OLPC Rwanda

2007 status: green
green

Rwanda, under the strong conviction of president Paul Kagame, has committed to deploying 100,000 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, OLPC-Rwanda, which aims to serve the educational and learning needs of Rwanda and other countries across Africa.

OLPC-Rwanda

Background

Based on the commitment and enthusiasm of the Rwandan government for the OLPC program, in June of 2009, the OLPC Learning Team, originally located in Cambridge, MA, relocated to Kigali, Rwanda under the leadership of David Cavallo to create the only country headquarters for OLPC, OLPC-Rwanda. This was done in partnership with the Office of his Excellency Paul Kagame, the Ministry of Education and OLPC-Rwanda was originally located in Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).

You can follow some of the team's work on the page for educators, and on the OLPC Rwanda website[[1]]

Mission

Our international team is here to support the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) in this lofty and exciting endeavor. Our mission is simply to ensure that XO laptops are used in powerful ways to in order to improve the educational conditions of teachers, children, schools and communities in Rwanda.

OLPC-Rwanda aims to work on improving the educational conditions of teachers, children, schools in general and communities through the use of the XO. To achieve this objective we advise the government on the deployment of these laptops throughout the country. We also work hand in hand with other organizations interested in improving the quality of education and community development.

The Ministry of Education Team

• Bakuramutsa Nkubito, OLPC National Coordinator
• Murebwayire Aline, Administration Manager
• Kimenyi .N. Eric, Chief Technical Officer
• Mugabo Patrick, Logistics Officer

• Abatesi Susan, Administrative Assistant

• Uwimana Ummi, Database Administrator
• Mutabazi Emmanuel, System Engineer
• Hitimana Jean Paul, Awareness Officer
• Nyirahirwa Pauline, Training Officer
• Usenga Jeanne, Training Officer
• Masevelio Basil, Infrastructure and Deployment Officer

The OLPC local team

• Pedro Cuellar, Head Of Learning,
• Julia Reynolds, Field Learning and Development Coordinator, [Julia's Blog| http://juliarwanda.wordpress.com/]
• Desire Rwagaju, Learning Development Officer,
• Jimmy Intwali, Learning Development Officer,
• Jean Claude Tuyishimire, Learning Development Officer
• Adrien Ndikumana, Learning Development Officer

Current Activities

OLPC-Rwanda's main focus is to support the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) as they run this project. Since 2009 much of our work has focused on this and the development of other local capacity, and also work directly with children providing them with powerful ways to use their laptops both inside and outside of school time.

