OLPC Idea Pool

Maybe this should be split into individual sub-pages? (Vorburger 20:06, 9 February 2006 (EST))

I second this idea. It's getting quite lengthy now. --Neovos 01:52, 13 March 2006 (EST)

Software Ideas

Hardware Ideas

Ideas that will require changes, or additional, hardware:

Broadcast texts over shortwave radio

A major challenge is providing access to information through the green machine. Access to the Internet in most of the regions of the world where children will benefit from the OLPC program is usually limited. Here's a hardware+software idea that could make access to information truly ubiquitous. It goes for _access_ as opposed to speed. The idea works synergistically with other ideas such as Jason's idea for p2p distribution of texts and mesh network access to the Internet.

Rationale: I see the green machine as (1) a tool for accessing information and (2) a tool for self-driven learning through investigation. A problem with the former role is "from whence cometh the information ?". With the limited storage resources, "pre-loading" the information on the machines seems like an untenable approach. The crux of this proposal is that having easy and reliable access to a small library of information will be more useful than having spotty access to the entire Internet, even through mesh networking. The idea focuses on access to information, rather than access to the Internet, the latter and Information not always being synonymous.

Idea: Broadcast texts over shortwave radio. Have the texts broken up into chunks, and all the texts from a library interleaved in time. If possible, transmit different interleaving sequences on a set of different channels. The basic circuitry for a shortwave radio demodulator can be very simple, particularly if the decoding is done in software sitting behind a straightforward RF and analog front-end. When a child wants information on a topic, the implemented system captures fragments of a text relating to the topic off the air, and over time, the whole text is collected.

Example: Purely as an example, let the library of texts being transmitted consist of (1) Project Guttenberg texts (2) (one thing I wish I had access to as a kid:) mathworld.wolfram.com (3) Some free encyclopedia. All the content is broken up into packets of some size, encoded, all the packets interleaved according to some scheme, and the entire interleaved stream repeatedly transmitted. The infrastructure for transmitting the data streams need not even be in the nation or on the continent where the recipients are. Let, for example, the entire stream take two months to transmit. 4GB of encoded data at 1200 baud will take ~40 days. 1200 baud for a packet radio seems feasible, though I can't say how complex the hardware would be. Bear in mind we're only talking about receiving, not a full-blown modem.

Extensions: You can imagine having N different interleavings, which are transmitted on N different channels. When a child wants information on some topic, the request is sent out to at least N other green machines, over the mesh wireless network. All the machines start picking up chunks for the text on one of the N different channels. The chunks are sent to the requester over the mesh network.

That's the top level idea. I think it is feasible to implement with minimal hardware, and the algorithms and their software implementations to go behind the hardware are interesting issues, many of which are already well understood or solved.

--Pstanley 10:52, 1 February 2006 (EST)

Support for this and mention of telesoftware and of MHP

Yes, good idea.

You might like to consider using telesoftware, that is the unidirectional cyclic broadcasting of software and its selective use, to broadcast software packages for the laptop as well.

The following webspace about the DVB-MHP (Digital Video Broadcasting - Multimedia Home Platform) interactive televison system might be of interest.

http://www.mhp.org

The MHP system broadcasts Java programs to interactive television sets.

The following idea, not implemented as far as I know, might be of interest in relation to digital radio.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/tor00000.htm

William Overington

5 March 2006

Historical note about the ATS-6 experimental satellite

Some interesting experiments in using direct satellite broadcasting for education took place in the 1970s using the ATS-6 experimental satellite.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/dsh/artifacts/CS-ATS6.htm

William Overington

6 March 2006

Another historical note about radio broadcast of programs

Back in the 8-bit era, when floppies were still not cheap enough, some computers had a cassette recorder so you could store your programs in cassette. A local radio used to broadcast Atari programs so you could record them at your radio receiver and then play them on your Atari. It wasn't very reliable, since line noise could spoil the recording, but it was a nice idea back then.

