OLPC Chiapas
This is a small deployment of about 40 laptops to two one-room multigrade rural schools in the forests of Chiapas, Mexico. The project Tecno-Tzotzil won one of the awards of MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Competition
We will be using the Strawberry edition of Sugar (yummm...) on a Stick running on Classmate Convertible netbooks, as we were unable to obtain just 40 XOs. The Classmate is a nice machine, faster than the XO, and also with camera, collapsible display and mesh network capability. The display can´t be read under sunlight though, and SoaS currently does not support laptop to laptop communication in the wild - they have to be connected either to the same wireless net or else to the school server or other jabber server in order to share activities. SoaS is still in Beta but fairly stable and well supported by the Sugar Labs community.
Classes start August 24, 2009, after teacher training, at two one-room multigrade rural schools. Community instructors, educational authorities and later the children, will learn how to develop constructionist activities. We will research the impact of the laptops on children's learning of their standard curriculum and (mainly, we hope) developing abilities not specified in the curriculum. This experiment will last one school year, but we will return one year afterwards to further assess the impact.
More details on this project at http://sites.google.com/site/tecnotzotzil/
| Primary Language | ,|x|Language spoken::x}} |
| Number of Laptops | Number of manufactured laptops::40 |
| Keyboard Layout | 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::Current status: Starting project planning (May 2009). Classes start middle August. |