Presentations/May 2008 Country Workshop: Difference between revisions

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|Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society
|Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society
''Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Academic Head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Head of the Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group''
''Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Academic Head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Head of the Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group''
|[http://download.laptop.org/content/conf/20080520-country-wkshp/Presentations/OLPC%20Country%20Meeting%20-%20Day%201%20-%20May%2020th,%202008/Mitchel%20Resnick%20-%20Sowing%20the%20Seeds.pdf slides]
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''Dale Joachim, MIT Media Lab''
''Dale Joachim, MIT Media Lab''
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|Brazil Presentation
|Brazil Presentation
''Jose Aquino, Special Advisor to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva''
''Jose Aquino, Special Advisor to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva''
|[http://download.laptop.org/content/conf/20080520-country-wkshp/Presentations/OLPC%20Country%20Meeting%20-%20Day%204%20-%20May%2023rd,%202008/Brazil%20-%20Jose%20Aquino%20-%20Govt%20of%20Brazil.pdf slides]
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|OLPC in New York City
''Teaching Matters''
|[http://download.laptop.org/content/conf/20080520-country-wkshp/Presentations/OLPC%20Country%20Meeting%20-%20Day%204%20-%20May%2023rd,%202008/OLPC%20in%20NYC%20-%20Teaching%20Matters.pdf slides]
|[http://download.laptop.org/content/conf/20080520-country-wkshp/Presentations/OLPC%20Country%20Meeting%20-%20Day%204%20-%20May%2023rd,%202008/OLPC%20student%20survey%20-%20Teaching%20Matters.pdf survey]
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== Transcripts ==
=== Keynote Speech by MEP Nirj Deva ===

Transcription of the keynote speech from the May 20, 2008 OLPC Countries Meeting at the MIT Media Lab:

Your Excellencies, Distinguished and Honoured Ladies and Gentlemen

Today we meet as a family.

A family created by the passion, drive and dream of Nicholas Negroponte and his team to give “One Laptop per Child” to children in need.
A family is not something you choose.

Instead it is a given.
We are a family obsessed.
Driven by a passion.
Our very obsession unites us into what we are.
We are driven by a purpose.

A purpose that transcends our own self interests; our pet hobbies and our own vanities.

Our purpose is simple.

Our purpose is to give every single child in the developing world and the developed world, the power to escape poverty, the power to escape ignorance, the power to escape years of neglect, deprivation and non fulfilment.

By doing so we give them a life chance, an opportunity, a window to realise their life potential and join the whole of the global community whatever their own circumstances.

Our purpose is to make them leap from a medieval to a 21st century existence.

We are not delivering a computer.

We are delivering a time machine.
A time machine that is so enormously transformational
that everything after that is changed.
Changed for ever.

Imagine this.

A hut in an African village. An old man and an old woman cooking their dinner by firewood . At a small table a young boy about 11 years of age is tapping into a computer looking at the key board in the half light of a flickering kerosene lamp.

He has escaped his hut.

His mind is elsewhere, connected to the global internet community. He is doing his homework together with 7 other kids in similar huts 1 km away. The huts are connected to the children. The children are the nodes and the village community is brought together by their laptops.

The children are learning, interacting, sharing, emailing and surfing. They are developing marketable technology skills, which can lead to jobs and opportunities for the youth of today and the work force of tomorrow.

The challenge now is to bring the old man and the old woman into that community of information, knowledge and empowerment that the children in that village possess.

The laptop unites the child with the world, then binds the village into a community and later connects that community into the global village.

This is a process.

Delivering the lap top is merely the first step.

A small pebble
that starts
an avalanche of change.

A change so vast, so complete, so comprehensive
that every person in that remote village
will change and become
a part of our global space,
the same space as that
we now occupy
in this room.

It impacts on everybody and everything. Not only the child.

That is why I have called for our programme to be designated by the UN as a Millennium Development Goal. Or MDG 9.

Whatever one’s motivation for combating extreme poverty—human rights, religious values, security, fiscal prudence, ideology—the solutions are the same.

The Millennium Declaration was adopted in September 2000 by 189 nations-and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit

A political framework was established.

For the first time in human history, a compact was made, between the poorer countries who pledged to improve policies, governance and accountability to their own citizens;
while wealthy countries pledged to provide the resources

The aim was to cut world poverty by half by 2015, saving tens of millions of lives and empowering a billon people into joining the global economy.

All that was needed was action and money - a paltry 60 billion USD per year more from a global economy of $32 trillion USD per year.

Action given that we spend 1.0 trillion USD on arms, and 600 billion USD on agricultural subsidies.

Well its 2008 now and you may quite rightly ask are we on track after the half way point ?

The simple answer is no.

United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon recently said.

"The MDGs are still achievable if we act now. This will require inclusive sound governance, increased public investment, economic growth, enhanced productive capacity, and the creation of decent work."

Progress so far:

Goal 1: Was to Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger

Global poverty rates are falling in Asia. But millions more people have sunk deeper into poverty in sub- Saharan Africa.

Low agricultural output and has led to millions of more people being chronically hungry in sub- Saharan Africa and in Southern Asia, where half the children under age 5 are malnourished. Quick wins are the provision of massive replenishment of soil nutrients and high yielding seeds for smallholder farmers on nutrient-depleted lands, through free or subsidized distribution of chemical fertilizers and agro forestry no later than the end of 2008.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
There are some 600 million school children enrolled in schools in 155 developing countries. Of these 66 countries have achieved, or are on track to achieve, universal primary education by 2015. The other 89, in sub Saharan Africa, South Asia and Oceania however, are unlikely to reach this goal over the next decade. Over 105 million children worldwide have not enrolled in schools.

Five developing regions are approaching universal enrolment. But in sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and Oceania fewer than two thirds of children are enrolled in primary school. Increased enrolment must ensure that all children receive a high-quality education.
Quick Wins can be achieved by ending school fees and fees for uniforms for primary schools; the expansion of school meal programmes to cover all children in hunger hotspots using locally produced foods, to provide annual deworming and hand cleansing gels to kill bacteria that produce diarrhoea and so improve health and educational outcomes.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality & empower women

The gender gap is closing — albeit slowly — in primary school enrolment in the developing world.

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Death rates in children under age 5 are dropping. But not fast enough. Eleven million children a year — 30,000 a day — die from preventable causes. Most of these lives could be saved through low cost solutions

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

More than half a million women die each year during pregnancy or childbirth. Some progress has been made in reducing maternal deaths in developing regions, but not in the countries where giving birth is most risky.

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases

AIDS is the leading cause of premature death in sub-Saharan Africa. Prevention efforts must be intensified. Malaria and tuberculosis together kill nearly as many people each year as AIDS. Ninety per cent of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where prevention and treatment efforts are being scaled up. Tuberculosis is also on the rise.
Quick Wins are to provide mass distribution of bed-nets and effective anti-malarial medicines for all children in regions of malaria transmission by the end of 2008.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.

Insufficient progress has been made to reverse the loss of the world’s forests and environmental resources. Access to safe drinking water has increased, but half the developing world still lack toilets and basic sanitation. Nearly 1 billion people live in urban slums outpacing the availability of productive jobs.

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals, increased aid and debt relief must be accompanied
by further opening of trade, accelerated transfer of technology and improved employment opportunities for the growing ranks of young people in the developing world.

So how can OLPC now augment the Millennium Development Goals by revisiting the MDG Programmes and accelerating their progress?

What is needed in these programmes which OLPC can uniquely provide?

The answers are simple and self evident.

The MDGs are failing because it is still “them and us”.
There is no common ownership. We give and they take.