Luis González

12 March 2006

WiFi and Batteries

I have two suggestions well actually one suggestion and one question. The suggestion is that why don't you wait for 802.11 N to come out. First of all the bandwith is greatly increased and, if you can't fit the card into your $100 dollar budget then it will at least push the 802.11 g down in price. The second thing is the batterie, if you are constantly recharging the batterie all the time this will greatly decrease the life of the batterie. I have a laptop and I always charged the batterie whenever it was powered on. After only about a year my batterie life decreased from almost 2 hours to less than 20 minutes. This must be considered when making the HDL.

p.s. visit my site at <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/laptopfreek0">Laptopfreek0</a>

or email me at <a href="mailto:laptopfreek0@yahoo.com">Laptopfreek0@yahoo.com

More RAM, less Flash

The laptop's RAM cannot be expanded in the field, but its Flash memory can be expanded easily and cheaply by plugging in USB thumb drives for any user who needs one. Thus, if you have a chance to add a little more memory to the base unit, add a RAM chip, not a Flash chip!

Question: What's the relative access speed of USB2 thumb drives versus the built-in flash memory?

Note of course: A hard drive can easily be added by plugging one into USB2 as well. One catch is that rugged, properly cooled USB2 hard drives do not seem to exist at any reasonable price. Another catch is power.

--John Gilmore

I agree with this point... maybe a free slot to allow increase of ram ?? (at least is the possibilty to add ram) that shouldn't be that much increase of costs...

In the other hand, as John said, a USB thumb or hard drive, could be easily plugged.

About the power of an external hard drive, I think if someone has money to buy it, it probably has electricity, so it's a matter of designing an external hard drive with with external power (or rechargeable batteries), if not, USB thumbs seems a good option, and they're getting cheaper.

Gandolfi

USB2 networking

The USB2 interface hardware allows one of the USB ports to be used as a device port as well as a host port. This means that with the proper cable and software, two laptops could be plugged together and you could network them via USB2. They can be daisy-chained in the same way, and should provide ~20 Mbytes/sec of thruput (see GNU Radio USRP software for Linux software that can keep the USB2 bus moving data at maximum speed). There's USB device software in the Sharp Zaurus, which runs Linux and has such a dual-use USB port (USB 1.1 though).

A USB2 cable is much faster than the wireless, and cheaper than adding USB2 ethernet cards + hubs + cables + etc. Running IP, DHCP, and Rendezvous over USB shouldn't be hard; I'm a little surprised it isn't standardized already (like IP over Firewire).

--John Gilmore

Cheap External VCD/DVD Drive via USB, including built-in streaming from e.g. teacher to students

An external, and separately powered, CD-ROM/VCD/DVD drive might prove popular, to use the laptop for watching movies, both instructional as well as for after-school entertainment. Would the current architecture, including display design/resolution/framerate etc. allow for this in principle? (It would be great if this were REALLY cheap; a normal standard CD-ROM for VCD reading, rather than a DVD, will do based on my experience in India; although I'm not sure what the difference in price between the two is.)

On the software side, how about some peer-to-peer streaming stuff; think one drive/player per say school class, and groups of kids watching a (same) movie on several laptops? This is possible with e.g. VLC - but could be built-in, preconfigured/high-lighted and very simple - thingie pops up saying "A neighbouring laptop has started streaming video, would you like to watch?" - done.

The hardware exists off the shelve... but will they all work out of the box? Drivers? Can player software be included in the "default" software? If not a full-blown "certification" program, at least at page (on this Wiki!) with "external devices known to work" (or if not, instructions on how to get them to work will probably be needed.

Vorburger

Keyboard

• Omit the CAPS LOCK key and status LED from the keyboard! This could save valuable real-estate inside the OLPC and on its face. When was the last time you pressed the CAPS LOCK key on purpose?? Typing in all caps is usually either a mistake or rudeness. My new Microsoft keyboard even has a (software) option to disable the CAPS LOCK key. I'm surprised the Apple hasn't already removed the Mac's CAPS LOCK key.

Serial Port??

I know it can be done thru USB emulators... but serial ports are simple and easy to use. If someone wants to make some electronic project, or using old hardware (mouse, or serial comunications devices), it could be useful to have one.

it's just an idea, but I started making my first hardware projects with this, and even today is cheaper (at least here in Argentina) and easy to make serial ports working hardware (rather than buying PICs and programming them).

