time, for transfer to the bus station and to the bus. The Siem Reap to Phnom Penh bus stops in Kampong thom, my destination. I did have to buy a ticket through to Phnom Penh, but it was not expensive ($11.00 US). The bus was clean and had an attendant that gave the information speech in English, French and Khmer. After nearly 3 hours through beautiful rice farming areas, where I saw some evidence of the recent rains and flooding, I arrived in Kampong Thom.

My host, Elaine met me with her driver, Vanny. I was thrilled to finally meet Elaine.
We drove about an hour to Robieng District and Reaksmy village. On the way, Elaine pointed out large tracts that have been clear cut for new industry coming in. She said that the road did not used to be paved. Chinese companies and workers have been working in the area and first paved the road to improve access. Next they began clearing the forest, destroying old forests and displacing wildlife, to make what looks to me like new "factory towns." Elaine thinks that these will be refineries of some kind. I have seen this kind of development in North Vietnam. It benefits the Chinese and their local (in this case, Cambodian) wealthy business partners. The poor rural residents rarely benefit from this type of development. Besides the loss of irreplaceable natural resources, the residents will be facing new types poisons and pollution which will add to the hardships faced by these people who are still some of the poorest in our world.

We arrived in Reaksmy which to me, did not seem near anywhere. I was staying with Elaine in the home her son Dimitri built to be a base for their work to improve education for the children here. I was touched to see the location just next door to the school. It's so close that you can hear the children and their lessons. I did not know very much about this early OLPC XO project, or the non-profit CAMBODIA~p.r.i.d.e., (providing rural innovative digital education) which supports it. http://www.cambodiapride.org/

In 1998 or 1999. Nicholas Negroponte and Bernie Krisher desired to bring education to some of the world\s poorest children. Flying over rural Cambodia in a helicopter, they looked down at Robeing, far from anywhere and ten years ago, before the Chinese paved the road, a 9 hour drive from Phnom Penh. As I am told, they said, "this area looks good," and with a drop of a pin on a map, the lives of hundreds of children from this rice farming village would be forever changed.

The Elaine and Nicholas Negroponte Primary School in Reaksmy was built in 1999 and all of the Reaksmy village children were welcomed there. Mr. Krisher, now the publisher of the Cambodia Daily also built a school in the same area. The Negropontes, Elaine, Nicholas and their son Dimtri supported the initial efforts and worked on site at the Reaksmy Primary School. In 2005, Elaine founded the non profit organization, CAMBODIA~p.r.i.d.e. to raise funds to help sustain and expand the school programs and community project.

The initial goal was to provide education to these rural children, some of the world's poorest, and to focus upon activities and curriculum that can teach the children to think for themselves. "Give rod, not fish." In the early years, finding and keeping qualified teachers was a challenge, and often the children were coming to school when no teachers were present. It was a struggle to get books, curriculum, and learning materials. The experience at the Reaksmy school led Nicholas to the idea that became One Laptop Per Child. http://one.laptop.org/

Working with MIT Media Lab Professors Seymour Papert and Mitchel Resnick, Nicholas dreamed up the $100 laptop, and in 2007, introduced the first netbook/notebook computer, to the world, with hopes of improving the future the world's poorest children. In just 4 years, portable computing has changed so much, with netbooks, smart phones and tablets flooding the marketplace. The cute little green, rugged XO laptop might not seem so lightweight anymore, against its newer cousins, but for the under-developed rural environment for which it was designed, it is still a very viable option for changing children's lives. Conventional digital equipment will not last very long in hot, wet, humid, sandy environments like Reaksmy.

At first, Dimitri lived and worked in Reaksmy to get things started. I know first hand how our children's paths can change the course of our lives, and thereby the lives of so many others too. Dimitri is still involved of course, but he has a family and work in America and now, his Mom, Elaine, carries the weight of this project. Elaine spends part of every year in Phnom Penh and in Reaksmy. In addition to fundraising, she works tirelessly with the teachers, the children and community residents, to meet whatever needs arise, and those are great.

In late 2007 or early 2008, the Reaksmy project received 500+ XOs and while the keyboard has a Khmer option built in, the children use them with English keyboards in the English program. The primary school computer class was formed welcoming any child who agrees to the attendance requirement. At first the children participating received and owned their own laptop. Those children still in school are now in secondary school and still use them. Because of the finite number of XOs and the large number of children who wish to learn with the XOS, in order to reach more children, the XOs are numbered, shared among different grades and kept in school. Each child is assigned their own laptop number and uses the same laptop each day. Their are 8 classes of 20+- students a day. The students do sometimes take laptops home for out of school homework assignments, rotating by class. The sharing system seems to me to work fine. Be sure to take a look at the photos of the classroom storage station! Those are the original styro-foam packing crates that the laptops arrived in and they have held up very well.