There is no interaction, no partnership, no dialogue, no common stakeholder-ship, between the individual beneficiary and the global donors.

Not at an individual level, not at a village or community level, neither at a regional level nor even possibly at a national level.

OLPC creates a new dimension a whole new world of interactivity. It creates a life long partnership of shared information and access to knowledge, between the child, who will be a teenager or adult by 2015, and between his or her village and the global community.

Why should such a interactive knowledge partnership accelerate and promote the MDGs ?
OLPC by connecting the internet to the child and the child to the village community introduces a technological component to development. While creating a better future for children it is also doing something for the parents of today.

The children can and will become the purveyors of information to their parents and to the wider village community.

Points of community contact and information will be networked together via the laptops for: education, health, business, and social empowerment.

Local clinics will be connected between far-flung villages, correct information on AIDS prevention will be distributed, preventive treatment programmes for malaria without expensive out-reach workers will mushroom.

Farmers will know the true worth of what they are growing by accessing world prices and prevent being cheated. They will learn to manage agriculture using more sustainable techniques. Deforestation will slow down, water conservation will improve.

The stored books in the computer will not only increase children's knowledge but expand adult's knowledge and ability to interact with the world markets.

Each of the earlier MDGs from MDG 1-to MDG 8 will be enhanced and accelerated by the newly created MDG 9.

Creating a new MDG is not enough.

The new programme has to be speedily and effectively delivered to meet our 2015 target of providing at least 100 million laptops; without having to approach bilaterally 155 countries and their attending bureaucracies.

Can this be done in time?

The answer to this is also quite evident. The HIV Aids crisis led to the creation in 2003 of an huge global fund of some 8 billion USD.

So far US$3.7bn has been spent in 132 countries. The Global Fund has provided 1.1 million people with anti-retroviral treatment for HIV, 2.8 million people with treatment for TB, 30 million insecticide-treated bed nets have been distributed to protect against malaria and many millions more people have received counseling, care, support and training, saving 1.8 million lives to date.

We have now also created under the UN aegis a Global Water Fund to provide clean drinking water and basic sanitation to millions of people.

Under the GAVI immunization Alliance we have created a unique, multi-dimensional partnership of public and private sector resources with a single focus which is to improve child health in the poorest countries by extending immunization coverage.
I now propose that we set up a multi-lateral Global Fund for Digital Education, GFDE - a part of the UN Millennium Goals programme as MDG 9 in partnership with the UNDP and UNESCO.

This would be a public and private sector partnership to raise large enough funds to deliver 100 million OLPC laptops in the next 7 years using the United Nations multilateral institutions for their delivery.

This would require raising some 2.6 billion USD per year from Governments and as Corporate Social Responsibility Programmes from the private sector.

It is a challenge and it is worth doing.

Starting now.

Thank you.

=== Introduction, Chuck Kane ===
...

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Despite that nice story that Nicholas went through, let me tell you the real story. I sat down with Nicholas one day and we were talking about the possibility of me being president, and I said why would you ever want a finance person as a president of this venture? And he said, "Well, you come late to meetings a lot, you look a little rumpled in your clothing and your hair, you need a haircut - you're clearly one of us." That's the truth...

Nicholas made the point early on that we are a non-profit, and I want to make the point and once again thank our venture capital money - instead of going profit, we went non-profit - and these are the companies that are our partners, that remain our membership, and give us direction as members of our board. All of these companies continue to contribute to the effort. It allows us to price the computer as inexpensively as possible, so that we make no profit, and we pass along that price to our constituent countries where we want to make sure that price point is as low as we can go.

What's not on that chart is a bunch of other people and a hidden component of what OLPC is all about. There's the Open Source community that contributes ongoing, to the code writing of our software - our Sugar software for educational purpose. There's a community in the Linux world that continues to contribute to the ongoing success of this, not for money but for gain and gratitude in what they're contributing towards. And there's a support group of hundreds that provide the fixing of the computers, support in terms of help desk and fixing of the computers particularly for the ones where we did the Give One Get One - the ones that landed in America and Canada. And these people don't get money. They have a call every Sunday afternoon - I jumped on the call this Sunday afternoon - 30 people took an hour and a half out of their day on a Sunday afternoon to talk about how they can better the project itself. We even tried to give them laptops, but most of them refused and did a Give One Get One, because they didn't want to take ... any form of remuneration to be a part of this whole project.

But the business challenges are difficult, in any non-profit, and in any profit organization. And when you look at what we really are, taking aside those invisible people behind the scenes, we're 23 full time employees and 26 - 30 consultants odd, ...

...

Our not-for-profit status, I would agree with Nicholas, has really worked to our advantage. But at the front end it is a credibility issue. When you have an education minister -- to put down $50m to 150m they are more uncertain for success with a nonprofit than they would be with a global for profit. We've gotten over that hurdle, and are into a different phase.

And we need us partnerships. We can not do this alone. We had a recent NN comment with Microsoft - they went and ported XP to our machine, came to us and said they have it running on the machine; lowered their price to $3 for educational purposes... something that could help us expand our footprint to get to more kids in more parts of the world. And we need support in that regard.

If you break down the hardware, the software, the connectivity, into a standalone business, there are multi-billion companies that are highly profitable... taking each of those segments and making a business out of them. Here we are offering the whole package because no-one else will do it. It would have been great if 3 years ago someone had stood up and held out their offerings [in these areas], but they would not do it, so we did.

Along with doing all of this comes the challenges. You are facing competition in each of the segments I just mentioned. It is challenging as an organization.

Then there was the price, the $100. Many people said Nicholas was crazy -- and sometimes he is crazy. But that forced us to push on a lot of things, to get the screen price down, to get the hardware parts and manufacturing down.

With a Windows machine you could spend 25% of the cost on software. But with a cheap windows license, with Linux being free, with no sales and marekting, with no unnecessary overhead (didn't mention: under 1%), we are getting there. Still not $100.

and then ther ewere the donors -- with our giving campaign, ourg1g1 project, mayny people helped send laptops for ree;many gave two, and saidtheydidntwant one; many gave many. this allwoed us to distribuet to childen who couldn't hae anyat all otehrwie. we were fortunate to have contrib fromngos ando ther orgs. when we matched them... new countries could coe onboard.
but we arne't done withpricing. we are going to keeppushing the price doawn, eep making enemies out there wrt the hardware.

then it come to finance. this is how we define a financial flow... its not a circuitboard diagram. and its not simple. one partne I want to pointoutand emphasize is brightar; they hav been a terriicipartner,working strongly withus, and

citigroup, underneath. citi maybe more than others have been impacted by the subprime issue. they have 10s of kof layoffs.buttheyvalue his program so muchtothenatuer of what they tnd for, they have stuck by ourside to be the backbone ofour fin truture, whichputs supply chain folks at ease. but the realheroesareto the rightoftheslide, thatis the coutnries. without those champinsto gtake the risk and move forward and makie ith happenin theur own orgs, without bridgingto that relty, we would just be a visionand a concept. they are theones on the ground making it happen.

we are fortunate to have to of our premier champions : they r the rael heroes who make ithappen. (miguel brechner and oscar becerra)

I am delighted,proud, and privileged to bepartofthis project...
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nn - weeeen inouyourf acea lot, we were in 408 media storieon friday... so some thngs get lost nn the noise..

people have said a lot ofunny things over the past days and weeks.
one eprson commented in the back and forth that i no longer cared aout education...