And still many hardware has serial ports (networking devices for example).

Gandolfi

Old style light sensitive pens ??

Old style light sensitive pens ?? maybe a touch screen it's expensive... but I use to have one of this pens with my Commodore 64. It was attached to my tv, and I don't know if it can made in LCD screens. But this could be an option. Of course it needs a cable, but it can work as an "anti losing the pen system". Who didn't lost the pen of the PDA once ?? :) (I don't have one, but my boss always..)

Gandolfi

Other Ideas

Other ideas, not specifically for hardware or software of the laptop itself:

I think the function of OLPC and UMPC should be the same, right?

Wireless Networking

A book called Wireless Networking in the Developing World is now available on the net in pdf at http://wndw.net/. It has a lot of information that might be useful when deploying the OLPC program. In addition to covering WIFI theory and design, it covers practical, social, and economic problems that they encountered. One idea is to share the cost of the infrastructure with other local groups like businesses and local government. Another is to disperse the knowledge of how to operate the system so that if one person moves away, critical knowledge isn't lost.

Wireless Thin-Client as alternative?

The main counter argument for a thin-client approach is probably the need for maintenance/administration and general dependency on the central server, think e.g. particularly power in this context?

Still, maybe providing a (much) cheaper wireless portable thin client (think one-chip LCD+wireless controller; nothing else inside, particularly no memory and real CPU, which are probably the next most expensive part after the display?), for say $20 instead of $100, plus a commoditized say $1000 Dual-CPU with 2 GB RAM server, per school/entire village, could of interest in some situations? This is assuming that the configuration and loaded software etc. of all devices would be very homogenous, which is probably a fair assumption in this context? If the server could run say 100 clients (essentially running very similar software to what was built for the full $100 laptop of 128 MB RAM each, but with all of the OS and application code shared, thus only using about 16-32 MB for per-client data) then this seems at least imaginable, and would mean a total cost of just $3000 instead of $10'000 - for the 100 children.

That's a lot of ifs and assumptions of course, and only real pricing, scalability and the "market" can tell if there was an interest for (also) providing this - later. Just an idea, really.

Development Process

How much coordination of the Software Development Process is useful? Just make an SDK available and hope for self-organization? Or maybe e.g. a registry of suggested/needed software, a forum to coordinate software development between parties using this. Or how about volunteer summer projects for CS university students, like Google's summer of code thing?

User interface

Get John Maeda involved with the UI and other design elements.

Remember the Social Context of your Technical Solutions

I think that the ideas here need to be seen in the context of how networking and distribution of data is going to be performed. In the poorest countries, the ideas may need to be modified due to limited scope for immediate netwoking. Also the role of charity will be very improtant; remember that most of the african countries have not yet been involved in the project, so charity support will be a major driving force in distributing the hardware.

I suggest a charity funded system of data distribution, but flexible enough that it could be a commercial venture for a citydewller with transport. Western charity could provide data transfer credits to individuals in remote villages, to be spent on delivery of data serveices to and from the village. A courier would have a laptop with large storage expansion, and travel to villages to deliver data designated for them, and to recieve data for delivery from them. They would expend their credits in the process of givig their data transmission, and recieve a secure reciept for their last communications sent from the data courier. When the courier returned to the city, they would access the internet via a larger access point if available, or just by telephone if not, and would load the appropriate dvd into a usb drive to retrieve the appropriate requested data from several repositories of information - e.g. encyclopedia (possibly wikipedia), educational syllabus for the next month or year as developed by national education system, etc. The delivery of the data would be accompanied by a cashing in of the data-transfer-credits collected on their journy around the villages, and converted to cedits for cashing at a bank, or directly at the internet access point if appropriate. Email based securely encoded credits designated for the individuals in villages as charity gifts would then be recieved from the internet and delivered by the courier to the village on their next visit. To prevent ransom of the delivery of the credits, the entire collection of data intended for the village would be bound in to a 'delivery package' only decodable and seperatable by the intended recipient and then distributed to the individuals by a simple username and password (the username selected from a village specific list, to avoid confusion).