When the children go to secondary school, it is in a school in Robeing that draws from several area primary schools. When the Reaksmy children arrived with XO laptops that others did not have, this did create some problems. Elaine has set up in school library of XOs in the secondary school to address this. Since the graduating children from Reaksmy no longer own their own XO, perhaps the library will need more XOs. Well, that will be a good problem to have!

The XO-1's are quite old, and they are very dirty, due to the hot, dusty, and sandy environment. I was pleased to see that the breakage rate was low and that the children in the 3rd through 6th grades (forms) are quite good with the programs. Their teacher's name is Channa and he is a true gift in that community. He has been with the school for 10 years and has married and made his home in the district in which he works.

I asked if the children are especially excited to join the class with the XOs and if having them perhaps increases school attendance. Elaine explained that yes, attendance is taken seriously and the kids know they have to come in order to participate. But she said that having the XOs to use is quite a normal thing for these kids already. Those children with older siblings or neighbors in Channa's classes have seen all the kids using them and for them, using the laptop is already a very normal part of their school day.

So it is heartbreaking to think that in the secondary schools and high schools in Cambodia, it is not normal to have any exposure to computers at all. What happens to the Reaksmy kids and their computer and Internet skills, when they get to high school? Elaine has tried to address this by acquiring some used Panasonic Toughbooks. These are apparently the laptop of choice that the US Armed Services use in the dusty hot environments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for some Police and Fire Protection Officers in the US. Elaine has excellent instincts and knows what to do to help. I have learned so much from her. She and Channa have the Toughbooks being used by the 6th graders, for Internet assignments, (when the Internet works), and also available for extra-curricular use during school hours. Anyone can come in and work on them, and I think they are available to the older non primary school students as well. They were always in use and the kids who are not on them, are looking over with interest.

What I saw is that the children love their work with the XOs and the computers. And, they are very good at using them! Be sure to read the Entry following this one where I'm writing about How the Children Use their XOs.

Visiting Reaksmy, was for me a big gift. It was a glimpse back in time to an earlier century. The school has electricity thanks to the efforts of the Negropontes. It comes from a combination of solar and generator power. Outside of the school, where a handwashing facility and protocol has been introduced, and of Elaine’s very modest home, there are few facilities for hygiene. There is very little and only sporadic electricity which is purchased from a man who makes power with a generator and has recently put some lines in, to sell the power. It is rare in the world today to see a place without a TV in every home and with no electricity, where the light of day determines daily schedules. There is no clean potable water, no refrigeration for food storage food, no education for adults about food safety, health or nutrition.

Some of the village traditions are ***********front and heartbreaking to see. There is a traditional medicine woman (Elaine calls her a witch doctor), that ill family members are taken to first. The families cannot afford to go to the health clinic in the nearby town or city, and someone has to be nearly dying before they can be convinced to try it. Then often it is already too late.

Elaine recounts an example that she says is not unusual. Not too long ago, a woman was bitten by a cobra or other type of poisonous snake. There is a westerner nearby who stocks some but not much anti-venom. But the person/family must know which snake caused the bite. Then they must get to the clinic quickly to even have a prayer of living. The family believing that the traditional doctor can help, may be afraid of western medicine and of the expense, which they cannot afford. They brought the woman to the witch doctor, and the young woman, of course, died. The witch doctor told the family that the woman was evil and that’s why the snake bit her and she died. This is not an unusual incident and sadly, it is part of life in Reaksmy.

Everyone who knows me knows me well knows that snakes freak me out. So when I asked how many types of poisonous snakes there are around this village, we started talking about this particular problem. At the next meeting of the English teachers, Elaine brought an idea that the children need a snake identification and preparedness curriculum. She brainstormed about who could visit and teach the children snake education, and said she would speak with the local clinic to try and stock a wider array of anti-venom. I saw that Channa has the 5th and 6th grades already using the Internet in English for research projects and no doubt they can use the Internet to learn about the snakes as well. We talked about the need to educate the “witch doctor’ that people’s lives can be saved. She needs to be encouraged (perhaps paid) to refer the patients to the clinic where they might have a chance to survive a poisonous bite. Education, computers, the Internet: Out here it can make a difference between life and death.

It might take some years to see the effects of their computer classes outside of school, but as the children learn more about the world outside of Reaksmy and Robeing, the hope is that they can improve their own futures if not that of their families. If one child could become a teacher, and one could become a nurse, or doctor, and come back and inspire younger siblings and friends, change, while slow, could come from within.