this is sohtingtwe worekd onackon1982, withfaitimata... fatimata, wdidyou -- you ewr tehre with us, doyou ermember this school

so forsomeone in thepressto saytht werenotinerestedin learning -- its not our marketin tdept tnatdcided weshould be involvedin eucation... this is somethigndeeply improtnt to us

this is seymour in a lassroomin dakar... forthose ofyou dwho dont know, seymour wa in hanoi indec and hti bya motorccle...he was unconsciosu for along time andis relearning or lots of thigs some of us had dinner withhim recent.y hhe's not able to raelly tl k at lest i dont undertan him, but he is capable of saying certain things.marvin minsky ame into the dinner and saw symour an wentup to him, and relized that seymour recognizedhim... and hse said, "you recognize me!"

and seymour said in peectenglish, i read a book this morning that you wrote." hes unfortuntely not here dtoday but ery mucharpt ofthe founding.

tisparticular pitur es the one that got me goign -- taken in 2002, at a school in cambodia where for a # of personal reasonsI wsinvolve in rolling ou aptops, panasonics inthis case, andit raelly changed the ives of these chilrne. we feldt that it just wouldn' happen wihtnormal market forces.

so thi is the same villaeg, these kids are pros, thi is one of the most incrediblephotos we have, taken by gloriana daenprot, aspeakerthis aftrenoon; you cantell when a pro take s a picture

and this sis where we are today, when i talk ouf production. when Iikenusto the world food program -- mcd doesnt compete with the wfp - I don't know why intel thinks they ar eompetingwith us... but the idea here is to in smoe sense have olpc push that out into other partners aschuck mentione.

theaunch strate,, which I want to talk about, has changed. we started with arg, brazil, ig, egypt, thailand. we hought ig countries wouldin fact do 1M laptop eah to sart the supply chain,andthepres's of those countries agred todo this;

but once we had a laptop, those same coutries din'trie to the occasion the tw tings we did was went to countries that were really pulling on us who are the last p3akers thismorning, and then we went to donnors through g1g1.

the msft deal : there areno bulltes there. it is just a pilot that they are running, to get itout into one or two schols; and then we are making a dual boot versino, iektheales that can dual boot windows; that will give youmorechoice and can get this to more kids.

then gen 2 : this iswhat I want to tal kaout brifely. when you ahea product or service people wnat to know whereyou are going. when we designed the ristlaptop that was because design mattres. thats not just because I was trined asnan archietct and have a persnoal love or this sort of thing ther eare two tawys to tudy design,oneis to makea cehap product and chea pomponents -- youc an raelly make things that are cheap. iyou go around you wil find chea pdesktops. we decided to hae a tdifferent approach - very large numbers advanced manufacturing,designintegration.

this ws our firstmahine forthose who hadnt seen it. announcedintunis with kofi annan. it is sort of charming and what people rmeember from thepictuer isthe pencilyellow crank. and when ihold up a machineand see some -- opook on thei rfaceandthey asked what wehad done with the crank.
it turnsoutht thwne you have a closed machin wih your left handonit andrankigwith your right, the letspends more energywiththe laptop. better tohave this whereyou do it on the ide, or camp it, or getyour baby brother to do it.

so,these were our four points.
2W (for 1:10). dual mode, sunlight display. wifi mesh. rugged.
mlj is at this minuet, at 11:30 our time, announcing gen 2 at the society for information displays conf in SF. it is very key to the next gen.

so... gen 2. this isthe nextlaptop. it come from a slightly different pointof view. the book experience is key. many people tell us -- whydontkids use cellphones/ this was uggestdby bill gates, in reation to olpc. let kidsuse cellphones, connect them to their tv sets when they go hme athnight.

not to knock cellphones - there are 1.2B being made thisyaer. butit isn'tthe learning device, the reading experience, or other tht we want. for meinartuclar the next gen shoud be a blook really, and then you can also use this as a laptop. so this isthe plan.

now how do wehave the nerve to tell you that thiswill cose 75?
well, people will say that he was wrong by a factor fo 2 lasttime. the reasno you an o this or have the audacity do to it is that 16x9 displays on inexpensive dvd players that t anticipate them costing / each is not so bad. the dd 16x9 will giveyou a verticalrtrace... thescanlines are vertical. not that they / you see them.itwould be psosible to seethem, but weshow it to get people to copy it as awell. we raellyhave that agenda in mind.

andyou could fold it flat andue itasonecontinuous display to playchess and checker... to have people, worktogether this is very improtant.

this is just to comparethem in size : beingsmall isimprotant. the currentone is al little too ig. it is a little tooheavy.

all of these images are available athigh re. ther eis onemore pictuer - herethis compare them in size. whenit opensup itwill avhe more display.
let me restate : the target is 2010. a little less than... that is what people are working on.

the tem is headed by mike bove and the tech tame in olpc, and our partners are workingwithus, th is where we areheaded.

I hesitated to inlude this pictuer... this isnotour constituency. it is raelly, back to chicuks uimages,this jcrew model is not raelly what we what the idea is. it showsyou the scale.

g1g1 : usingonly fiv minutes : we will startitupagain. whether in aug or sept i dont know but that is the kind of time frame. soon tomakeit psosile to givetheselaptops and get one atthe same time -- raelly inmportant. it changedthe economic model in the csse of reana, mongolia andhaiti, we could commit to ten thousand laptops in each place. free and then thoe ountries,rwandaand then ongolia,matched them andbrought inanother 10kmachines. s oguess what, whenyou do the math, the verage cost is 100. and in the cse ofhaiti, the iadb has partnered andsomeotherngos. so it kleverages... what will happen over thenetcouple ofyers before tgen 2, is that the 0 laptop will b 100. we will get it back there. it is very improtant;we wil launchit this timein europe as well as win the us, anddo it with apartner so we are not gettinginto fulfillment issues.

in thef rist day of g1g1, ther ewere s omany transactions, it was the highest number of hits in paypals history. (??)

thelast thing: I want to make suer tht people inthe audience andnot staying for the next 2-3 days raelize that tehemain realize for this event anthe subsequent days is the learning piece. you will get smoe iof it this aftrenoon, in trems of how the laptops get ued and constructionism an an approachand pointof view. but I want to be very clear that olpc is notstuck on one model of learning. smoetimes, K have found that, this isnoe of the easons tht ebooks have beaken on so much improtance to me-- sometimesyou have to go in with a trojan hore approach. you have to sya, its just an ebook. and because o thateach oneof thsoe has 400 books in it - and becausethey communicatewith eachother, the 20 kids in the lassroom anhave diffeerent books. if we were an encyclopedia, 1 could behere,b could be ther, c, oul beere -- andsuddenlyyou are making acasae for books andteexts-- they areupdtedonstantly they can be annotated, they can be come discaussinogroups andyou ake awhle thing, which isprety timprotant. china and brazil both spend $19per kid perschool in textookbks for a child. so 19/yr for 5 years.. you dont have to be a cfo to know this. andnocethey are in as ebooks,the kids at night comein and useit has alaptop.

it is not that evrybody has to come in and adopt fullblown constuctionism onday 1. &c.

people willtal klater todayon these topics I promisedto bringus inon time, anduess what, it is aexactly 11"30.did oscar show up? ye,you are here! I assumeyou just came from logan airport.