OLPC-Rwanda Key Learning Actions*

Time	Action	Description	Goals	Location
April 2011	Scratch Workshop	Working with kids on how to use scratch	Help kids better understand programming skills using scratch	OLPC Rwanda offices, Kacyiru, Kigali
April 2011	In-field support	Work with MINEDUC to supervise teacher trainings, work with MINEDUC on technical side	To evaluate the outcome of the trainings and get feedback from teachers	Countrywide
April 2011	Technical Workshop	Working with kids from Nonko Primary School on how to solve XO technical problems	Help kids learn how to solve technical normal problems(troubleshooting)	OLPC Rwanda offices, Kacyiru, Kigali
March 2011	In-field support	Support new OLPC trainers at schools	Help guide and support trainers to ensure the best work with teachers	Countrywide
March 2011	Trainer Preparation Workshop	Prepare new OLPC trainers to work with teachers	Create informational and mock training sessions to prepare new OLPC trainers	Ministry of Education, Kigali
March 2011	Community Awareness Guide	Worked with MINEDUC to create a plan and guide for community awareness	to prepare OLPC trainers to aware the community about the project	Ministry of Education, Kigali
March 2011	Social School Mapping Project	Work with students to do a holistic demographic analysis of their class, school and community	Students use math in meaningful ways	EPAK Primary school, Kimhurhura, Kigali
February 2011	Grandmother Legend Project	Work with students to collect Rwandans legends that will be put online to share and dialog with other students around the world	students learn more about their history and culture	ESCAF Primary school, Nyamirambo, Kigali
15th November –January 4th 2010	OLE Curriculum Workshop	a workshop aimed to develop content related to the Rwandan curriculum which will be loaded to school servers and accessed by students through an activity called Learn developed in Nepal	Development of content and lessons by local stakeholders that will be used in schools to support the current Rwandan curriculum	Remera Primary school, Remera, Kigali
6th -11th December 2010	Documentary Camp	students from 4 different primary schools have to create a documentary about "A Day in the[ir] Life"	For students to creatively express a day in their life by using the XO laptop	OLPC Rwanda offices, Kacyiru, Kigali
20-28 October 2010	1st African Education Expo	Education stakeholders from across Africa to meet and share work with guests including the Education Ministers of both Rwanda & Uganda	to spread the work of OLPC in Rwanda, the OLPC-Rwanda booth placed 2nd in a competition for best booth	KIST, Kiyovu, Kigali
3rd September 22 October 2010	Technical Teacher Training	Train teachers to diagnose and fix technical problems on the laptops	create sustainability for the project at the school-level	Kagugu Primary School
July 5th-9th 2010	Champion Teacher Training	Train 300 teachers and headmasters from upcoming deployment schools	create one champion teacher that can bring information about the XO laptop and OLPC to their school	Remera, Kigali, Rwanda
May 2010	Music and game programming Clubs	Conducted by Intwali Jimmy, Adrien & Jean Claude Students worked with OLPC-Rwanda and students from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to develop music and games, after CMU students left the work continued by OLPC-Rwanda in a club format	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	Nonko Primary School
4th Jun -7th July	Technical Teacher Training	Work with three teachers to develop technical capacity	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.	ESCAF Primary School
1st April 13th- , 4th July 2010	Technical Teacher Training	Prepare teachers for laptop use in the classroom	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.	Kagugu & Nonko Primary School
5th-16th March 2010	Malaria 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. 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.	Kagugu & Nonko, Rwamagana Primary Schools
February 2010	Basic Training on the XO use for Rwamagana School	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.	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.	Rwamagana Primary School
April 2010	Basic Training on the XO use for Kagugu, ESCAF and Nonko Schools	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.	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.	Kagugu, Kagugu, Nonko Primary School

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.

Partnerships

We are eager to create dual-purpose partnerships with local and internal partners whose missions are to enhance Rwandan education, or the lives of teachers & children. OLPC Rwanda currently has partnerships with the following organizations:

• RENCP Rwanda Education NGO Coordination Platform
  • RENCP’s mandate is to serve as a body for NGO representation, information sharing and coordination. The need for a coordinated NGO community within the education sector in Rwanda was felt by many years ago, but the initiative lacked leadership. The education sector in Rwanda is endowed with many development supporters, including local and international NGOs, donors and multilateral agencies. All of these actors seek to contribute to the development of a quality education system that benefits the Rwandan people.

• TEVSA [2]
  • TEVSA RWANDA works with students outside of the normal school structure (aged 15-18) who focus on developing specific manual skills. These participants will work alongside other developing community members from KIE, KIST and NUR to develop a grassroots technical team as part of a larger movement to initiate a national Rwanda Linux community. The goal of this community is to eventually become sustainable and to develop local programmers to create local content and activities specifically for the Rwandan context.

• Kigali Institue of Science & Technology (KIST) [3]

• Kigali Institue of Education (KIE) [4]

• National University of Rwanda, Centre for Instructional Technology (NUR/CIT) [5]

• International Educational Exchange (IEE) [6]

• Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) [7]

• Open Learning Exchange (OLE) [8]

• Search for Common Ground [9]
  • Partnering for a peace-building game for the XO

• ESRI [10]

Documents

Lesson Plans from Upcoming Large Scale Teacher Training, March 2011

Photos

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. These laptops were distributed from 2008 through 2009 and are now in the hands of both teachers and students, in use, across the country. At the end of 2010 another 65,000 XO laptops, from the Rwandan government's purchase of 100,000 XO laptops, were distributed en-masse to schools in every district in Rwanda. Community awareness programs and first phase trainings are now taking place.

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

In 2010 the second large-scale deployment of laptops to schools began. This started at the end of 2010 and concluded with more than 150 public schools receiving laptops. Over 60 thousand laptops have now been deployed in those schools. The wiring of schools that received laptops was the first step before the deployment. The training operation is currently run by the Ministry of Education countrywide.

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Primary Language	,|x|Language spoken::x}}
Number of Laptops	Number of manufactured laptops::110000
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::110K laptops in country. 60k laptops already deployed. Schools will teach in English, French and Kinyarwanda. 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.]]