To me, this is the real story of the Reaksmy XO Laptop project. It is about how the children’s computers, their classes and the Internet have and can affect the entire community. My visit was short, only a few days. Here are some examples of what I saw:

1. The Reaksmy school children are privileged to have school for 8 hours a day. School starts at 7:00AM and goes until 11:00AM. After a long lunch break during the hottest part of the day, the children return from 1:00PM until 5:00PM. The school is safe and welcoming and has toilets and hand-washing facilities (unusual here) that the children and teachers are supposed to help maintain. The children appear happy to be there. But except for the English language and Computer classes who with their dedicated teachers, Virak and Channa, the teacher situation is not great. Often the teachers do not hold class and the children are just outside playing. The Toughbook computers and the Internet, when working are available to the older kids during these times.

2. The first evening, two young men from 11th grade at the high school dropped by Elaine’s house. In order to stay in school, they are living in the Temple Pagoda in the village. They came to ask if Elaine knew a teacher who could tutor them for the high school exam. They know that most students from the area who manage to say in school and take the test don’t pass it. The math and science and language education suffers sorely in this district and in recent years only one student has passed the national test to graduate. They can’t afford to pay a tutor but Elaine will try and arrange something for them.

3. During school a woman came to the class and shyly asked Elaine if she might know why the woman used to be able to read, but now she cannot see well enough. Elaine says that she recently had given another woman some reading glasses and this woman too thought she might be given a pair also. Elaine brought out a handful of drugstore reading glasses to try. They didn’t find the right ones, but you can see the difference that a generous westerner’s presence in town can make.

4. Elaine has a refrigerator (not plugged in) filled with first aid supplies and medicine. Rather than use precious electricity and use the refrigerator for cold storage, Elaine buys ice daily from sweet Mrs. Lang in town. She says if she did not buy ice then Mrs. Lang might not have enough customers to be able to continue to sell it. And then village vendors won’t have an ice source and residents can get sick more often from improper food storage.

5. I met a lovely girl in class whose parents and sister all have AIDS. Her father left the village to go work elsewhere, as is not uncommon. And must have gotten AIDS and brought it home. There is no money for treatment or travel to get it.

6. I met a lovely 16 year old boy named Chua that Elaine has known since he was a child. Chua has a severe and unusual kidney problem that stunted his growth. Elaine has taken him to the Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap for care and has had tele-computer consultation with doctors
in Boston to try and help. The obstacles are so great as Chua’s mother can’t afford to travel or stay with Chua for medical care and she does not ever leave him. At the last visit they learned that sadly, all that could be done at this late stage has been done and I hope that sweet Chua has an easy time when he goes. I received this sad update on Chua from Elaine, December 20, 2011. "Extremely sad news about Chua -- on Saturday he departed for what I hopeis a far better place and one without pain. He was cremated behind the school -- we flew the flag at half mast and the entire primary and JHS went to say goodbye. I have always said that he is the heart and soul of our operation -- not to see him again is very painful for all of us. Renal failure is not a disease to have in a poor country. Not a disease to have anywhere; when dialysis or a kidney transplant is the only option." I am sad for Chua, his mother and the entire community. May his memory be a blessing.

These relationships that Elaine and other westerners working with CAMBODIA~p.r.i.d.e. develop with the local residents are necessary to the success of the project. While working in a remote area in Vietnam, I could not have acquired the solar panels needed to install in the school there, without building relationships in the local community. Today, when Elaine stopped at the Lang's to buy ice, she was speaking with Mr. Lang about when she could take him to Phnom Penh (and presumably pay him) to help her buy a new generator for the Junior High (secondary) School.

Elaine & I spoke about family & cultural obstacles. She is distressed about the widespread ineffective teaching in this District that lessen the chance that more than a few kids will complete high school. The first children who received XO laptops 5 years ago are approaching high school graduation. Unlike others who complete the high school classes in rural Cambodia, these students are computer literate. They know how to use the Internet to learn. I am so impressed to see what even the youngest children are doing with their XOs already. (See my next Entry in this blog). Even if the children here will become rice farmers, they need to learn about the greater world they live in. With their computer skills and access they can learn farm (agricultural) science, about better nutrition and about general, maternal and child health.

The results of Elaine Negroponte's dedication to this community and to this project, are visible already. Through her work, and that of CAMBODIA~p.r.i.d.e., OLPC and the XO project, hopefully even those children that don’t complete their high school exams, will have learned to think and learn. They will have the tools they need to become more successful adults and parents and farmers, run better micro-businesses, and improve their future and that of their families.