Our firt speakerisnirj deva, memberofparliamentin europe. heisunique inmany wys but oneaspectofhisuniqueness isthat he wasborn onone continent, in asia,and isa member ofparliament in another. in the uk, where heisamof, they sendyou to / you get voted for theEU. andit isparticularly improtantthat nirj ishere, b/c in hisparliamentarycapcity, he leads theeuroean unions commitment to the evelopigworld to thefunds,andholsd the keys to thefundstheeu /the largest ecin power in the world / the us -- when you think of the eu's commitment to the developingworld -- ournext speaker, nirj.
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=== Nirj Deva live ===

nirj d ...your excejexcellencies, laidesandgentleman..wtday w eet as a family, driven ynn's dram of eduation to childrne in need.

a family is notsomething youhooseyour very obssino unites usin what we are w are driveby a prupsoe, that transcendsour ownpself instreests, our pet hobbies, and our vanities. our purpsoe is simple, our puropse is o give. everysingechil in the developing world and the developed world the pweor to esape poverty. the pweor to escape ignorane ,the pwoer to exapeyear of neglect and nonfulfillment.by doing so we ive them a life chance, an opprotunity, a windowto realize their lfe ptoential,andjointhe global communiyt, whatever their own circumstances.our purose is to make the leap from a miedival to a 21st entyrtexistence.

we ar enot deliverig a copmputer, we are deinvering a time machine, one so powerful...that everyong atre that ishanged.
Imagine a couple at inner, with fierwood in the fireplace. at the tale is n 11yr old tapping at a compuetr in the flickering light of a kerosene lamp. he hasescapedhis hut, his mind is elsewher,e in a gloal intrenet community. hogetherwith other kids in similar huts 1km away.

the hust areconnected to thechildrne,the chilen are thenoise, an the childrenare brought togetherby theiratptops. theyarelaughing, sharing, and suring. they are developing marketable technological skills that canled to jobs and techonlogefor the childrne of today and the workorceof tomorrow

their challenge nowis to bring menandwomenintothe commhntiy fo wknoedge that the /childrne/ ofthecommuniyt willpsosess. thelaptop tiouchesthemind ofthe child,thenbinds the commuity's mind, and connects int into our global villaeg.this is ap rocess, delivering the laptopis merel a first te-p, a small pebble that starts an avalancehef change. a changeso vast, so compete, so coprehensive, that evry persno inthat remoteillaeg will change and become apart ofour global space. the same space as that we now ocupy in this room.

this is why I am calling for our progrma tobe decared by the european parlaiment as millennium development goal 9. the millennimecaration was adopted in septemer2000 by 189 nations and signed by147 heds of state duringthe un milliennium summit. apolitical frameworkwas etablished. fro thefirst time in yumanhstory, a compact w made betweenthe por countries,who pledge to improove policies, gov and accountability t their own citizens,and wealthycountries who pledged resuorces. the aim was to cut world poverty by halfby 2015, serving0s of milllinons oflives, andmpwoering a billino opeople to jiin the global eonomy. all that was neededwas action and, of ourse, money.

a paltry16billion us dollars per year more, from a global economy of 32 trillion us dollrs per year. action, giventhatwe no w spend 1 trilion usd on arms, and 600 billion us dollars on agriculturalsubsidies... well, that was 8 years ago. it is now 2008.you maywhite rihly aks, are we on track aftre thehalfwaypoint? the simple answer is, no.

what were the goals/
1 - cutting global poverty and hunger.
there are smoe quick win solutions... in agricultuerre.

2 - universal primary education
thereare smoe 600M children in developingcountries, of these 55 countries areon tack to achieve UPE by 2015.theother 89, insubsah, asia, and oceania, are unlikely to reah this goal in the next deade. and over 500mchildrne hae not enrolled in childrne at all. quick wins can e achieved by cutting shool anduniform fees, dxpansion of schoolmeal programs withlocally producedfoods, annual deworming andhand-cleansinggels to cutdown in diarreha and improvehealth andeducation outcomes.

3 -reducegeneder disparity in shools

4 - reduce cihld mortality. 11m children a year, 33k a day, die from preventable causes.

5 - improve matrenal health. some proges has been made to reduce maternal death.

6 - combat hiv, aids, other diseases. aids is the eadig cause of death in ss af. alaria and tuberculosis together killnearlyas much. 90% of mal deathsarein ssaf. (q wins - benetsandanimal for all children)

7 - environm ustainability. access to safe dirnking water has increased, andforestsarebeingreclaimed, but half of the dev world lacks toilets and basic sanitation, andn early 1B arein slums

8 -develop a gobal partnership for development. andthis is wehre wecome in. we have to acelerate therate of developent. now, what isneededinthese 8 mdg goals, enunciated 8 yrs ago at the world summit, which olpc can uniquely provide? why olpc? why mdg 9? the answer is self-evident. themdgs are failing, because it is till them and us. ther eis no common ownership; we give and they take.

thereis no interaction, no partnership, no ialogue, no common stakeholdership, ebtweentheindiv beneficiary and the global donor. not at the indiv level, or the regional leel,nor even psosibly at anatl level. olpc createds a new dimension, a whole new world of interactive ownership. it creates a lifelong partnership ofshared inormation and access to knowledge b/t the child, who will be a teenager or adult by 2015, his/her villaeg, and the global comm. why should such an interactinve knwoldge patnership accel and promote the MDGs? olpc, by onnecting the internet to the child and the child to technology, createsabettre futuer for chilrenand does something or the paretnt oftody.

the chilrne can and will becometh purveyorsof informatino to thei rpartetns andthe dwidervillaegconmmuniyt. points of contact and informatino will be conneced together by thelatpops for intfpormatio,health, business, and soial empowerment. correctinformation on aids prevention will be distributed.info on malarai...fathers willknow the answers to what themarkets ar edoing anwehtehrthey are eing chated;deforestatino will low down; water preservation will be improved. the strd books in the computerwill not only increase childrens knowledge, but expand adults knowledge and their ability to inetract wiht the world.

each ofthe precedeing immdgs, 1 through 8, will be accelerated through our newly craetedd mdg9. creating anew goal is not enough. the new program has to be speediy and effectively delivered to meetour 2015 target of providing at leat : taking a deep leap into the dark here: 100M laptopwithout having to approah bilaterally 155differentcountries and their ever-atendingbueraucracies.

can this be done? the answer to this is also staring us in the face. the aids crisis led to the craetion in 2003 of a huge global fund of 8B usd. so far 3.7B has been spent in 132 countrie. the global fund has provided 1.1M peope with antirv treatment for HIV, 2.8M people with traetment for T, 30M insecticide traeted bed nets have been delivered to protet against malaria, and many millions of morepeoplehave received counsling, care, supprot, and training, saving 1.8M livse.

we havenow craeted under theun aegis, another globalfund of3.6B dollars to provide clean drinking water andbasic sanitation.

underthe ? un alliance, we have a unique multidim partnership of public andprivate resources to improve child health in the poorest countries by extendingimunization coverage.

I now propsoe here that we work to set up a ultilateral global fund for digital education. GFDE. A art of the UN DMG program, with olpc in partnership wit UNDP and UNESCO.

a public/priate sector partnership to deliverpublic and privatefunds to delvier100M laptops to deliverinthenext 7 yerausing UN channels todeliverthem, bypasing government constrainst.

this would requierraisig 2.6B dollars yer,rom gov and respnosibility progrms, and from the rivate sector. friends : each generation is caledupon to do somethingunique, smoething spcial, that marks and reflects our passage. we areindeed the electroni generation, the first to go digital, the first to go global, and the fisrst toharness the pwoerof information. As a thidr eye, a an extension ofourelves. we arein cyberspace, so we exist. until now, wthis has been in the hands of the privileged, the rich, and the educated. we now have the chane to empweor the poor, the depprived in our villaeg. i tis an oopportunity we will grasp and never let go until it is done. it is a job worth doing, starting now.
-->

=== Miguel Brechner, Uruguay ===
<!--
NN -- the rpesident ofuru is leingin 20 months, and I hear that he wants to leae with two legcies, oneiso make the countrynon-smoking, the otheris that everyhild should havealaptop. miguel runs atechnical center. they are extremely competent -- 22 engineers there, and 50 people rolling out. so they have more people there than we do her.e..