For adults, with limited postal service or reliability, A major application of importance would be political communications, and the option of communications by pgp communications is essential, but should be very user friendly. There must be a pgp-like delivery certification to ensure that deliveries of emails is made without being intercepted or held ransom by delivery people is also very important. - a user or regular email would confirm reciept by clicking a url on the delivered email to confirm reciept to an international reciept confirmation server. reciept confirmation of the village resident would be sent by pgp based confirmation.

access to personal data must be able to protected, by user/password encoded access only, also for deleting data - there should be a firmware controlled partition or directory on the flash which can only be accessed by users' passwords, or deleted in its entirety (not per user) - also there should be a limit on the space used by each user. There should be a hardware switch for deactivating wifi if installed, to prevent hackers and viruses in potentially unstable political climate - likely used to prevent political dissent.

I think that the social model of data repositeries on dvd, and internet access, in cities or perhaps towns is a realistic and efficient solution. With funding of data distribution by digitally secure credits or tokens delivered securely to villagers, access to data by the holders of the laptop can be guaranteed.

-- suggested by ma http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/User:Ma

Proposed Educational Models

I think with the prospects of using a system such as this on the global level that it's designed for, this would be a good opportunity to start a global mentality of "United in Education." This is done first by the fact that no country in need will be left out of the opportunity for use of this technology. But I think also that it should extend beyond that.

The Internet As A Backbone

The internet is the living example of what global unity in information exchange is, and the upcoming idea of "Web 2.0", or an "always-on, integrated" internet I think proposes a way to provide the educational content on the scale that it needs to be. I feel that once these laptops are distributed to local communities across the globe, through local wi-fi (the idea of which is not unique to me by any means) that is distributed through the schools or a designated "community center," the internet can be accessed.

Once this connection between the world's young students and the world's information is established, I feel that the best way to start the education process would be a very meticulously crafted website or series of websites that cover the educational needs for various grade levels. For example, very easy to navigate lessons using flash websites and pictures for pre-school to middle school children. Then as fluency in the use of the internet increases and a more advanced study continues, use of other web sites and internet services can be brought in to the more advanced students in high school/college area.

Language Barriers

While trying to be as objective as possible, I feel that the best solution for the concept of language barriers is such: If using the website oriented education concept above, instead of spending time and money to translate the many lessons, concepts, and websites to the respective countries native language, I propose the use of a constructed language, preferably Esperanto, the most popular one in use today (with about 5 million users worldwide) as the language of education worldwide. This idea has many benefits which I will explain:

-Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn and to the best of my knowledge and personal experience, it is. This could be the first of the lessons that the student would learn. In keeping with the idea, http://www.lernu.net/ is an example of a site where one may go to learn the language. To ensure the quickest possible learning, and to root out problems involving an individual’s first language, the "Direct method" of teaching it is used here. There are other websites I'm sure that are just as successful in teaching this way.

-English and Mandarin are the top spoken languages in the world. This is not by choice. Population is the reason in the case of Mandarin and English just happens to be the language of business and the internet. I feel that a strong sense of global satisfaction in this project would result if not only the students of the third world countries had to learn Esperanto in order to learn, but also the many nations across the globe that are teaching them had to learn it as well. That would allow for any country to communicate and teach directly with the students. No language barriers.

-What happens when people from the U.S., Europe, or Asia decide to visit these nations involved in the project? Immediate communication is established without the idea of the students needing to switch their native language. Without the use of Esperanto, these students would have all this valuable information, but not be able to do anything with it due to language barriers. Imagine a flourishing of education in South Africa and the schools put out some great talent. What then for them? They would travel in search of prosperity. While the many dialects of Africa are definitely beautiful, they aren't popular business languages and these student's talents' would not be able to flourish with their new education. It would be giving someone a brand new car without any keys to go with it. Learning of the worlds main business languages (English, French, Japanese, Arabic) is not ruled out by any means to those that want to learn it. But it represents a higher level of education that most will probably not obtain. I feel that the ability for even the individual schooled in just the arts, or just math, or just the sciences (all of which are not normally ventures that promote the assimilation of foreign languages) be able to gain the advantage of having that common language anywhere in the world.