Watching the Reaksmy Primary School kids use their XOs, I can hardly believe how much of an impact this earliest XO project has had, and what has been accomplished in one of the poorest and remote locations. How fortunate I feel to have had the opportunity to visit Reaksmy. Thank you Elaine for inviting me and for being a wonderful host!

To learn more or to help the Reaksmy children, go to: http://www.cambodiapride.org/
Nancie:)

Sugar Labs@NDSU Meeting Notes :: 01.13.2012

2012-01-13T19:49:33+00:00

Regular Meeting Time

Will 11am on Thursdays work?
Yes: Kevin, Chris, Jade, and David
Not sure: Matt and Emily

Tech Team – Spring Curriculum Planning

3 Week Physics Challenge — Build a “Mouse Trap” machine (starts on 01/24)
3 Week Etoys Challenge — TBD

Physics Challenge

Students will challenged to create their own machine that moves an object from point A to point B. It will be framed as the Sugar Superhero Camp, where they must demonstrate their cleverness, so they can move onto the next level of Etoys.

Tech Teamers will be “scored” by the number of pieces/components and the level of complexity of the system of processes. Of course, it must also work. And, perhaps, it should also contain a mix of self-sufficient procedures vs. interactive procedures?

After completing this unit, we will provide the materials on our blog, as well as share it on the “Physics” wiki site. We will also be sure to take video of our work and the work of the students to share with the community.

The hope is to also scaffold in moments to help students understand the type of procedures that they are constructing. The hope is to start thinking procedurally, then taking that line of thinking into Etoys with more script-based activities.

Sugar Team Duties

1. Look for similar examples — David
2. Make one — Chris, David, Jade?, Matt?
3. Look for instructions — Chris
4. Notify Emily about the instructions

Instructions

Will contain the following:
>>Framed as Sugar Superhero Camp to demonstrate their cleverness, so they can move onto the next level of Etoys.
>>Screenshot of finished product: think Mouse Trap (to come)
>>Screenshot and explanation of different tools (http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/Physics#Tools)

Crayon Physics Deluxe

2012-01-13T17:43:08+00:00

Crayon Physics Deluxe.

We are getting ready to teach a 3 week unit using Sugar’s Physics, but my son just introduced me to Crayon Physics. Sugar’s Physics gives users a completely blank slate; Crayon Physics gives user a challenge, then another, then another. We need to help our kids go from zero to 60 in three weeks; Crayon Physics starts at 30 and walks kids up to 60 pretty easily. Sugar Physics is constructivist all the way down; Crayon Physics is scaffolded constructivism. Sugar Physics is FOS; Crayon Physics is $20.

What’s the right mix?

OLPC Australia XO-AU OS 12 beta 1

2012-01-07T07:37:16+00:00

The OLPC Australia XO-AU OS 12 has reached beta 1. This is based on OLPC OS 11.3.1 and Dextrose 3.

We’d really appreciate some testing. Please direct your feedback to the OLPC Australia mailing list.

Here is the notice I sent out to teachers:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Sridhar Dhanapalan
Date: 24 December 2011
Subject: Taking part in improving new XO software

Friends,

The 2012 OLPC Australia operating system, XO-AU OS 12, has reached a
beta stage of development. It has many improvements, and we looking
for feedback on how it works to help us create the final product. This
beta is suitable for testing, documentation and developing lesson
plans.

In early February, we will have a near-final release candidate,
suitable for trialling in classrooms. We are looking for clever
teachers to provide us with real-world feedback on how the software
works with their classes.

This is an opportunity for you to take part in XO development and
ensure that the device suits the needs of your classroom. We would be
especially interested to know how the connectivity and collaboration
works on your school’s networks.

To get started, visit our release notes page:
https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/xo-au/wiki/120_release_notes

This page outlines the main changes in the new operating system. Go to
the “Beta 1″ part of the Installation section. Installing the beta is
no different from installing the XO-AU USB 3 stable release: extract
the zip file to a USB stick and you’re ready to go.

To provide feedback, join our technical mailing list:
https://dev.laptop.org.au/projects/general/wiki/Technical_mailing_list

Following this, you can send your comments or ask questions at
olpc-au at lists dot laptop dot org

The OLPC Australia Engineering team are active participants on this
list, and we will reply. Remember, the better you can help us with
quality information, the better we can make the product for you

Regards,
Sridhar

Lunar Tet Holiday for Poor Children

2012-01-07T01:15:17+00:00

The Lunar New Year is nearly upon us and the 2012 Tết Holiday in Vietnam is shaping up to be bigger and better than ever before. Here at Volunteers for Peace Vietnam Saigon Branch we are just as excited as everyone else and we want to use this year’s Tết as an opportunity to extend our outreach in Vietnam.

