OLPC:Five principles: Difference between revisions

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OLPC's Five Principles

Child Ownership

OLPC has created the XO laptop to be low cost, robust and powerful, beautiful and friendly. It was designed for elementary school children, the first of its kind.

A laptop can be transformed into a mobile school: a portable learning and teaching environment. A connected laptop is more than a tool. It is a new human environment of a digital kind. An essential aspect of OLPC is the free use of the laptop at home, where the child and the family together can greatly increase the practice time normally available at a school lab or library.

The ownership of the XO is a basic right, coupled with new duties and responsibilities: including protecting, caring for, and sharing this creative environment.

Low Ages

The XO is designed for the use of children ages 6 to 12 — covering the years of elementary school — but nothing precludes its use earlier or later in life. Children do not need to know how to write or read to enjoy and learn with an XO. Playing is the basis of human learning, and the digital activities on an XO help with acquisition of reading and writing.

Every year a new class of students will be incorporated into the program. The assessment of the OLPC program should be intrinsic to each class, and every student will have an individual portfolio or journal with the history of his or her learning paths in the many disciplines at school. Small children with learning, motor or sensory disabilities may use the computer as a prosthesis to read, write, calculate, and communicate.

Saturation

OLPC is committed to elementary education in developing countries. To attain this objective we aim to reach “digital saturation” in a given population. The key point is to choose the best scale in each circumstance. It can be a country, a region, a municipality or a village, in which every child and teacher will own a connected laptop.

As with vaccinations, digital saturation implies a commitment to maintaining these tools as part of primary education over time. With it, the whole community becomes responsible for this focus on shared education, and the children and teachers receive support from the many institutions, individuals and groups around them. Universal connectivity helps these different communities grow together and expand in many directions, in both time and space. Over time, the education network becomes solid and robust, without a digital divide.

Connection

The XO has been designed to provide an engaging wireless network. The laptops are connected to others nearby automatically. Children in the neighborhood are permanently connected to chat, sharing information on the local network or web, making music together, editing texts, or using collaborative games.

The laptop can be charged by solar or mechanical power, or through special bulk-chargers at school. The unique XO display allows the use of the laptop under a bright sun. All of this makes it easy for children in a community to connect to one another almost anywhere.

This connectivity will be as ubiquitous as a formal or informal learning environment permits. We propose a new kind of school, an “expanded school” which grows beyond the walls of the classroom. Last but not least, this connectivity ensures a dialogue among generations, nations and cultures. The OLPC network will speak every language.

Free and Open Source

All children are learners and teachers, and this spirit of collaboration is amplified by free and open source tools.

A child with an XO is not a passive consumer of knowledge, but an active participant in a learning community. As children and teachers grow and pursue new ideas, their software, content, resources, and tools should be able to grow with them. The global nature of OLPC requires locally-driven growth, driven in part by the children themselves. Each child with an XO can leverage the learning of other children. They can teach each other, share ideas, and support each other's growth.

There is no inherent external dependency in being able to localize software into their language, fix the software to remove bugs, and repurpose the software to fit their needs. Nor is there any restriction in regard to redistribution; OLPC cannot know and should not control how the tools we create will be re-purposed in the future.

OLPC's goals require a world of great software and content, both open and proprietary. Children and teachers need the chance to choose from all of it. In the context of learning, knowledge should be free. Further, every child has something to contribute; we need a free and open framework that supports the human need to express and share.

Other principles

See also the list of Hardware Principles.

