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Image about the World Summit in Tunisia, showing Nicholas Negroponte and Kofi Annan when presenting the laptop

Hello, I am writing an article in the german Wikipedia on the "100-Dollar-Laptop" aka "Children's Machine" (link: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/100-Dollar-Laptop). I would like to add an image showing Nicholas Negroponte and Kofi Annan in Tunisia on the World Summit. Unfortunately on flickr there is no photo, which is compatible zu the gnu-licence. Only Creative Commons 2.5. with the right of commercial use and of course the gnu-licence are allowed to be uploaded in Wikipedia.

Do you have such a picture in your portfolio? Can you upload this picture with compatible licence on Wikipedia?

In my opinion such a picture would have positive impact on OLPC's image. If you google for "Children's Machine" the german Wikipedia-article has the best page rank. You can contact me on the german Wikipedia, search word "Betbuster".

Thanks, Wikipedia user: Betbuster 134.2.57.213 09:20, 19 December 2006 (EST)

School Gateways

I've looked around the site for a while and cannot find much about gateways at the schools. Can somebody tell me about the connectivity to the internet for the whole mesh network through gateways at schools? I'm especially interested in what the power requirements will be for a gateway, because I'm hoping to find out how hard it would be to set one up in an area where there is no electricity. Thank you!

The OLPC networking concept is not Internet-based. We assume that there will be no Internet connectivity and no Internet gateways. The laptops are being deployed into countries which do not have a lot of native-language content available on the Internet. The networking focus is to make sure that the laptops will be able to communicate with each other over a larger than normal area, and that they will be able to communicate with resources in the school. In most cases, these school resources will not be Internet gateways but will be more like a cross between a library and an FTP site with content that kids can download to their laptops. Of course some schools will have Internet access and may copy Internet content for use by the kids, but the laptops are not intended to be used for direct Internet surfing.

OLPC is not interested in taking on the added burden of Internet connectivity for dozens of countries, but others are, including OLPC4USA. See Internet for more. --Mokurai 15:30, 26 December 2006 (EST)

In regard to your questions about power, you may wish to read the Battery and power page for tips.

Technology innovation is moving at a very rapid pace

How are you guys planning for the future. How are you guys preparing for the technology currently planned to be used inside the laptop becoming absolete. What is your turnaround time between parts going into production and actually being distributed to the people? --314159271828 01:55, 4 December 2006 (EST)

Maximum Altitude Spec

According to the Hardware specification the Maximum altitude: -15m to 3048m (14.7 to 10.1 psia) (operating), -15m to 12192m (14.7 to 4.4 psia) (non-operating... would it be possible to operate (safely) above that altitude? After all, in the Andes (and I'll assume the Himalayas) many people live higher... El Alto 4150m, Potosi 3967m, etc... --Xavi 12:47, 30 November 2006 (EST)

Usability and User Testing

There is very little public information about requirements gathering, usability and user testing. In other words, how do you know whether the OLPC (i) will meet your users' needs and (ii) is easy enough for them to use? Have the target user groups been characterized? What ongoing plans do you have for this? I`d Like test the OLPC in Argentina, Please contct with me to know how. Thanks.

As far as I know, there are two local groups in Argentina with test boards (don't know if anybody has the 2B1/XO prototypes though). They are Ututo and Tuquito. I know Ututo had some explicit arrangements to let other people use/test the boards. If anybody knows about other groups (or about any local XOs) please let me know (or post in the OLPC Argentina pages. --Xavi 07:23, 6 December 2006 (EST)

Deployment Criteria & Metrics

Although these issues are basically 'national' prerogatives, is there anything being done at the OLPC level? In many countries, 1 million laptops will either be too little or too much. All along, before, during and after the deployment they should be able to assess the result of the effort (metrics), be it to keep the course, or change things, or try new things, etc.

We do not believe there is such a thing as too little. In countries where 1 million laptops is too many, we won't be able to do an early deployment, but we do expect that after a few million units are in the field, there will be other organizations who will deploy smaller quantities to smaller countries, such as many island nations. In fact, Libya has announced their intention to buy laptops for some poorer African nations.