Miguel, it's yours!

MB -- nn, chuck thanks verymuch forinviting me. it is a plesurto behere and to share the uruguay experience of olpc and t. ceibal : basic connectivity for education. i have 20 ming,so... I want to tell you a bit about my country: what we have learned, and what we are doing since we started.

We have 3.3M people, per capita income is 5.800 usd. We were once called the switz of lain america, but thatchanged. in 1992 we had 50% of childreninpoverty and 20% in indigency. in 2006,it ws defined a special progarm for uruguay, to imply that between 2007 and now, all teachers in public schools will receive a laptop. first, 6-12, with an investment of 0.2% gnp over those three years.

It is good to tell you now : private schools have decided to become part of the plan. this program has 3 pillars. equity, learning, and technology. new tools or learning, content, forms of eucation. wireless conection.

The 4 I's : insure, increase, invest, andinclusion. equal access and equal opportunities. not only for children but for teahers and theirfamilies. social inclusion. reduce the gap b/t the haves and the have nots.

This project depends on the presidency, and everyone from al acting groups s ivolved : the ministers th privateshools. there is an educational committee resp for training of teachres, education programs, and protal needs. then we have LATU, an org I preside over, in charge of operations, supprot, liogistics, sw and apps, impact measurement, volunteers,and parental participation.

we have a dept centralized for sw development, bc we also need sugar running on windows. everythig inlocalization is working on oher thigns too, ut this is coordinatedwiht latu.


What we have learned : dec 06, annc of ceibl. study starting in 2007 withdeployment offirst pilot, then lagerin december. we have now finished 32,500 in 5 regions, delivering 1300 a day, doing a 6th region this week. we have 220k to deploy by the end of thisyear. then 190k by 2009, plus 1600 servers and connectivity. we want no child to wal kmor than 300m to getnet. this requiers lots of access pointand repeaters. wecannot beat physics. we only deliver once schools have connectiviyt. of the 32500 mahies deployed, noone is missing -- if it is missing, everyone knows it has no value, as we block it.

first wehave to define regions to start.
then we start rgional efinition,t eher training and delivery of notebooks. in parallel we prepare the schools, eletrial and security (for the servers), and we install the aps and inetrnet proider; adsl or hdspa or edge or sat. then we install outdoor aps in major towers (pub and priv). we need a childrne's list, not an eay task. intreactionwith parents before they receive the machines, since the /parents/are respnosible for this. and thenship them to the schools where teacehrs deliver them.
then we deal wiht warranty and techsuprot. a key issue is askileld gruop of youngpros and teachers and an inmprotant group of volunteers. what chuck said for the us is validhere-- withoupt whthe helpof volunteers in thisd eploymentit would be ipossible to do this.
todaywe evenhave aprogram for volunteers;it istheonly way to deliver every da,, to every school, and every teacher.

learning : 1. before dleliver, teachers shoud be trined. a fewhours reduces fear. 2. childrne learn very fast, and intrdoue them well to the family environment. kids use itat night, and also their parents do, sometimes after kids go to sleep. <laughter> it is improtant for teachers to be able to share their experience with other teachers. at first teachers dont want to change contents oftheir curriculum, then their thoughtschange. now weare starting to taech all teachers in uru to teach logo.

one main goal is for the school to reclaim its role as cnetreof town. best network is in school, supproters are in school. teachers and parents go aftre work, aftre shool, on saturdays, and when there is a strike. because they ahe the best inetrnet ther.e it may no t bepolitically correct, but it works.

even parents are vhelpfulin all supprot committeees in thes chools. thev of tech in children's lives in schools ispart of learning communities. collaboration is key to trnsorming education.

when kid use the computer, tey help eachother, parents, and teachrdsin a natrual way. this has no cost b/t childrne and paents. sharing andbuilding knowledge is a kyevelue. the model changes from competition andp woer to sharing and onstructing.

volunteerwork isneeded and needs centralizatin. w eh ave establisehd credit pograms in the university, so students do work in ceibal and give credist in the univresity for this work.
wehaveno textbook to learn how to deploy masively -- still, we have smoet ogod pans, admitting that we hmake mistakes andmust improise. hereis a story for you. the first sday aftre hoidsays, the taechers asked thechildrne : what have you learnedthissummer-- /can you teach us all?/ that is an ewp aradagim in teaching and lerning.

childrne surprise us and show us things that we would never imagine. children filming things from the birth of a cow to biographies -- something that was not though by us or any people founding this project.

the teachers' attitude changes forthe best all the time, when teys ee creativity and empowerment of the project. as this is an equity program, we need to find solutions for all of the kids; for blind and impaired children. we are working on this. once the childrne leae school for high school, we decided to put servers in shools; it is cheaper to do this than to control that laptops are used by kids. that puts us in the situation of giving high schol teachers notebooks... the kids will have them, but not the taechers? s owe are implementing in high school as well.

small conclusions. one of the mostimprotant things in ceibal : results are shown immediaetly, we dont have to wait yers.
courage is needed... but it is the only way wean thing o a futuer or our countries.
the involvement of children and their families is immense, the desire for opprotunity is strong, and must be given to all.
this started as a draem of a group of people; once it started depoying, hope returns to all, it becomes a draem of many,and it becomes the draem of the country...

let me show you a video : another way of constructing a dream.
(short documentary) : thank you, we know this will be a milestone for ceibal, and a milestone for the future of our country and for other countries.

====

NN returns -- you didn't tell another story, about a teacher who heard that compuetrs were coming to her villaege, and went to the [equiv of social security] office and asked to retiere early... and there were delays with her paperwork, and after the computers had arrived, two weeks passed, and she went back and asked if she could retire late...!
-->

=== Oscar Becerra, Peru ===

NN, intro to OB: A man came to visit us... expressed interested in learning, in meeting Seymour Papert. Becomes a constructionist. And then he becomes the Minister of Education in Peru. And Oscar came with him, and he is now here representing the project; their progress is just amazing, and thank you for flying out.


Oscar Becerra [OB] - Good morning! I am glad we did not see Miguel's presentation before we started, because we would still be planning... <chuckles>

The starfish and the beach.... why OLPC is the right ICT solution for Peru.

(Opening video, with Oscar talking over it.) This town is 2 hours from Lima. .. another about 4 hours from Lima... they are students in Apostolo Santiago? school. another in Arahuay.

"We are going to go on line" Rafael Sanches, Arahuay mayor -- it is wonderful, children alreay know how to draw, they spend hours online, they set up competitions, with checkers and chess... they don't spend as much time in the streets.

[a community fair]
....

You know, someone from Microsoft came to me just the other day, asking for help tranlating Vista into Quechua; as we had done it with XP. But it takes me 15 min to load vista on my current computer... the teachers don't need to relearn everything they have done... They need someone simple that is still powerful. What do they say/ ? low barrier, no ceiling.

<!-- "the dogs are barking, it is time to go" -->
Be aware : everyone will warn you ifyou are trying tostart onthis project
: there is no pedagogical theory behind this!
: it is a crazy academic idea that is untested!
: there is no proof this will work!
they mean: it wasn't my idea, i did nothingwhen i had the chance.

Others will say
: it will take lots of teacher training!
: this is really much more expensive than suggested!
What they mean is : we dont have something ready, wait until we can make money off of selling our product.

