OLPC Laos

FAQ from Teachers in Lao PDR

• Will this laptop be available in Laos?

We hope that this (or some other laptop designed for children) will be available in Laos. When is in large degree dependent upon the people (and government) of Laos take action to work with us to make it available.

• How will the teachers be trained?

There will undoubtedly be a need for some training programs in regard to making best use of the laptop in school, we are also designing the laptop in such a way that we expect that the path to incorporating it into classroom can be done in a

• Which age of children is the laptop for? (5-10,10-15,15-graduade)?

We are targetting K-12, but our emphasis is on the younger grades.

• My sallary is 20$ in one month and I have 4 children. How can I pay 100$ per kid?

Our model is that laptops will be distributed to the children and their teachers for free from the Minsitry of Education.

• Does it also work with 220V Socket without cranking?

Yes.

• Does the teachers get the PC before the children get one?

This is a local decision; we encourage teachers and children to learn together.

• Is this project only for rich countries like Thailand and China?

We hope that the project is for every child, rich or poor.

• Is there a phone hotline where I can get more infos about this project?

Sorry: no telephone hotline, but we try to answer email (info@laptop.org).

Other questions

• Is there a contact to the Lao PDR government?

No direct contact as of yet (2006-06).

• Who will translate things to Lao language - there is no big open source community?

We will help develop a community. We believe this is something the government should also help with.

• The Lao PDR government does not have much money. To sell wood from primary forests maybe is the only possibility to finance this project. Are there alternatives?

We have been discussing various mechanisms for financing with some of the regional development banks, but as yet we have no specific plans re Laos.

• To build the education infrastruction for OLPC may take a long time - when does this task starts? Isn't that more time critical then the hardware?

It is no clear that a separate educational infrastructure need be built for OLPC. We are hoping that OLPC will have a positive influence on the exisiting educational infrastructure and that the two will become coincident over time. (It may be worth reading David Cavallo's essay, "Models for growth—towards fundamental change in learning environments".

Challenge

Laos is a very small country but has it's one language and script. There is not much software translated into lao language till now. Translation from thai to lao shouldn't be difficult, but it has all to be rewritten because of the different script. Most of the people in laos understand spoken thai. More educated people can read thai fluent. For primary and secondary school thai or english is not an option.

Translation should be startet as soon as possible and needs a budget. The wikipedia in lao is also far from useable for education. http://lo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics

Schedule

There's also a Laos launch plan page... that somehow got orphaned, so I'm linking it here.

Offer

• olpc contacts the Lao PDR government and gives details about the availability

Finance

• Hardwarecost
• Supportcost
• Credit

Government

• Protect cultural identit
• Laws
• Decision

Infrastructur

• Hardware repair
• Software support
• Network, Servers, Power supply
• Train the trainers

Manufactor

• Keyboard Layout
• Contract

Order

• Medial Event

Introduction

• Printed manuals for children, teachers and techicans in Lao language
• Localized introducion (Multimedia)
• Final HD Image

Deliver

• What Age first
• Where first

Links

Internet price list: http://www.etllao.com/broadband.html

Localization experience

The program Application Program: Test of ability with arithmetic may or may not become produced, yet if you wish to try adding some strings for localizing into Lao you are welcome to do so.