Comment on the idea of using Esperanto

Esperanto was designed to be an auxiliary language, with the idea that it could be a second langauge for everyone: it was not intended to become the first language of users.

I feel that it would be a good idea to make available Esperanto versions of learning material so that people can use that to become skilled in using the language if they so desire. However, although producing many versions of learning material in many different languages will as you write involve "spending time and money to translate the many lessons, concepts, and websites to the respective countries native language," that is, I feel, part of what needs to be done to make the project work. If some people can produce Esperanto versions by volunteer effort then hopefully they will be made available within the system: I feel that as auxiliary items they could be very useful, they need not be regarded as replacing versions in native languages. Nevertheless, if a learning module starts in English and then versions in Spanish and Portuguese are produced fairly quickly and then other versions take longer due to the amount of work and the possibly smaller number of translators available for localization into languages with a smaller number of users, then an Esperanto version might well be a valuable resource for a teacher whose native language is such a rarer language and who does not know English.

I am interested in Esperanto and indeed have included the accented characters for it in most of the fonts which I have produced. I feel that it has much to offer in the context of being an auxiliary language. I do feel, however, that children should have the opportunity to be educated in their own language. However, the word "should" is easily written yet does not deliver a solution, so using Esperanto is, I feel, certainly a tool which is there to be used and which could, in certain cases, perhaps be of great usefulness.

Some years ago I produced an animated gif file, when I was learning how to make them, which mentions Esperanto.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/de000000.htm

William Overington

12 March 2006

[Comment by Brian Clements 12 March 2006

"Esperanto was designed to be an auxiliary language, with the idea that it could be a second language for everyone: it was not intended to become the first language of users."

I may have been unclear in my wording, but that exactly was my intention: to have Esperanto function as an auxiliary language. Even though the users would spend a great deal of time on it and probably get it to fluency very quickly, the idea and intent was that the individual’s native tongue wouldn't be threatened by whatever country decides to do the most teaching. I have trouble explaining it fully, but I think that a large influence of a language that has no native country or culture isn't as threatening as a language that has a nation and a culture backed behind it such as English or Mandarin. I feel too that just by staying in their particular geographic location with the cultures they know and love, they will not loose their native tongues, which is exactly my intention.

"Nevertheless, if a learning module starts in English and then versions in Spanish and Portuguese are produced fairly quickly and then other versions take longer due to the amount of work and the possibly smaller number of translators available for localization into languages with a smaller number of users, then an Esperanto version might well be a valuable resource for a teacher whose native language is such a rarer language and who does not know English."

And I do like this point and agree.

Should translation of text to native tongues be a not too difficult task, then that is a more direct way of teaching and should be used. I would think though, that from the standpoint of volunteer teachers coming from developed nations, the prospects of learning one language, then being able to help out anywhere in the world with this project seems like a definite plus.

End of Comment by Brian Clements 12 March 2006]

Teaching Barriers

As much as a teacher wants to teach, they can only teach what they know. The, for lack a better term, "flaw" in the educational process of third world countries is the knowledge available to the teacher. This is either by their own unfortunate lack of knowledge or by their inability to obtain new information for teaching. Since the emphasis of the project (I think) is toward the children more so then the actual teachers, I would think that some standard of training is necessary for the teachers that are involved with use of these laptops. I would think too, that this training would mainly be in the technological side of how to operate the laptops so that there would be nothing stopping the flow of information from the internet to the student.

Perhaps these laptops and the aid of volunteer workers that are familiar with the technology could be used in conjunction with another specific website to give this training to the teachers. Initial help could be given in person so that the individual could continue to teach themselves the particulars of using a website devoted to teaching them how to teach students on these laptops. This is the first step in helping people help themselves. This is essentially enabling the teachers the ability to teach on the new medium.