Aside, about logo on a simple computer 30 years ago -- if we all shared that with everyone, all children in the world would have better learning tools, but the industry went in a different direction; now computers are a million times more pweoful, but still slower, bc they are running Vista!

Data about the current implementation : 210k through the gov, and 600k though individual departnemts within the country raising their own funds to extend the project, for 810k in all. They hope to have more than 1M committed by the end of this year. (silence in the room, then applause)

[information-rich slides]

[closing with a video clip, much faster paced, going through activities and what children are doing with them; voiceover again]

Just in case you are still dubious about what can be done withouttraining, I will show you 2 minutes of the first /day/ of the deployment in the travel project, not a pilot (in juan catal.?) Here is a town 4500m above sea level. The children are getting laptops from the pres and the minister of ed.

[a boy travels the keyboard with his fingers, girls use hemouse to explore something unseen... ]

Pedro Santana Jimenez - These children... it serves to reduce the gap between thecities and the countryside... especially in marginal areias.

"look! photos, I see photos! look, there is the internet..."
[visualizing sound with measure... taking photos... drawing, painting, writing.]

OB : thankyou very much.

=== Q & A session ===
''excerpts''

From Mali - How do you choose countries for g1g1, will you let donors choose? nn - we chose 3 countries, from asia, africa, and this hemisphere last time; determined by poverty and enthusiastic head of state. we are also focusing on post conflict countries like afgh on top of what i just mentioned. in the new g1g1 we will find a way to let people designate...

D from Ethiopia - a question. This is a very grand scale and wonderful project. i was moved really by the whole pes. A brief question is - has this all been a gov initiative, or were you supported by other dev partners?

OB - In Peru, it has been a whole gov initiative. We spend more than that in books. So it seems large, but just the books they get in the machine would be more expensive to make out of paper. We are just re-orienting what we are already spending.

The children will hopefully be using the machines or 5 years. The cost is very low, and for other ages.

MB - we are not doing everything, we define and design things such as tech support, which are done by private co's at almost pro bono prices. they are doing this because of size and implication o the project.

ND - I have a question which someone has to answer. It is in the nature of government to want to control their own purchasing, so they will inevitably run a pilot and test study by the time 150 countries run pilot studies we will have missed the boat. How can we give it a global certification so that a pilot study run in peru or uruguay is /enough/ so that people say they don't need to run one, its been found to be working, rather than running pilots?

NN - It is one of our biggest problems. Pilots kill us in two regards. One is they take a lot of attention, and they are an excuse to do something small. [if people really insist on doing a pilot, I recommend they go to Intel. we need people with courage.]

NJ - they are done to cover civil servant backs in case something goes wrong. if they are covered by some sort of certification; unesco and crew -- fda approved, etc is approval you can use.


Mike from Afghanistan -- to the two successful pilot implementations : you have talked a lot about the whole ecosystem you have built up to indicate success. When I have been digging around to find more information to help support this... we need to share.

What are you guys going to do to facilitate better sharing of guidance to make this sort of ecosystem work?

NN - one thing is to have meetings such as this one, and to put more information on our website.

OB - [an aside] sometimes people say "give me more information so that I can better formulate my opposition". there was for instance a sticky keyboard problem mentioned online -- there were three related threads I could find online, two on peruvian noticeboards about what the government would do when this massive fault hits all laptops -- when it happened in 3 out of 160k machines.

MBr - the easiest way to share information is : to come and visit us. better to come spend time to visit schools and see the children, than to write papers it would not be serious to write an evaluation on things we have been doing for 3 or 4 months; it is not a qualified paper to publish, better to visit us.
nn - one more question before lunch/?

Marisa? - Hola - (in Spanish,a comment rather than a question) In Uruguay the educational system has parents as a part of it. before children receive a machine, we work with parents in sharing responsibilities about machines. Controlling internet surfing and chat, to use the laptop in the family, and also we are working with parents on the machine for things in the family... not only before receiving them but continuously while having it.

== Images ==
<!-- ... -->

[[Category:Presentations]]

Latest revision as of 07:39, 21 August 2008

All presentations and video can be downloaded from http://download.laptop.org/content/conf/20080520-country-wkshp

Agenda

Tuesday, May 20

10:30 Welcome

Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman, One Laptop per Child

video: swf ogg
10:45 OLPC Operational Strategy

Chuck Kane, President, One Laptop per Child

slides video: swf ogg
11:00 Future and XO 2.0

Nicholas Negroponte

slides video: swf ogg
11:30 OLPC as the Ninth Development Goal for the New Millennium

Nirj Deva, Member of the European Parliament

slides video: swf ogg
12:15 OLPC Deployment in Uruguay

Miguel Brechner, President of the Uruguay Technology Laboratory (LATU)

slides video: swf ogg
12:35 The Starfish on the Beach: Why OLPC for the Poorest and Most Remote? and How?

Oscar Becerra, Chief Educational Technology Officer, Ministry of Education of Perú

slides video: swf ogg
12:55 Q & A with Miguel Brechner and Oscar Becerra video: swf ogg
1:15 Lunch and Demonstrations
2:30 High Quality Education: A Basic Human Right

David Cavallo, Chief Learning Architect, One Laptop per Child

slides video: swf ogg
2:50 Global Panel

Rwanda (slides)
Ghana
Senegal (slides)
Ethiopia
Haiti (slides)
Thailand (slides)
Sri Lanka (slides)
Nepal

 video: swf ogg
3:35 Q & A and Discussion with the Panel Members
4:10 Coffee Break
4:20 Children as Media Makers

Glorianna Davenport, Prinicipal Research Associate, Head of the Media Fabrics Research Group

video: swf ogg
4:30 Music Painter Across Cultures

Barry Vercoe, MIT Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, One Laptop per Child Asia Pacific Liaison

video: swf ogg
4:40 Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society

Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Academic Head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Head of the Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group

slides video: swf ogg
5:00 Beyond the Printing Press: Computers as Learning Environments for All Children

Alan Kay, President, Viewpoints Research Institute, Inc.

video: swf ogg
5:30 Reception and Demonstration of One Laptop per Child Learning Activities

Wednesday, May 21

9:00 - 9:30 Welcome & Overview of the workshop
9:30 - 10:00 Introduction to Sugar Desktop and User Interface

Jim Gettys, Vice President, Software Engineering

slides
10:00 – 11:00 Sugar User Interface continued with Q&A

Eben Eliason, UI Designer
Jim Gettys, Vice President, Software Engineering

slides
11:00 – 11:15 Break
11:15 – 12:30 Localization on the XO Laptop

Jim Gettys, Vice President, Software Engineering

slides video: small med.
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 3:30 Connectivity – school, community and the internet

Michail Bletsas, Vice President, Advanced Technology & Connectivity

slides video: small med.
3:30 - 3:45 Break
3:45 – 4:00 The Uruguay Experience

Fiorella Haim, Plan Ceibal/LATU

slides video: small med.
4:00 – 4:30 XO Laptop School Server

John Watlington, Vice President, Hardware Engineering

slides video: small med.
4:30 - 5:30 Discussion

Thursday, May 22

9:00 – 11:00 XO Laptop Software Roadmap

Kim Quirk, Director of Technology

slides
11:00 – 11:15 Break
11:15 - 12:30 XO Laptop Power

Richard Smith, Hardware Engineer

slides
12:30 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:45 Support and Repair