Project Overview

For a new year coming, Tet 2012, we would like to organize a voluntary trip to K’rông Pa, a small village in the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai. We want to try and make a difference to this community (especially for children) in a variety of ways over a 2-3 day trip. Villages like K’rông Pa are often forgotten in popular society and rarely receive voluntary aid; and the local people have a very poor living condition at the moment. We are looking to raise funds to help us make a positive impact in K’rông Pa, hopefully leading to continued efforts in similar communities in the future.

There will be 3 main aspects to the trip:

Gift and everyday necessities donation
Organisation of traditional games of Tet for children
Personal Hygiene guidance

Gifts: We would like to give presents to the local children in celebration of Tết. Ideally we are looking for direct donations of everyday necessities such as food, blankets, clothes, in particular socks and underwear, as well as important items like new mosquito nets and any other items you may feel are relevant to the living conditions. We understand this is not always possible and will also look to raise funds in order to purchase gifts ourselves. Everything will be spread out equally and we hope for every child to receive the same or similar gifts which emphasizes the importance of these donations. This is a great chance to enhance the living standards of these children but also the families who may be too poor to afford these crucial items.

Activities and Games: With 2 or 3 days in Buon Phum, we plan to arrange many activities for the children especially but we would like to involve as many people as possible. We will play traditional Tết games and arrange performances by the VPV volunteers involved in the project and stories around the fire etc. The most special event will be the making of ‘Bánh Chưng’. It is perhaps the most famous food associated with Tết, It is a rice cake with a square shape to represent the earth. The outer layer wraps in green banana leaves. In the middle is pork meat and mung bean to represent animals and plants on earth. It’s a special tradition and will be lots of fun for everyone involved. This will also be a great opportunity for volunteers and local people to share both experiences of living in such contrasting environments and also local customs that either group of people may find interesting.

Personal Hygiene Guidance: Perhaps the most important aspect of the trip will be a Personal Hygiene guidance for villagers to learn more about improving their cleanliness and personal health. It is so important as we hope to develop simple but crucial life skills that will benefit the children especially in later life. If we can get them to understand the significance of brushing your teeth or the most effective way to keep warm in the cooler mountain weather they will be able to avoid simple but devastating health problems that can arise as they get older. As part of the guidance we would like to offer free toiletries, like toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, toilet paper and other important accessories in hygiene. We need to raise funds in order to create pamphlets that can be distributed amongst locals as well as the amenities mentioned earlier to give out so that we can put the message into practical use for the foreseeable future.

Resources – Available and Required

Available:

VPV Staff
Local Volunteers

Needed:

As a non-profit organization it is difficult to arrange a project like this which is unrelated to everyday work and provide sufficient funds from within the organization. The fundraising efforts break down into two main areas:

Donations either in actual physical objects, gifts or items for workshop or funds which can be used by VPV to purchase these items. Donors will be made aware of the use of their contributions.

Transportation costs: – there will be around 20 – 30 volunteers taking part in the project. Most are students and will have difficulty in covering transportation costs. The maximum will be 30 and the price per person is estimated around 500,000VND per person. The target transport budget will be 15m VND which will cover the maximum number of volunteers but if we do not reach capacity can be used in the same way as funds donated towards the gift giving or workshop.
Ways of donation: directly at VPV office (88/1B Đào Duy Anh, ward 9, Phu Nhuan district, HCMC) from Monday to Saturday (7:00 am – 9:00 pm) (for local volunteers)
Through Western Union Service / Transfer from Visa card / Pay pal /….. (for international volunteers)

Information of person in charge of fund raising and received your support:

Name: Don Hong Minh

Phone number: +84(915 767 897)

Email: saigon@vpv.vn

ID card number: 111583231

ID card day of issue: Jan 10^th 2011

Bank Account: 102 2526 9503 017

SWIFT: VTCB VN VX

Any amount of donation will be highly appreciated (5usd, 10usd,…)

VPV is a trustable organization I volunteered for in 2010. I donated money for this project two years ago and wrote in a blog post about this annual initiative of bringing food to children in the Highlands of Vietnam for Tet. If you feel like making someone happy, it is a good cause. These children live in real poverty, and your presents will brighten their lives!

Inking a deal

2012-01-06T02:14:13+00:00

I am pleased to write that San Francisco State University and One Laptop per Child Association have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on existing effort and future work.

From the MoU:

"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."

First, a quick flashback.

