OLPC Rwanda

2007 status: green
green

Rwanda, under the strong conviction of president Paul Kagame, has committed to deploying 120,000 laptops across the country. This is partly supported by a collaboration between the wealthier city schools and the poorer rural schools. OLPC has also set up a major learning center in Rwanda, the Center for Laptops and Learning, which aims to serve the educational and learning needs of countries across Africa.

Center for Laptops and Learning

Background

The OLPC Learning Team has been developing this center in Kigali under David Cavallo since the summer of 2009, in partnership with the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. They have helped with the deployments of the first schools in Rwanda, and are helping local students develop activities for a summer showcase in December 2009.

You can follow some of the team's work on the page for educators, and on the OLPC blog.

Recently,the office has been shifted from KIST to Kacyiru in the same building as world relief (Mukeka House).The learning team is working hand in hand with the government team in the implementation of the project.

Current Situation

Currently, the OLPC Rwanda has a new country coordinator,Samuel Dusengiyumva. Throught out the year 2010,we have been working on many things involving the use of XO's with the children and teachers, here is a list of some activities done during the year 2010.

1. Basic Training on the XO use for Kagugu, ESCAF and Nonko Schools( April 4th 2010) Conducted by Melissa Henriquez, Jimmy and Desire Training focused on the basic use of hardware and software of the XO for at least 14 teachers from Kagugu , 13 teachers from Nonko, 11 teachers from ESACF.

2. Basic Training on the XO use for Rwamagana School. (February 2010) Conducted by Julia REYNOLDS Training focused on the basic use of hardware and software of the XO for at least 13 teachers of the mentioned schools.

3. Malaria Camp (5th-16th March 2010) Conducted by Jimmy INTWALI at Nonko and Desire RWAGAJU Kagugu Primary School.

On April Holidays (April 5th-16th),OLPC Rwanda Learning Team conducted a camp with 100 students at Nonko School. During this camp, students developed their own projects about Malaria. The school decided to hold an event in honor of World Malaria day, April 25th, to show their best projects. This camp has been a great success, the great projects developed by students using Etoys book, or programmed dialogue using Scratch , have been shared within students and community around school on World Malaria Day, April 25th . The student projects were talking about what is Malaria, its causative agent ( mosquito),most susceptible individual in the community, transmission mode, prevention, Mythology about Malaria, as well as efficient treatment.

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  student developing project on malaria.

During the camp , the student have been very creative, researching about Malaria, trying to understand why not all mosquito causing malaria, and why only mosquito bed net should be used during the night while sleeping not the during the day. Mythology about were very important projects developed by kids, because they grown up with different thought about this devastating diseases. Example: Malaria can been treated traditionally using banana beer, or caused by eating sugar canes, bad spirits, or can be transmitted through sharing the drinks, etc. The creativity, culture of researching, and construct thing to help the community using laptops have been the outcomes of this camp.

4. Advanced Training for teachers of Nonko, Rwamagana and Kagugu schools (1st April 13th at Kagugu and Nonko , 4th July 2010) Conducted by Jimmy in Nonko, Julia and Melissa in Rwamagana and Desire at Kagugu This training has the purpose of bring to the teachers ideas on integration of the XO in teaching activities. As we know, the XO is not a vehicle of contents, is a vehicle of ideas and possibilities to explore creativity. This sessions has the purpose of promote that kind of ideas as well as show to the teachers specific ideas on how to use the laptops in the classroom.

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  teachers in training at Rwamagana primary School

5. Technical training for teachers of ESCAF school (4th Jun -7th July ) Conducted by Melissa Henriquez, Jimmy, Desire The purpose of the training was give to the teacher of the ESCAF school the right tools to deal with basic troubleshooting of the Sugar environment as well as instruction on the basics of parts replacement of the XO. The work was developed with three teachers of the ESCAF school.

6. Creativity and programming club in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University students in Nonko School (17th -21st May 2010) Conducted by 10 students of the Qatar and Pittsburg campus of the Carnegie Mellon University and Jimmy Adrien and Jean Claude on OLPC Rwanda side The main purpose of the work was to give to near of 120 kids of the Nonko School the opportunity to work in areas like performing arts, programming and music using the XO laptop, in order to give the children the possibility to understand a way to use the laptop to increase their creativity on those fields.