John Watlington, Vice President, Hardware Engineering

slides
2:45 - 3:00 Break
3:00 - 5:00 Technology Open Discussion
6:30 OLPC Dinner

Friday, May 23

9:00 - 9:30 Activities Presentation

Dale Joachim, MIT Media Lab

slides
9:30 - 10:30 XO Laptop Activities: loading, developing and sharing

SJ Klein, Director, Community Content

10:30 - 10:45 Break
10:45 - 11:30 Building and leveraging community

Mako Hill, MIT Media Lab/OLPC
SJ Klein, Director Community Content

11:45 - 12:00 Brazil Presentation

Jose Aquino, Special Advisor to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

slides
12:00 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00 - 1:15 Uruguay Presentation

Shirley Siri, Marcela Brener, Fiorella Haim, Plan CEIBAL - LATU

1:15 - 2:45 Key Learning issues: Local Teams, Teacher Development & Collaboration

David Cavallo, Chief Learning Architect

2:45 – 3:00 XO Laptops in Kliptown, South Africa

Julia Weber
Hannah Weber

3:00- 3:15 Break
3:15 – 4:00 Discussion and Wrap up
4:00 Adjourn
unknown OLPC in New York City

Teaching Matters

slides survey

Transcripts

Keynote Speech by MEP Nirj Deva

Transcription of the keynote speech from the May 20, 2008 OLPC Countries Meeting at the MIT Media Lab:

Your Excellencies, Distinguished and Honoured Ladies and Gentlemen

Today we meet as a family.

A family created by the passion, drive and dream of Nicholas Negroponte and his team to give “One Laptop per Child” to children in need. A family is not something you choose.

Instead it is a given. We are a family obsessed. Driven by a passion. Our very obsession unites us into what we are. We are driven by a purpose.

A purpose that transcends our own self interests; our pet hobbies and our own vanities.

Our purpose is simple.

Our purpose is to give every single child in the developing world and the developed world, the power to escape poverty, the power to escape ignorance, the power to escape years of neglect, deprivation and non fulfilment.

By doing so we give them a life chance, an opportunity, a window to realise their life potential and join the whole of the global community whatever their own circumstances.

Our purpose is to make them leap from a medieval to a 21st century existence.

We are not delivering a computer.

We are delivering a time machine. A time machine that is so enormously transformational that everything after that is changed. Changed for ever.

Imagine this.

A hut in an African village. An old man and an old woman cooking their dinner by firewood . At a small table a young boy about 11 years of age is tapping into a computer looking at the key board in the half light of a flickering kerosene lamp.

He has escaped his hut.

His mind is elsewhere, connected to the global internet community. He is doing his homework together with 7 other kids in similar huts 1 km away. The huts are connected to the children. The children are the nodes and the village community is brought together by their laptops.

The children are learning, interacting, sharing, emailing and surfing. They are developing marketable technology skills, which can lead to jobs and opportunities for the youth of today and the work force of tomorrow.

The challenge now is to bring the old man and the old woman into that community of information, knowledge and empowerment that the children in that village possess.

The laptop unites the child with the world, then binds the village into a community and later connects that community into the global village.

This is a process.

Delivering the lap top is merely the first step.

A small pebble that starts an avalanche of change.

A change so vast, so complete, so comprehensive that every person in that remote village will change and become a part of our global space, the same space as that we now occupy in this room.

It impacts on everybody and everything. Not only the child.

That is why I have called for our programme to be designated by the UN as a Millennium Development Goal. Or MDG 9.

Whatever one’s motivation for combating extreme poverty—human rights, religious values, security, fiscal prudence, ideology—the solutions are the same.

The Millennium Declaration was adopted in September 2000 by 189 nations-and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit

A political framework was established.

For the first time in human history, a compact was made, between the poorer countries who pledged to improve policies, governance and accountability to their own citizens; while wealthy countries pledged to provide the resources

The aim was to cut world poverty by half by 2015, saving tens of millions of lives and empowering a billon people into joining the global economy.

All that was needed was action and money - a paltry 60 billion USD per year more from a global economy of $32 trillion USD per year.

Action given that we spend 1.0 trillion USD on arms, and 600 billion USD on agricultural subsidies.

Well its 2008 now and you may quite rightly ask are we on track after the half way point ?

The simple answer is no.

United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon recently said.

"The MDGs are still achievable if we act now. This will require inclusive sound governance, increased public investment, economic growth, enhanced productive capacity, and the creation of decent work."

Progress so far:

Goal 1: Was to Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger

Global poverty rates are falling in Asia. But millions more people have sunk deeper into poverty in sub- Saharan Africa.

Low agricultural output and has led to millions of more people being chronically hungry in sub- Saharan Africa and in Southern Asia, where half the children under age 5 are malnourished. Quick wins are the provision of massive replenishment of soil nutrients and high yielding seeds for smallholder farmers on nutrient-depleted lands, through free or subsidized distribution of chemical fertilizers and agro forestry no later than the end of 2008.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education There are some 600 million school children enrolled in schools in 155 developing countries. Of these 66 countries have achieved, or are on track to achieve, universal primary education by 2015. The other 89, in sub Saharan Africa, South Asia and Oceania however, are unlikely to reach this goal over the next decade. Over 105 million children worldwide have not enrolled in schools.

Five developing regions are approaching universal enrolment. But in sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and Oceania fewer than two thirds of children are enrolled in primary school. Increased enrolment must ensure that all children receive a high-quality education. Quick Wins can be achieved by ending school fees and fees for uniforms for primary schools; the expansion of school meal programmes to cover all children in hunger hotspots using locally produced foods, to provide annual deworming and hand cleansing gels to kill bacteria that produce diarrhoea and so improve health and educational outcomes.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality & empower women

The gender gap is closing — albeit slowly — in primary school enrolment in the developing world.

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Death rates in children under age 5 are dropping. But not fast enough. Eleven million children a year — 30,000 a day — die from preventable causes. Most of these lives could be saved through low cost solutions

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

More than half a million women die each year during pregnancy or childbirth. Some progress has been made in reducing maternal deaths in developing regions, but not in the countries where giving birth is most risky.

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases

AIDS is the leading cause of premature death in sub-Saharan Africa. Prevention efforts must be intensified. Malaria and tuberculosis together kill nearly as many people each year as AIDS. Ninety per cent of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where prevention and treatment efforts are being scaled up. Tuberculosis is also on the rise. Quick Wins are to provide mass distribution of bed-nets and effective anti-malarial medicines for all children in regions of malaria transmission by the end of 2008.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.

Insufficient progress has been made to reverse the loss of the world’s forests and environmental resources. Access to safe drinking water has increased, but half the developing world still lack toilets and basic sanitation. Nearly 1 billion people live in urban slums outpacing the availability of productive jobs.

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals, increased aid and debt relief must be accompanied by further opening of trade, accelerated transfer of technology and improved employment opportunities for the growing ranks of young people in the developing world.

So how can OLPC now augment the Millennium Development Goals by revisiting the MDG Programmes and accelerating their progress?

What is needed in these programmes which OLPC can uniquely provide?

The answers are simple and self evident.

The MDGs are failing because it is still “them and us”. There is no common ownership. We give and they take.

There is no interaction, no partnership, no dialogue, no common stakeholder-ship, between the individual beneficiary and the global donors.

Not at an individual level, not at a village or community level, neither at a regional level nor even possibly at a national level.

OLPC creates a new dimension a whole new world of interactivity. It creates a life long partnership of shared information and access to knowledge, between the child, who will be a teenager or adult by 2015, and between his or her village and the global community.

Why should such a interactive knowledge partnership accelerate and promote the MDGs ? OLPC by connecting the internet to the child and the child to the village community introduces a technological component to development. While creating a better future for children it is also doing something for the parents of today.

The children can and will become the purveyors of information to their parents and to the wider village community.

Points of community contact and information will be networked together via the laptops for: education, health, business, and social empowerment.