I have worked at SF State for close to 12 years. As part of SF State's strategic plan, Goal 1 states:

Solar-Powered Internet Connectivity a Reality in Lascahobas, Haiti!

2012-01-05T18:09:31+00:00

On December 13-14, 2011, a partnered team from Illinois Institute of Technology, Green Wifi, and Inveneo worked together to bring solar-powered Internet connectivity to the EFACAP school in Lascahobas, Haiti. Thanks to funding from an Internet Society Community grant, this team first established a long distance Internet connection to the school, and then set up point-to-multipoint wifi hotspots across the school’s campus.

In August, 2011, the IIT and Green Wifi team installed a 2.4 Kilowatt solar p.v. powering system at the EFACAP school. Now that the laptops could be charged, the team’s next goal was to establish an Internet connection, so that the teachers, students, and administration could have access to unlimited information from the world wide web, but also, so that those at the school in Lascahobas would be able to communicate with the team in the US. From the beginning of this project, one of the team’s goals was to enable communication to foster collaboration between the two groups. Being able to communicate over the Internet should facilitate this.

The backbone tower in Lascahobas, to which the EFACAP school is connected, is one of many set up across the country as part of the Inveneo-led Rural Broadband Initiative to form a high-speed wireless backbone across Haiti. This initiative’s objective is to bring affordable, reliable and sustainable broadband access to 6 regions and 20 un-served population centers across Haiti. The Internet Society grant, which enabled our team to leverage the commitment of a two-year anchor tenant contract with the EFACAP school, was a contributing factor toward the Rural Broadband Initiative’s decision to place Internet towers in this region, thereby including it in the national backbone, which means that this grant’s potential reach and contribution to Internet connectivity and use in Haiti go far beyond the single connection at the EFACAP school!

As part of their BATI program, Inveneo is training and certifying local Haitian technicians from regions across the country in Internet connectivity setup and related small-business skills. The EFACAP school Internet installation was used as a hands-on training session for five BATI technicians.

Once the long-distance link from downtown Lascahobas to the (semi-rural) school was established, the team worked together to establish multiple solar-powered wifi hotspots across the school’s campus. After connectivity was established, the IIT team met with the school’s teachers, only two of whom had ever used the Internet before, to instruct them in how to get online, use search tools and a server, and finally, to set up email addresses!

The EFACAP school in Lascahobas was the recipient of about 400 laptops from a much larger laptop donation that the Haitian Ministry of Education received in 2009, with the stated goal of improving the quality of primary education. However, as is the case with the vast majority of primary schools across Haiti, the EFACAP school had no way to provide the power to charge the laptops—in this school’s case, it was the result of the grid no longer providing them power after the devastating earthquake that hit Port au Prince in 2010.

Our team looks forward to returning to the school in the first half of 2012. While we are confident that the Inveneo BATI team is capable of installing, supporting and maintaining the Internet and related connectivity technology, our team plans to host a training session (for the BATI and beyond) focusing on solar powering technology and on wifi technology, so that these complementary technologies can similarly be locally supported and maintained. With each visit, we are working to increase local capacities, as well as local support for the project in order that it can be fully locally owned, maintained, and supported.

Fedora 17 gcc-4.7 Mass rebuild

2012-01-04T17:26:00+00:00

starting immediatly there is going to be a mass rebuild of rawhide for gcc-4.7 that landed yesterday.

as approved by FESCo packagers will have just over a week, until Thursday Jan 12 to build packages themselves. After that date releng will kick off an automated mass rebuild of everything else.

So please get building as Fedora 17 branching is less than 5 weeks away. we need all built by then

Changing Gears

2012-01-02T00:30:48+00:00

I am flying to San Francisco to join Code for America! This initiative - just entering its second year - develops and adapts open source tools and resources for cities. We aim to make cities participatory down to bits and bytes. Throughout the year I am going to be working directly with officials in Macon, Georgia.

Though you'd never mistake Macon for Chicago or Seattle, the city has a major role to play. Smaller cities often struggle to develop and maintain their technology. They don't have the in-house techies to make apps like a big city does. What grows strong roots in Macon can spread and grow in hundreds of cities, like dandelion seeds blowing into the wind.

CC-BY-SA Alexdi

Any OLPC / Sugar updates will continue appearing here. For CfA updates follow @mapmeld on Twitter.

We’re immortalized in the new ‘Cult of LEGO’ book!

2011-12-31T21:50:49+00:00

Thanks to a tip from Walter Bender, I discovered that wife Amy and I are featured in the new Cult of LEGO book from No Starch Press. My 2007 photo of Amy modeling a One Laptop per Child XO-1 laptop camera viewfinder made of LEGO bricks runs full bleed on page 41. The viewfinder is shown as an example of one of a wide variety of ingenious uses for LEGO bricks. The book itself is a broad survey of LEGO history, culture and fandom.