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 {{Translations}}
 __NOTOC__
-=The Five Principles=
+== OLPC's Five Principles ==
-==Child Ownership==
+=== Child Ownership ===
-OLPC has created the XO laptop to be very low cost, robust and powerful, beautiful and friendly. It has been designed explicitly for children of the elementary classes, the first one of its kind. The ownership of the XO is a basic right of the child and is coupled with new duties and responsibilities, such as protecting, caring for, and sharing this valuable equipment.
+OLPC has created the XO laptop to be low cost, robust and powerful, beautiful and friendly. It was designed for elementary school children, the first of its kind.
-A laptop can be transformed into a mobile school: a portable learning and teaching environment. A connected laptop is more than a tool. It is a new human environment of a digital kind. A key OLPC asset is the free use of the laptop at home, where the child (and the family) will increase significantly the time of practice normally available at the standard computer lab in the school.
+A laptop can be transformed into a mobile school: a portable learning and teaching environment. A connected laptop is more than a tool. It is a new human environment of a digital kind.  An essential aspect of OLPC is the free use of the laptop at home, where the child and the family together can greatly increase the practice time normally available at a school lab or library.
+The ownership of the XO is a basic right, coupled with new duties and responsibilities: including protecting, caring for, and sharing this creative environment.
-''I wear my XO like my pair of shoes.''
-==Low Ages==
+=== Low Ages ===
-The XO is designed for the use of children of ages 6 to 12—covering the years of the elementary school—but nothing precludes its use earlier or later in life. Children don’t need to write or read in order to play with the XO and we know that playing is the basis of human learning. Moreover those digital activities will help the acquisition of the writing and reading skills.
+The XO is designed for the use of children ages 6 to 12 — covering the years of elementary school — but nothing precludes its use earlier or later in life. Children do not need to know how to write or read to enjoy and learn with an  XO.  Playing is the basis of human learning, and the digital activities on an XO help with acquisition of reading and writing.
-Every year a new cohort will be incorporated into the program. Accordingly the assessment of the OLPC program should be intrinsic to each cohort and every student will keep an individual portfolio or journal with the trace of his or her learning paths in the most diverse disciplines at school. In particular small children with learning, motor or sensory disabilities may use the computer as a prosthesis to read, write, calculate, and communicate.
+Every year a new class of students will be incorporated into the program. The assessment of the OLPC program should be intrinsic to each class, and every student will have an individual portfolio or journal with the history of his or her learning paths in the many disciplines at school.  Small children with learning, motor or sensory disabilities may use the computer as a prosthesis to read, write, calculate, and communicate.
-''I have good XO shoes for a long walk.''
-==Saturation==
+=== Saturation ===
-The OLPC commitment is with elementary education in the developing countries. In order to attain this objective we need to reach a “digital saturation” in a given population. The key point is to choose the best scale in each circumstance. It can be a whole country, a region, a municipality or a village, where every child will own a laptop. As with vaccination a digital saturation implies the continuous intervention on the successive cohorts at the proper ages.
+OLPC is committed to elementary education in developing countries.  To attain this objective we aim to reach “digital saturation” in a given population. The key point is to choose the best scale in each circumstance. It can be a country, a region, a municipality or a village, in which every child and teacher will own a connected laptop.
-The whole community will become responsible of the OLPC program and the children will receive support of many institutions, individuals and groups of this community. Because of the connectivity inherent to OLPC these different communities will grow together and expand in many directions, in time and space. They will become solid and robust, because they are saturated, without holes or partitions.
+As with vaccinations, digital saturation implies a commitment to maintaining these tools as part of primary education over time.  With it, the whole community becomes responsible for this focus on shared education, and the children and teachers receive support from the many institutions, individuals and groups around them.  Universal connectivity helps these different communities grow together and expand in many directions, in both time and space.  Over time, the education network becomes solid and robust, without a digital divide.
-''A healthy education is a vaccination, it reaches everybody and protects from ignorance and intolerance.''
+<!-- ''A healthy education is a vaccination, it reaches everybody and protects from ignorance and intolerance.'' -->
-==Connection==
+=== Connection ===
-The XO has been designed to provide the most engaging wireless network available. The laptops are connected to each other, even when they are off. If one laptop is connected to the Internet, the others will follow to the web. The children in the neighborhood are thus permanently connected to chat, share information on the web, gather by videoconference, make music together, edit texts, read e-books and enjoy the use of collaborative games on line.
+The XO has been designed to provide an engaging wireless network.  The laptops are connected to others nearby automatically.  Children in the neighborhood are permanently connected to chat, sharing information on the local network or web, making music together, editing texts, or using collaborative games.
-The battery of the laptop can work for many hours and it can be charged in special gang chargers in the school or by mechanical or solar power. The unique XO display allows the use of the laptop under a bright sun, enabling the user to work outside the classroom or home, in the wild as well as in any public open place.
+The laptop can be charged by solar or mechanical power, or through special bulk-chargers at school.  The unique XO display allows the use of the laptop under a bright sun.  All of this makes it easy for children in a community to connect to one another almost anywhere.
-The connectivity will be as ubiquitous as the formal or informal learning environment permits. We are proposing a new kind of school, an “expanded school” which grows well beyond the walls of the classroom. And last but not least this connectivity ensures a dialogue among generations, nations and cultures. Every language will be spoken in the OLPC network.
+This connectivity will be as ubiquitous as a formal or informal learning environment permits.  We propose a new kind of school, an “expanded school” which grows beyond the walls of the classroom.  Last but not least, this connectivity ensures a dialogue among generations, nations and cultures.  The OLPC network will speak every language.
-''When we talk together we stay together.''
+<!-- ''When we talk together we stay together.'' -->
-==Free and Open Source==
+=== Free and Open Source ===
+All children are learners and teachers, and this spirit of collaboration is amplified by free and open source tools.
-The child with an XO is not just a passive consumer of knowledge, but an active participant in a learning community. As the children grow and pursue new ideas, the software, content, resources, and tools should be able to grow with them. The very global nature of OLPC demands that growth be driven locally, in large part by the children themselves. Each child with an XO can leverage the learning of every other child. They teach each other, share ideas, and through the social nature of the interface, support each other's intellectual growth. Children are learners and teachers.
+A child with an XO is not a passive consumer of knowledge, but an active participant in a learning community. As children and teachers grow and pursue new ideas, their software, content, resources, and tools should be able to grow with them. The global nature of OLPC requires locally-driven growth, driven in part by the children themselves. Each child with an XO can leverage the learning of other children.  They can teach each other, share ideas, and support each other's growth.
 There is no inherent external dependency in being able to localize software into their language, fix the software to remove bugs, and repurpose the software to fit their needs. Nor is there any restriction in regard to redistribution; OLPC cannot know and should not control how the tools we create will be re-purposed in the future.
-A world of great software and content is necessary to make this project succeed, both open and proprietary. Children need to be able to choose from all of it. In our context of learning where knowledge must be appropriated in order to be used, it is most appropriate for knowledge to be free. Further, every child has something to contribute; we need a free and open framework that supports and encourages the very basic human need to express.
+OLPC's goals require a world of great software and content, both open and proprietary.  Children and teachers need the chance to choose from all of it. In the context of learning, knowledge should be free. Further, every child has something to contribute; we need a free and open framework that supports the human need to express and share.
+<!--
 ''Give me a free and open environment and I will learn and teach with joy.''
+-->
+=== Other principles ===
+See also the list of [[Hardware|Hardware Principles]].
 [[Category:OLPC]]