7. Music and game programming Clubs on Nonko School (24th May) Conducted by Intwali Jimmy, Adrien & Jean Claude After the work with the Carnegie Mellon University, many kids of the Nonko School were very interested in continue the work in that sort of dynamic.

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  Students programming thier own games

Jimmy, a member of the OLPC Learning Team here in Rwanda, took the lead and create some clubs in order to gave continuity to the previous work.

8. Champion teacher training (July5th-9th 2010) Conducted by Juliano Bittencourt

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  300 teachers training by OLPC Rwanda Learning Team in pertnesrship with Ministry of Education.

This event was focused on the basic introduction of 300 teachers (150 teahers +150 heads of schools) of 150 schools to the philosophy of the OLPC project as well as to the basic management of hardware and Sugar environment software.

9. Technical training for teachers at KAGUGU school (3rd September 22 October 2010) Conducted by Desire Rwagaju From 3rd September this year ,The center for Laptops and Learning conducted a technical training to five teachers technically minded from Kagugu primary school, different basic skills on laptop hardware, fixing or replacing broken parts, Hardware Self test and Software re-flashing, upgrading firm ware, Tracing new XO activities and their installation in big number of laptops using Nand-Blast, trouble shouting, etc.

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  teachers fixing laptops in the training.

This training aimed to build teachers capacity to solve some problem frequently faced by their students users of XO laptops, like replace deleted activities ,fixing broken screen ,damaged Key-board, broken Antennas all need to be replaced with spare parts form MINEDUC or replace the small parts like camera, speakers, from other damaged laptops to make a working one from one or more irreversible damaged.During the training the teachers were very passionate and exited to fix their abandoned laptops themselves. The school contributed in this training by providing these tools like screw drivers, USB Keys for re-flashing and download new activities , place and refreshments during the training.This training is being productive, now these five teachers are solving different problems not only on their school but from other private schools.The training took six weeks ,two sessions of 3 hours each a week.Kagugu Technical training

10. Annual East Africa Education Exposition (20-28 October 2010) Organized by MINEDUC in collaboration with OLPC Rwanda

20th -28th October both OLPC-Rwanda in partnership with the Ministry of Education took part in the first annual East African Education Exhibition and Conference. The theme of this event was “Quality education for intercultural understanding and regional development”. It gathered participants in the field of education from across East Africa. Many Rwandans attended the event, especially parents and other stakeholders from private schools. Minister of Education of Uganda flanked by the exhibitors visited our stand and the Ministry of Education Coordinator, updated them, on the plans for the project achievements and the perspectives for the future. OLPC stand has been ranked second on the closing day.

11. Documentary Camp (6th -11th December 2010) Conducted by Rwanda OLPC Learning Team With an average of 25 people of private and public schools, the participation of headmistress and the Rwanda OLPC Learning Team, the “A day in the life” Documentary Camp was developed with the purpose of teach the kids creative ways to use the laptop in order to explore their potential and creativity.

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12. OLE Workshop (Julia and Desire Learning Team) From 15th November –January 4th 2010 ,Organized by Open Learning Exchange a workshop aim to develop a content (curriculum) related to Rwandan curriculum which will be loaded to a server to be placed at each school, and accessed by students through an activity called Learn developed in Nepal. Both OLPC Rwanda and the Ministry of Education team were invited to attend this workshop. Teachers form different schools with laptops and KIE students are the developers of this, content guided by OLE staffs, using the current books of Rwandan primary curriculum and Siyavula curriculum from South Africa. They started with only two subject Mathematics and English of Upper classes of Primary Education(P4 to P6), but the OLE objective is to provide schools the full curriculum with all subject studied in Rwanda including social studies and arts. The first test of the first term curriculum is going to happen on the 16th January 2011.

The role of OLPC in this activity was to try to push, guide and help teachers, KIE students to develop a curriculum which is not only use a laptop as vehicle of content but as leaning tool to more explore and understand the curriculum.