The Cult of LEGO is available in bookstores and online. No Starch Press offers an ebook or ebook/print bundle on their web site. The PDF ebook is pictured here on my iPad.

The LEGO viewfinder was discovered by design professor Phil Renato, who collaborated with me to create a custom design for 3D printing. We made a couple hundred of them for sale and gifting. The photo of Walter Bender looking through that viewfinder has been used far and wide. The viewfinder was even converted into a USB flash drive. Then Vik Olliver of RepRap fame came up with a simpler design that could be printed from an XO laptop to the DIY RepRap 3D printer.

My ongoing involvement with LEGO through the MIT Media Lab and the OLPC Learning Club of DC attracted a visit from producers of the LEGO Mindstorms Robotics products. I provided consulting on approaches to optimizing their low-cost WeDo robotics kit for the OLPC XO laptop. The discussions led to my introducing to LEGO the team of developers that did the port of the Win/Mac software to Linux that is now being deployed to 20,000 kids in Peru.

I’m looking forward to helping LEGO some more in 2012.

CC Flickr photo by Mike Lee

Happy New Year 2012

2011-12-31T20:00:29+00:00

Last year I bought Russell chocolate and saved covers because they were too cute. This year I used them to create The Ultimate Answer collage as a Holiday Card. It has the happiness formula in it. In 2012 be kind to yourself and those around you! Be happy

Good Faith Collaboration (Part Two)

2011-12-30T19:00:36+00:00

I enjoyed learning about collaborative culture definitions from the book. Henry Jenkins defines participatory culture as one in which there are low barriers of engagement, support for creation and sharing, and some form of mentorship or socialization, and members believe that their contributions matter and they “feel some degree of social connection with one another”.

I agree with the author that openness and incrementalism may not be enough to create good quality content. “Wikipedia must reconcile their vision with the inescapable social reality of irritating personalities, philosophical difference and external threats”. He notes that “goodwill is not always necessary to Wikipedia’s production”.

Clay Shirky said: “Wikipedia is the product not of collectivism but of unending argumentation; the corpus grows not from harmonious thought but from constant scrutiny and emendation”.

Einbinder writes in the introduction to his critique, “since encyclopedia is a mirror of contemporary learning, it offers a valuable opportunity to examine prevailing attitudes and beliefs in a variety of fields.” Indeed, problems both in community’s culture and its content are a representation of our society.

“Thomas Mann, a librarian, argues we would be better … (know of) the pathologies that infect social organisms (ex. short-sightedness, selfishness, and ignorance are constant factors in human life), rather than celebrating the unproven presumption that technology can cure all. Wikipedia is said to favor mediocrity over expertise”.

It goes even further with this caricature: “fanatical mob producing Wikipedia exhibits little wisdom and is more like a Maoist cult of monkeys banging away on the keyboards and thumb pads of their gadgets, disturbing the noble repose of scholars and displacing high-quality content from the market place”.

I would say that any criticism should be constructive. I have no doubt that technology is capable of curing a lot of social problems; it just needs to be redesigned so that people cultivate their best qualities while using it.

Ideally, contributors should become more tolerant and compassionate in the process of collaboration. Today Wikipedia volunteers are restricted to behave with civility, but do they truly feel compassion to those with opposing views? Surely, they have a sense of purpose and connection to others, but at times Wikipedia becomes a vanity project for those proving their personal significance at the expense of others.

Georg von Krogh, in his article on “Care in knowledge creation”, identifies five dimensions relevant to the successful creation of knowledge within a community: mutual trust, active empathy, access to help, lenience in judgment, and courage. Benkler and Nissenbaum argue that “commons-based peer-production” entails virtues that are both self-regarding” (ex. autonomy, independence, creativity) and ”other-regarding” (ex. generosity, altruism, camaraderie, cooperation, and civic virtue).

The author says that “the central concern seems to be how we can conceive of our humanity in working together and its implications”. His definition of good faith is “assuming the best of others, striving for patience, civility, and humor”, and Wikipedia is trying to act with it.

From 2004 Letter from the Founder: “None of us is perfect in these matters; such is the human condition. But each of us can try every day, in our editing, in our mailing posts, in our irc chats, and in our private emails, to reach for a higher standard than the Internet usually encourages, a standard of rational benevolence and love”.

