User:PIOLPCIntern-1/Marching/Overlap

OLPC Status & Overlap with PI

Note: Throwing this link here: http://laptop.org/en/vision/progress/maps.shtml Don't know how useful that is, but it's the map of OLPCs progress/planned implementation. The map shows that pretty close to every country in the world has some level of involvement, which seems like a bit of a stretch; the only thing that's relevant off here is the green countries, which are the ones that are in the pilot, although even then I haven't seen anything about russia or pakistan online.

"L.E.A. Primary School Galadima is a public school in the outskirts of Abuja Model City" (OLPC Nigeria/Galadima from OLPCWiki)

Abuja Model City is located in Abuja City, the capital of Nigeria. Each staff member and chidren in Primary 4, 5, and 6 (ages 8-11 roughly, based on UK system) currently have laptops. In June students in Primary 1, 2, and 3 (ages 5-8) were supposed to recieve them as well. No new information on that.

- COMPASS has offices in the Federal Capital Territory (and more specifically the Abuja Central District, which is the capital city).

http://www.compassnigeria.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Where_We_Work_FCT

- There is also a Pathfinder office in Asokoro, Abuja, the same city.

Of course, the above is only looking at the trial in Galadima; Nigeria is also in the first wave of 1 million+ laptop orders. However, those laptops aren't even starting production until late september, and there don't seem to be any details about where they'll be going yet.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/16/olpc-production-line-nearly-ready-after-getting-3-million-orders

There's also a link to an OLPCNews entry that states that OLPC has given out some inconsistent numbers in terms of how many confirmed orders they have.

Timeline:

July 2006 - Nigerian order and payment confirmed, this link is kinda second-hand, I couldn't find the article on the website for the newspaper they mention in the article below. http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2161048/nigeria-orders-olpc-laptops

March 2007 - School Galadima recieves first batch of laptops.

June 2007 - School Galadima recieves laptops for the rest of its students.

July 2007 - Kids take sexual education into their own hands.

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL19821905.html

Other countries:

- Figuring out where the current OLPC pilot programs are is fairly difficult, due to fairly low content on the wiki relating to this.

-According to the map at the top of this document, the countries that OLPC plans to pilot in are: Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia, Libya, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Thailand, Uruguay & USA. The countries on this list that overlap with existing Pathfinder programs are: Brazil, Ethiopia, Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, and the US.

Ethiopia doesn't appear to have a pilot program at the moment, but they are trying to organize one through the 'Ehiopian Millenium Gift Project.' There is no news page for Ethiopia on OLPCNews, which suggests that the project is currently non-existent there.

There is an OLPC Nepal program, but I can't find much information on it; at this point I think it's just a group of people trying to localize OLPC software working without and kind of government support, pilot program, or implementation plan.

Similarly, while the OLPC is based here in the US, there are no active pilot programs running. A number of school districts are communicating with OLPC (Negroponte says that 19 governors have asked to participate in the program).

Negroponte also says that the 7 launch countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, Thailand) each has between 200-400 of the laptops (this is as of late april). http://www.olpctalks.com/nicholas_negroponte/negroponte_analyst_meeting.html

Looking on the wiki, there are pages for 6 pilot sites: Porto Alegre and Sao Paulo in Brazil, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Galadima (above) Nigeria, Cardal in Uruguay, and Arahuay in Peru.

Geographically, the only overlap is that there are Pathfinder offices in Brazil and Peru (and Nigeria, obviously). Based on some rough calculations, Arahuay is about 40-50 miles from Lima (where the Peru Pathfinder office is located). The Brazilian Pathfinder office is in Salvador, which is fairly far north up the coast from either of the two pilot sites in Brazil. So it seems like the easiest place from Pathfinder to connect up with OLPC is in Nigeria. Nigeria also seems to be getting the most press, with some articles out about the kids looking up porn, as well as the Galadima trial article being the most substantial of any of the pilot program wiki pages.

...

• Thanks, Chris. Good job.
• Yeah, you'll also see naysayer-type drama around the Nigerians and spam, I'd imagine, and also around the cost of the laptops. Media's done a pretty good job of latching onto the wrong thing to talk about (the 100 dollar thing), but the project's mostly addressed that by name change and consistent messaging by this point, though it's still in the pop consciousness. As regards the competition thing, we're (meaning PI & you) platform agnostic. This is a significant enough happening that we're interested in seeing if there's opportunity to advance our mission in conjunction with the project, just as we might be with other projects that reach critical mass (e.g. the Intel one).
• :) Ben Nardone:: My Talk:: Internship:: Peru:: Nigeria 09:00, 24 July 2007 (EDT)