Services Available to Teachers/Community Leaders

    -A central website devoted to the posting of technical issues about the laptop hardware where MIT or
     other certified people can respond and help
    -Perhaps a site/wiki where the specific communities could have their own page and be able to post and
     inform the world what their current activities are or what they’ve learned or are working on (could be a
     tool to spawn educational competition or collaboration amongst neighboring cities or nations or to get
     artistic work on the web)

Teacher Basic Training

    -Basic functionality of the physical laptop (on/off, charging, maintenance)
    -Ability to get around the user interface and perform simple tasks (to be clarified)
    -Be able to assess/troubleshoot networking problems? (perhaps too advanced?)
    -Be already quite versed in Esperanto (should use of that language be an accepted proposition)

Educational Outline (This list is to be critiqued by experienced educators)

1. First Steps (pre-school to middle school):

    -Learn the language of learning, Esperanto
    -Learn the metric system
    -Basic physical sciences and early math
    -Art/Music (I feel arts education is just as crucial to healthy education as anything else, but there
     is no set way to teach this. This would purely be left up to the specific teachers and their staffs to
     organize)

[Comment by William Overington 12 March 2006

> Art/Music (I feel arts education is just as crucial to healthy education as anything else, but there is no set way to teach this. This would purely be left up to the specific teachers and their staffs to organize)

Well, maybe some project supported music education might be possible, though teacher support might be needed to organize it.

An idea I thought of some time ago was called Chloe and Phil music.

Chloe and Phil music fonts can be used to produce graphics showing the scores of short pieces of percussion music using untuned percussion instruments which each produce one note. People can hopefully enjoy playing such music and enjoy writing new pieces.

There are some notes about it just after half-way down the following web page.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/font7001.htm

A quick try can be produced using the following font in conjunction with the Microsoft Paint program on a PC. The font would need to be installed on the PC. The font is rather old and from some way back on my own learning curve of fontmaking, yet it works!

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/CPMUSICA.TTF

The glyphs, slightly altered in design, and some further glyphs for the music, are also in the Private Use Area of the present version of my Quest text font.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/QUESTTXT.TTF

(The notes about problems with Quest text are now obsolete, I need to update that old web page.)

The further glyphs provide for more complex rhythms using single tone instruments and so that two tone drums and improvised two tone instruments can be used and so that a repeated section with different endings can be used.

The music glyphs of the Quest text font cannot be accessed directly from Microsoft Paint on this PC, yet can be accessed using Alt codes using Microsoft WordPad. One can then Print screen and then paste into Paint. The further glyphs are in U+E4C4 to U+E4C6 Alt 58564 to Alt 58566 and in U+E4CC Alt 58572 and in U+E4E4 to U+E4E7 Alt 58596 to Alt 58599 and in twelve of the sixteen places from U+E4F0 to U+E4FF, Alt 58608 to Alt 58623 (not in U+E4F0, U+E4F4, U+E4F8, U+E4FC).

Anyway, just a thought in the hope that it might be of interest.

End of comment by William Overington 12 March 2006]

[Comment by Brian Clements 12 March 2006

I think it's a good idea I think that perhaps introductory lessons on music theory could involve that to some extent early on. But I think it may get limiting too quick. An program I found on the web that is currently only for windows, but is open source, is LenMus Phonascus found here http://www.lenmus.org/ . I haven’t used it yet but allows for anything from theory lessons to advanced ear training. That would cover the gamut for all levels of involvement; introductory to mastery.

In keeping with the web 2.0 mentality however, http://www.musictheory.net/ allows for a GREAT way to cover all music theory topics, again from basic to mastery. It has a great interface that is clean and functional.

End of comment by Brian Clements 12 March 2006]

2. Welcome to the World

    -Learn the basic workings of the internet and how the technology the students are using works
    -Perhaps learn how to use the internet for personal use, blogs and wikis on their community page?
    -Learn literature, both unique to their particular culture (in native tongue) and accepted works
     worldwide (translated to Esperanto)
    -History oriented for their specific country
    -Continue the mastery of Esperanto
    -More advanced learning of math and sciences, more incorporation of current worldwide news and
     relevant scientific discoveries

3. Higher Learning

    -By this point the students should be enabled to get around the internet with ease, therefore
     seeking and finding any information and news they are interested in. 

As a note, I feel, and I think this is obvious, that no specific religious education should be brought into the education until much later in the students learning when it becomes a personally driven academic venture. Their native culture and religion should be preserved and held in high regard. I think since this common educational ground is spanning so many different cultures and religions, this is an important ideal to be set early on.

Brian Clements

11 March 2006