Local clinics will be connected between far-flung villages, correct information on AIDS prevention will be distributed, preventive treatment programmes for malaria without expensive out-reach workers will mushroom.

Farmers will know the true worth of what they are growing by accessing world prices and prevent being cheated. They will learn to manage agriculture using more sustainable techniques. Deforestation will slow down, water conservation will improve.

The stored books in the computer will not only increase children's knowledge but expand adult's knowledge and ability to interact with the world markets.

Each of the earlier MDGs from MDG 1-to MDG 8 will be enhanced and accelerated by the newly created MDG 9.

Creating a new MDG is not enough.

The new programme has to be speedily and effectively delivered to meet our 2015 target of providing at least 100 million laptops; without having to approach bilaterally 155 countries and their attending bureaucracies.

Can this be done in time?

The answer to this is also quite evident. The HIV Aids crisis led to the creation in 2003 of an huge global fund of some 8 billion USD.

So far US$3.7bn has been spent in 132 countries. The Global Fund has provided 1.1 million people with anti-retroviral treatment for HIV, 2.8 million people with treatment for TB, 30 million insecticide-treated bed nets have been distributed to protect against malaria and many millions more people have received counseling, care, support and training, saving 1.8 million lives to date.

We have now also created under the UN aegis a Global Water Fund to provide clean drinking water and basic sanitation to millions of people.

Under the GAVI immunization Alliance we have created a unique, multi-dimensional partnership of public and private sector resources with a single focus which is to improve child health in the poorest countries by extending immunization coverage.

I now propose that we set up a multi-lateral Global Fund for Digital Education, GFDE - a part of the UN Millennium Goals programme as MDG 9 in partnership with the UNDP and UNESCO.

This would be a public and private sector partnership to raise large enough funds to deliver 100 million OLPC laptops in the next 7 years using the United Nations multilateral institutions for their delivery.

This would require raising some 2.6 billion USD per year from Governments and as Corporate Social Responsibility Programmes from the private sector.

It is a challenge and it is worth doing.

Starting now.

Thank you.

Introduction, Chuck Kane

...



Miguel Brechner, Uruguay

Oscar Becerra, Peru

NN, intro to OB: A man came to visit us... expressed interested in learning, in meeting Seymour Papert. Becomes a constructionist. And then he becomes the Minister of Education in Peru. And Oscar came with him, and he is now here representing the project; their progress is just amazing, and thank you for flying out.


Oscar Becerra [OB] - Good morning! I am glad we did not see Miguel's presentation before we started, because we would still be planning... <chuckles>

The starfish and the beach.... why OLPC is the right ICT solution for Peru.

(Opening video, with Oscar talking over it.) This town is 2 hours from Lima. .. another about 4 hours from Lima... they are students in Apostolo Santiago? school. another in Arahuay.

"We are going to go on line" Rafael Sanches, Arahuay mayor -- it is wonderful, children alreay know how to draw, they spend hours online, they set up competitions, with checkers and chess... they don't spend as much time in the streets.

[a community fair] ....

You know, someone from Microsoft came to me just the other day, asking for help tranlating Vista into Quechua; as we had done it with XP. But it takes me 15 min to load vista on my current computer... the teachers don't need to relearn everything they have done... They need someone simple that is still powerful. What do they say/  ? low barrier, no ceiling.

Be aware : everyone will warn you ifyou are trying tostart onthis project

there is no pedagogical theory behind this!
it is a crazy academic idea that is untested!
there is no proof this will work!

they mean: it wasn't my idea, i did nothingwhen i had the chance.

Others will say

it will take lots of teacher training!
this is really much more expensive than suggested!

What they mean is : we dont have something ready, wait until we can make money off of selling our product.

Aside, about logo on a simple computer 30 years ago -- if we all shared that with everyone, all children in the world would have better learning tools, but the industry went in a different direction; now computers are a million times more pweoful, but still slower, bc they are running Vista!

Data about the current implementation : 210k through the gov, and 600k though individual departnemts within the country raising their own funds to extend the project, for 810k in all. They hope to have more than 1M committed by the end of this year. (silence in the room, then applause)

[information-rich slides]

[closing with a video clip, much faster paced, going through activities and what children are doing with them; voiceover again]

Just in case you are still dubious about what can be done withouttraining, I will show you 2 minutes of the first /day/ of the deployment in the travel project, not a pilot (in juan catal.?) Here is a town 4500m above sea level. The children are getting laptops from the pres and the minister of ed.

[a boy travels the keyboard with his fingers, girls use hemouse to explore something unseen... ]

Pedro Santana Jimenez - These children... it serves to reduce the gap between thecities and the countryside... especially in marginal areias.

"look! photos, I see photos! look, there is the internet..." [visualizing sound with measure... taking photos... drawing, painting, writing.]

OB : thankyou very much.

Q & A session

excerpts

From Mali - How do you choose countries for g1g1, will you let donors choose? nn - we chose 3 countries, from asia, africa, and this hemisphere last time; determined by poverty and enthusiastic head of state. we are also focusing on post conflict countries like afgh on top of what i just mentioned. in the new g1g1 we will find a way to let people designate...

D from Ethiopia - a question. This is a very grand scale and wonderful project. i was moved really by the whole pes. A brief question is - has this all been a gov initiative, or were you supported by other dev partners?

OB - In Peru, it has been a whole gov initiative. We spend more than that in books. So it seems large, but just the books they get in the machine would be more expensive to make out of paper. We are just re-orienting what we are already spending.

The children will hopefully be using the machines or 5 years. The cost is very low, and for other ages.

MB - we are not doing everything, we define and design things such as tech support, which are done by private co's at almost pro bono prices. they are doing this because of size and implication o the project.

ND - I have a question which someone has to answer. It is in the nature of government to want to control their own purchasing, so they will inevitably run a pilot and test study by the time 150 countries run pilot studies we will have missed the boat. How can we give it a global certification so that a pilot study run in peru or uruguay is /enough/ so that people say they don't need to run one, its been found to be working, rather than running pilots?

NN - It is one of our biggest problems. Pilots kill us in two regards. One is they take a lot of attention, and they are an excuse to do something small. [if people really insist on doing a pilot, I recommend they go to Intel. we need people with courage.]

NJ - they are done to cover civil servant backs in case something goes wrong. if they are covered by some sort of certification; unesco and crew -- fda approved, etc is approval you can use.


Mike from Afghanistan -- to the two successful pilot implementations : you have talked a lot about the whole ecosystem you have built up to indicate success. When I have been digging around to find more information to help support this... we need to share.

What are you guys going to do to facilitate better sharing of guidance to make this sort of ecosystem work?

NN - one thing is to have meetings such as this one, and to put more information on our website.

OB - [an aside] sometimes people say "give me more information so that I can better formulate my opposition". there was for instance a sticky keyboard problem mentioned online -- there were three related threads I could find online, two on peruvian noticeboards about what the government would do when this massive fault hits all laptops -- when it happened in 3 out of 160k machines.

MBr - the easiest way to share information is : to come and visit us. better to come spend time to visit schools and see the children, than to write papers it would not be serious to write an evaluation on things we have been doing for 3 or 4 months; it is not a qualified paper to publish, better to visit us. nn - one more question before lunch/?

Marisa? - Hola - (in Spanish,a comment rather than a question) In Uruguay the educational system has parents as a part of it. before children receive a machine, we work with parents in sharing responsibilities about machines. Controlling internet surfing and chat, to use the laptop in the family, and also we are working with parents on the machine for things in the family... not only before receiving them but continuously while having it.

Images

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