Future Plans

After the deployment of more than fifty thousand laptops all over the country,the future plan is basically to train the teachers the teachers of the schools that received laptops and children in those schools.

Parternership with other NGO'S

OLPC Rwanda is currently having parterneships with the following NGO's:

-International Educational Exchange(IEE)

-Carnegie Mellon University(CMU)

-Kigali instute of Education(KIE)

-Open learning Exchange(OLE)

-Search for Common Ground

OLPC Rwanda in the news

Kigali, 3 January 2007: Rwanda Commits to One Laptop per Child Initiative

Kigali, 2 October 2008: Kagame launches One Laptop per Child, pg. 1, pg. 2

AllAfrica, 9 January 2009: Rwanda: OLPC - 100,000 Computers to Be Imported This Year

Dagens Nyheter (Swedish), 21 January 2009: [1] - This article describes how young students bring their XOs to the vicinity of the airport to pick up good WiFi connections.

About Rwanda

detailed article:OLPC Rwanda/Background

Repubulika y'u Rwanda République Rwandaise Republic of Rwanda
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/LocationRwanda.png
Capital	Kigali
Official languages	Kinyarwanda French English
Area	26,338 km²
Population
- 2005 estimate	9,378,226
- 2002 census	8,128,553
- Density	320/km²
Education
- Literacy (%)	70.4
- Compulsory Years
- Compulsory Age
- Pop. in School Age
- Pop. in School
GDP (PPP) 2005 est.	USD 13 billion
- Per capita	USD 1,500
GDP (nominal) 2005 est.	USD 2 billion
- Per capita
HDI  (2004)	0.450 (low)
Gini Index  (1985)	28.9
Time zone	CAT (UTC+2)
Internet TLD	.rw
Calling code	+250
More statistics...

Rwanda, the land of one thousand hills, is known for its natural beauty and warm people, but also a recent past of human tragedy and violence. The country has begun embracing information technology as their main strategy for economic and social development as a part of Rwanda's Vision 2020 -- the long-term country development plan that aims to transform the country into a medium-level income country by 2020. Even before OLPC started their project in the country, bringing computer literacy to primary school students was a goal of their society in order to prepare their country for this new economy. OLPC just added to their effort the technology needed for operate in Rwanda's limited electrical infrastructure and average primary school size of 1500 students and expertise in how to unleash the creativity of the children through the XO.

10,000 XO laptops have been donated through 2007's Give One, Get One program; 5000 have recently been deployed and are in use by students and teachers. The remaining 5000 laptops will be arriving in late 2008. Concurrently the Government of Rwanda is preparing to directly purchase a significant number of XOs.

The biggest strength of this project in the country is the incommensurable commitment of the people involved in the laptop initiative. From the Honorable President Paul Kagame, who recently stated their commitment to saturate the school in the country with XOs in the next year. Rwanda is enthusiastic and supportive, of making the initiative a success.

Many languages are spoken in Rwanda, including Kinyarwanda, Swahili, French, and English.

Deployment details

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Primary Language	,|x|Language spoken::x}}
Number of Laptops	Number of manufactured laptops::120000
Keyboard Layout	Keyboard::OLPC English Keyboard
Build	,|x|Software release::x}}
Date(s) Arrived in Country	,|x|Has received laptops on date::x}}
School Server	,|x|School server status::x}}
Deployment Status	[[Deployment status::5K laptops have arrived. 5K more coming in November, 2008. Schools will teach in English, French and Kinyarwanda. More arrived in May 2009, and another 100k are in production. No School Server planned Much of the deployment will be off net. 96% of primary schools don't have electricity, no server or wireless network in the moment, average of 1k students per school and 70 per classroom. Powerpoint Presentation, Bootstrapping OLPC deployment in Rwanda, from Juliano Bittencourt & Brian Jordan, members of the OLPC Learning Team, who assisted with this large-scale deployment.]]

Recently, deployment of laptops to schools started.This started at the end of 2010 and more than 150 public schools received laptops. More than 47 thousand laptops have been deployed in those schools. Wire-ring of schools to receive the laptop was the first step before the deployment.