OLE Nepal

Open Learning Exchange Nepal

Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal is a non-profit organization registered in Kathmandu, Nepal. It was founded in July of 2007 by Rabi Karmacharya, Bryan Berry, and Mahabir Pun. All three had been working on the One Laptop Per Child project for over one year's time. Mahabir Pun, in particular, has been connecting remote Nepali villages to the Internet for the last 7 years. OLE Nepal has signed an agreement with the government of Nepal to help implement Nepal's pilot of OLPC in 2008. As part of that, we are creating fully open-source digital content for the Nepal government's OLPC pilot in spring 2008.

We have a full-time staff of 7 and two full-time volunteers. Our content development team has one graphic designer and three programmers. Check out our demonstration activities. For the present, we are entirely focusing on developing learning activities in Squeak.

OLE Nepal resources

• Our Community More about the OLE Nepal Community.
• Our Blog which is pretty darn active
• Our FAQ.
• How you can get involved -- We are really looking for Squeak experts!

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 earlier. 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 the XO, but to utilize the XO to fill gaps, providing previously unavailable tools such as a virtual science lab.

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

OLE Nepal Blog

The OLE Nepal Blog is used to document in real-time, the actions and progress of OLE Nepal. Here are some past stories, with information relevant to the deployment of the XO.

See also

• Nepal-Austria Cooperation (still a stub)