OLPC Nepal

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Nepal

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Country Information
ISO Country Code	NP
Wikipedia Article	Wikipedia Link
Government Support	Sponsored Trials
Deployment	Trial (50 to 500 machines)
Languages
Keyboard Layout	Nepali Layout
Written	Nepali (ne)
Spoken	Nepali (ne)
Secondary Written	Various dialects
Secondary Spoken	Various dialects

'Nepal नेपाल '
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nepal_map.png
Capital	Kathmandu
Official languages	Nepali
Area	147,181 km²
Population
- July 2007 estimate	28,901,790
- 2003 census	23,151,423
- Density	184/km²
Education
- Literacy (%)	48.6
- Compulsory Years
- Compulsory Age
- Pop. in School Age
- Pop. in School
GDP (PPP) 2006 est.	USD 48.18 billion
- Per capita	1,500
GDP (nominal)  est.
- Per capita
HDI  (2007)	0.534 (medium)
Gini Index  (2003–04)	47.2
Time zone	NPT (UTC+5:45)
Internet TLD	.np
Calling code	++977
More statistics...

Nepal has had perhaps the most active grassroots OLPC community, that became active in the fall of 2006. The OLPC Nepal movement has needed to develop its deployment plans, school server architecture, and strategies of interfacing with government. The most active members of the OLPC community within Nepal formed a local non-profit organization in July 2007, OLE Nepal, to implement Nepal's initial OLPC deployments. All of these became the exemplars for later deployments.

News

• April 25, 2008: OLE Nepal launches wide trial in Bashuki and Bishwamitra schools
• March 27, 2008 : OLPC Nepal launches a "Sunrise" trial at Janajyoti school.
• July 2007: Members of the OLPC Nepal community form OLE Nepal to implement Nepal's pilots

Additional Information Sources

• Mailing List: nepal@lists.laptop.org
• IRC Channel: #olpcnepal @ irc.freenode.net
• The large OLPC Nepal Category
• The unofficial OLPC News Nepal Section
• The OLE Nepal Website, especially their blog.
• The CIA's world factbook.

Deployments and Trials

OLE Nepal in Bashuki and Bishwamitra schools

OLPC launched at Bashuki and Bishwamitra schools on April 25th, 2008. Open Learning Exchange Nepal (OLE Nepal) distributed a total of 135 OLPC laptops to grade 2 and 6 students from two schools in the outskirts of Kathmandu Valley. These were addition to the 22 laptops that were handed out to teachers from the schools during the teacher preparation program held a month ago. The laptop project was undertaken in partnership with Nepal government’s Department of Education (DoE). This project is part of OLE Nepal’s mission to increase quality of education while reducing current disparity in access and quality between school types, regions, and population groups by integrating ICT-based education in daily teaching-learning process. The laptops for the project were donated by the Danish IT Society in Copenhagen.

These pilots focus on integrating laptops into the Nepali educational system and measuring their impact. The laptops and relevant software have been integrated into the Nepali curriculum and teaching process for grades two and six, subjects Mathematics and English. We at OLE Nepal believe that the central challenge of this project is not to get children to use the constructionist tools within t

Sunrise trial at Janajyoti school

See the OLPC Nepal blog discussion about the start of the trial here.

Nepal Pilot Sites

Many planning documents were produced for this early deployment. Some of these were incorporated in later documents for general deployments.

• Pilot Sites, including selection process, target, and deployment teams
• Jamirkot (Lalitpur), Bishwamitra Ganesh school pilot, including technical planning
• Lakuri Bhanjyang (Lalitpur), Shree Bashuki school pilot, including technical planning
• Teacher Training
• Content Development
  • Content Development Principles
  • EPaati - suite of educational software for grades 2 and 6 developed by OLE Nepal
• Program Evaluation (to be created)
• Technical Aspects of the Deployment
  • Testing and QA + some non-technical logistics
  • Power Systems -- currently power distribution, hopefully will later encompass power distribution
  • Networking
• Some relevant items from the blog:
  • The School Server w/ emphasis on Moodle
  • Monthly Game Jams

Historical Planning Documents

These pages are preserved to show the history but they are dated now and do not show actual deployment design.

• Nepal:Pilot Project Plan
• Nepal:School Server Specification
• Nepal:School Server Specification - Phase 1 Design

Groups

OLE Nepal

OLE Nepal is a local Nepali NGO that has a memorandum of understanding with Nepal's Department of Education to implement Nepal's pilots at Bashuki and Bishwamitra. For more information visit their wiki page or [website].

• OLE Nepal People All about the people involved, what they are working on, and areas in need of help.

Nepal Government

Nepal Government has three-tier committees to implement OLPC in Nepal under Ministry of Education.

• Steering Committee -- Secretary of Ministry of Education chairs this
• Coordination Committee -- Director of Department of Education chairs this
• Task Force -- Deputy Director of Department of Education chairs this