Personally, I think that Wikipedia is a great invention and a great resource, but it is just the beginning of an even better model of gathering knowledge and resolving misunderstandings and conflicts. Let’s call it 1.0 version where people work together towards one great goal. It is a good start. Next version would align personal goals of the members with community’s goals, and help them rediscover and develop themselves in the process of compassionate creation.

Re-posted from The Ultimate Answer

Good Faith Collaboration (Part One)

2011-12-29T13:00:50+00:00

I recently finished reading Good Faith Collaboration book by Joseph Reagle. I was very curious about this book as not only it describes Wikipedia’s culture but also talks about its historical roots and contemporary criticism. Wikipedia is around for almost 11 years. So what is it?

First, there are actual Wikipedia pages and edits to them, as well as the meta pages documenting the policies and norms of Wikipedia itself. Second there is the talk/discussion page associated with each article. Third, there are mailing lists on which most abstract and difficult issues are often discussed. There are Wikipedia Signpost and Wikizine newsletter, other community forums such as popular “Village Pump”, and various Wikipedia related blogs, aggregators and podcasts. Fifth and finally, there are physical spaces in which some community members interact.

But mainly, Wikipedia is a snapshot of the community’s continuing conversation. Wikipedia culture encourages contributors to treat and think of others well, hence the name of the book. There are awards for best contributors like a “barnstar” (image placed on another’s user page to recognize merit). These awards are part of the Kindness Campaign and are meant to promote civility and WikiLove. There are more than 200 laws/norms by which Wikipedia contributors abide, including the guidelines of “Assume Good Faith” (AGF), “Please Do Not Bite the Newcomers” and “Neutral Point of View”.

This idea could be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century, in particular Paul Otlet’s Universal Repertory and H.G. Wells’s proposal for a World Brain. Wells proposed the reference work compilers would be joined by world scholars and international technocrats to produce a resource that every student might easily access, in a personal, inexpensive, and portable format. This collection of the world’s intellect was envisioned to yield a greater sense of unity: wells hoped that such an encyclopedia could solve the “jig-saw puzzle” of global problems by bringing all the “mental wealth of our world into something like a common understanding”; this would be more than an education al resource, it would be an institution of global mediation.

As Wells said, “Without a World Encyclopedia to hold men’s minds together in a common interpretation of reality, there is no hope whatever of anything but an accidental and transitory alleviation to any of our world troubles.” I completely agree with the way Wells stated the problem. Additionally I question the transitory life cycle of one person’s knowledge. That knowledge must be reused even if the person is gone, as he/she may have insight into some solutions that are not easily generated, but the mankind desperately needs them.

One of the topics discussed in the book is who can really contribute. In Wikipedia’s predecessor Nupedia only educated and reasonable people were able to make final edits. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we often confuse formal school education and life experience, as one can be a PhD but uneducated in the matters of humanity. I am also not fond of the neutral point of view, as to be politically correct is not the same as being sincere and true. I would personally be more interested in hearing polar opinions to understand other people’s perspective and how they come to their conclusion. Only when people know of completely opposite opinions on the same topic then can they start a conversation to reconcile their differences. Having several versions of the most arguable topics is better than one bland version. Maybe views from the haters, the lovers and the neutrals. People need to learn Dalai Lama’s realistic approach, value every person’s input and become compassionate. Only then we will be able to understand our humanity.

It seems to me that the primary goal of Wikipedia is compiling knowledge, while finding compassion is somehow secondary.

I agree about verifiability policy that “the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth”. If the material has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true. Even when it comes to voting, majority has more power over minority. Majority usually represents the most convenient opinion of the culture it represents. There should be international SMEs participating or at least rating the content in terms of trust ability. Otherwise there will always be an issue of quality due to the lack of expertise and diversity.

Here we come to another problem I see here – how globally disconnected are different language Wikipedia sites from each other. Language barrier is still present in the Wikipedia structure, which leads both to duplicated efforts (when the same articles are written separately in different languages) and the lack of content in one language when it truly exists in another language. It would add diversity if articles from different languages were swapped and became international. We would create a better version of reality if people of all nations worked on the content together, not separately. During search, there should be instant translation of all related content from other languages.

Finally, it feels that Wikipedia is not a hub of innovative views limited by its “no original content” norm, which means inclusion of referenced work only. Wikipedia is a repetition of what others said. Most importantly, it results in the loss of individuality and creativity both for their contributors and readers.

Today contributors appear to be simply compilers and hunters for good content. They are assemblers, not the creators. Everyone should be able to speak up and come up with new knowledge and solutions to the world problems. Only then will Wells’ statement become reality: “Our world has complex and urgent problems that need to be addressed. We believe there are innovative ways for solving them together online.”

Re-posted from The Ultimate Answer