OLPC Afghanistan

One Laptop Per Child Afghanistan This is the new Official Wiki page for "One Laptop Per Child Afghanistan" project. The old page is archived at [One Laptop Per Child Afghanistan]. Project Goals Afghanistan is a very famous for being a multicultural country. Participation of the OLPC project in Afghanistan will not only revolutionize the way children are taught, but also scale up the eco-system of sharing between the diverse set of communities existing in the central Asian countries. The mission of this Nonprofit Organization is to create an environment for OLPC, take necessary steps to ensure every child in Afghanistan gets the laptop and develop the Local Activities for OLPC laptops that could revolutionize how Afghani children are educated. The goal is to provide every child in Afghanistan with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves in a collaborative way. The Ministry of Education Afghanistan (MoE), and Ministry of Communication and Information Technology Afghanistan (MoCIT), in a unique public-private partnership with USAID’s Afghanistan Small and Medium Enterprise Development (ASMED) and Telecom Development Company Afghanistan - Roshan, launched the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project in Afghanistan in September 13, 2008. Contacts and Further Information • Official OLPC Afghanistan website • Official OLPC Afghanistan Dari Weblog • Contact Salim Hayran, OLPC Afghanistan Project Coordinator • Send inquiries to info@olpc.af Deployments Team Members Involved Volunteer Team Sohaib Obaidi Ebtihaj Usman Mansour Ansari Mohammad Hamed Quraishi Read More about the OLPC Afghanistan volunteers [here OLPC Afghanistan Team Read about the OLPC Afghanistan Team here Join the FaceBook group for fresh and updated news as well. Pilot Program OLPC technical implementation team started working on 19th of November 2008. In December 2008 OLPC Afghanistan deployment team received 10 XO's from the Ministry of Education Afghanistan, for a test lab, which was based in PAIWASTOON office. These XO's are used for experiments and testing in OLPC-AF Office by its technical team, in order to develop and test new activities and software for XO's. First Deployment Twenty teachers have been trained in this school and now they are teaching students with XOs. The Master trainers were trained in PAIWASTOON office and they trained the teachers in the school. In January, 2009, teacher training took place in Kabul and Jalalabad. Each was four days long. The deployment should have started in the last week of January, but it actually happened in mid-March. On March 17th, 2009 a ceremony took place at the governor's palace including the Deputy Minister of Education Afghanistan, Director of ICT for the Ministry of Education Afghanistan, Director general of ICT for Ministry of Communication and IT Afghanistan, parents, children (top class position holders e.g. "honor roll"), USAID/ASMED's regional manager and the OLPC Afghanistan Technical Implementation Team. In its first deployment plan, OLPC-AF provided 396 XOs to every single child in a school in grades 4, 5 & 6 at the Istiqlal High School in the Ningarhar province of Jalalabad. Once the remaining number of XOs are received from OLPC, they will be deployed to grades 1-3. The Istiqlal parents’ attitude, community acceptance, and the school’s overall attitude toward OLPC were the major factors for selection. Also the school size and the number of students in that school was the best match for our first pilot school. The deployed laptops are pre-installed with: Complete localization of all core activities in both national languages of Afghanistan (Dari and Pashto) The Ministry of Education standard national curriculum books Economic information for parents including advice on job interviews etc, a local business directory, a guide to starting a business in Afghanistan, and research of different possibilities for starting small businesses locally. Health information (Basic Hygiene, Nutrition, Hand washing - some remaining to be translated) Localized updated manuals / guides that replace the standard user manual and appear when the user clicks the Help Icon Information for parents about the XO laptop and it's benefits Roshan Telecom provided Internet connectivity (64 kbps) to the school, and now students are connected through the mesh network as well as low-speed (just for upgrading of sugar/activities) Internet connection. Children were of course delighted to receive the laptops and quickly started exploring. The Technical Implementation Team is following up the pilot school to see how the kids and their teachers are getting on with OLPC XO laptops. Information on the Pre-Selected Schools for Implementation Here is the list of schools in 5 provinces of Afghanistan. OLPC Laptops will be deployed to all Kabul schools and 25 selected schools in other provinces. Here is the list of schools for pre-selection: Kabul Baghlan Balkh Herat Nengarhar Second Deployment OLPC entered its second phase of deployment on June 21st, when students in grades 4-6 in four Kabul schools were given 2000 laptops. Upcoming updates of this deployment will be coming soon. Deployment Wiki Page Read here Picture Blog View pictures here Media Coverage 4/3/09 Huffington Post: “Afghanis Desperately want to Learn and aren't Afraid to Do So: Washington can't be Afraid to Help Them” by Matt Keller, Director of Europe, Middle East and Africa for One Laptop per Child. 3/5/09 CNN: “Laptops bring lessons, maybe even peace” 2/10/09 USAID: “One Laptop per Child Program to be Launched in Afghanistan” 1/31/09 USAID: “One Laptop Per Child program launched in Afghanistan” 9/9/08 Tech World: “How the OLPC can help beat Taliban in Afghanistan” 9/5/08 PC World: “OLPC Seeks ITU's Help to Promote Laptops” 12/12/07 CSR Wire (The Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire): “The Kite Runner Inspires Gift Through One Laptop” Technical structure and operations The Structure of Technical Operations Laptop Update & Maintenance Procedure Example of Networking Site for Teachers The first diagram shows the structure of Technical operations of OLPC Afghanistan. The Second one is the chart of Laptop Update and Maintenance procedure and the job of each team member. The third diagram is showing an example of networking sites available for teachers in schools. Sections: The whole Technical operations can be divided into 5 sections. Deployment teams section This section's responsibility is deployment of OLPC laptops to schools with all related logistics and actions. Technical trainers section Technical trainers are responsible for education of teachers and at the beginning of the project also for education of Technical operations staff. User service team section User service teams provides support for teachers and schools what OLPC laptops concern – troubleshooting, documentation creation, development of new activities (programs). This team will closely cooperate with Ministry of Education on development of new content and activities for OLPC already deployed where MoE will provide the Curricular specifications and content and User service team developers will create the programming part. Localization team section Localization team is responsible for translating the current activities into Dari and Pashto. This activity will take place at the very beginning of OPLC project. See also OLPC Afghanistan/Job descriptions - jobs needed for the project, not necessarily filled OLPC Afghanistan Stakeholders External links Lets Explore the XO One Laptop Per Child Afghanistan official website PAIWASTOON OLPC Afghanistan Dari Blog OLPC Afghanistan Dari Wiki Page OLPC Afghanistan on Wikipedia OLPC Afghanistan Sugar-Labs wiki Page Primary Language ,|x|Language spoken::x}} Number of Laptops Number of manufactured laptops::5000 Keyboard Layout Keyboard::OLPC Dari Keyboard Build ,|x|Software release::x}} Date(s) Arrived in Country ,|x|Has received laptops on date::x}} School Server ,|x|School server status::x}} Deployment Status Deployment status::Started with Paiwastoon. The first few hundred arrived in 2008, and the rest throughout 2009. This category is only for pages that describe an OLPC deployment. Category:Deployment planning is for pages about the topic of deployments. See the Deployments page for deployment summary information pulled from these pages. Template:Deployment puts pages in this category. Deployment coordinators can use Has default form::Form:Deployment to edit these pages; look for an 'edit with form' tab on them. Afghanistan