OLPC India/Nashik

Holy Mother School

Holy Mother School is an English medium school in Nashik, Maharashtra. We are a private school established in 2004 by Joshua and Heera Pritikin. My wife runs the school, and I funded it out of my own savings. It is breaking even this year.

A small OLPC trial has begun as of July 2008. We are working on an Internet connection. We already have a machine to serve as a school server.

We would love to make the laptops child owned but

• There are 50 students in 1st grade and older.
• Students pay about 105 USD per year in tuition.

I am paying for 10 laptops to develop interest.

Our implementation is simplistic because we are not yet trying to achieve child ownership. The laptops are owned by the school. The children spend just a few hours a week working with them. As the kids and parents become more comfortable with the laptops, we expect to move towards child ownership and closer integration into the curriculum.

We hope to save ourselves from disappointment by starting with very low expectations.

The teachers like the laptops so much that we decided to order another 5 for a total of 15.

What we really need for child ownership is to replace the cost of books with the cost of the laptop. Children spend about 25 USD per year on books. That's about 125 USD over 5 years. There are a bunch of things we need before this is possible:

• NCERT books are a good start, but they are just scans of the pages. We need books or activities better tailored to the laptop medium.
• An English slice of Wikipedia would be neat. This should be easy since the software is already done for the spanish version.

Comment: Check Kiwix 'Wikipedia on a DVD/CD' at http://tinyurl.com/4j6vlx. I have given a couple of copies to Khairat school.

• The Google summer of code project for the handwriting tutor would be fantastic. Young kids spend a few years practicing handwriting on paper.
• Everybody is impressed by the speak activity. English, Hindi, or Marathi childrens' books which are integrated with text-to-speech would be fantastic, even if pronunciation is poor. I know people are working on this, but we need it ASAP.

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  Children and staff

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  Cultural program within one of the classrooms

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  Traditional Indian dance

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  The first day with laptops

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  10 laptops are not enough

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  Unpacking

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  Unpacking

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  Playing

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  Teachers and students