I think that spanish speaking latin american countries do fit in a gray-zone there; there are many that individually would have to wait for later stages, but together they could probably put something - ie: central american countries.

As far ans metrics are concerned, we take that very seriously both in the design of the laptops and in the whole deployment process. We are constantly measuring, analysing and making course corrections based on the data. We will continue to do so.

Seriousness is good. Transparency too.  :) I've somehow managed to reach the Pilot Projects#Diversity Matrix, which I find a bit shallow and unstructured for my taste, so I'm assuming that more structured guidelines are being thought out, planned and to be published, right? After all, as the proposers of the idea, the performance analysis and other measurements should be your domain of expertise. For example, which population segment is known to make the most out of the laptop experience? Is income considered a (key) factor? People with very-low, low, medium, high, or very-high income are 'all equal' or they somehow 'profit' differently in respect to their original educational levels? Under all circumstances?

I'm well aware that these are mostly unanswered questions (I'm not looking for an answer here) and will be subject to many factors and variables; notwithstanding, what kind of information is being thought as necessary to evaluate or consider? All I'm asking is to be able to see the guidelines - and hopefully a way to collaborate.--Xavi 17:04, 9 December 2006 (EST)

Timor Leste (East Timor) not involved yet and how to get the process off on the right foot

I am a volunteer IT worker here in Dili. I wish to follow through on getting the Government/Min of Education involved. Is there a set of templates/docs/procedures for me to follow? If so, then I think that they would be very useful for other countries. thanks chris mansonc@usa.net

Thanks for writing in. Right now I think the whole world knows about the program. You may contact your countries Minster of Education and try to start a dialogue about the service OLPC is offering. If they are interested you may then try with in your country to find big donor corporations that will come up with the funds for your country and you can also contact me on this site to ask more questions in how you can do that. I am sure you speak the native language which would make this much easier that you can also speak English too. This way I can explain this to you as in how to do that. Thanks Hunter--Hunter 10:36, 28 December 2006 (EST)

Social Benefit

How will OLPC benefit countries when the majority of children do not attend public school or public school is not available?

Your statistics are questionable. What is your source for such an outrageous statement? In any case, the OLPC is not distributing laptops to schools, they are distributing laptops to kids. In thousands of small towns and villages, the existence of a mesh of laptops will create a learning infrastructure that can function without a school building.

Mention was made in the NY Times article of a sponsorship program where people could fund a OLPC for a child in a target country. The quote was attributed to Nicholas N. How do we sign up?

If there was such a quote, it was incorrect. The laptops are being purchased by national ministries of education. If you want to sponsor the purchase of laptops then you must make arrangements with a national ministry of education. The OLPC will not be involved at all in such arrangements. In the USA you should contact OLPC4USA. For personal purchase you should read the Retail page.

--Hunter 10:52, 28 December 2006 (EST)

Support for Self-Learners

I understand that you initially sell batches of at least 1 mio OLPC laptops to departments of education who distribute them to children going to public schools where trained teachers will put them to use applying localised curriculas. So far I can imagine quite well how OLPC hardware and software supports the kid's learning effort. This picture best matches developing countries such as OLPC's first subscribers rather than really poor 3rd world countries.

However, what about those children who cannot attend to schools and have no teachers, which is not uncommon in really poor 3rd world countries? I still cannot imagine how illiterate kids (probably having illiterate parents) teach themselves the usage of the OLPC laptop and moreover teach themselves basic reading, writing and math.

Personally (can't talk for others) I've been working under the assumption that some level of schooling will be available so that reading and writing, although not necessarily a given, will be a guided process. Nevertheless, I think that the sound processing capabilities of the OLPC would be more than enough to have speech synthesis and text-to-speech allowing 'oral' tutoring and building language skills. These technologies could also be used as an opportunity to include kids with communication pathologies too.--Xavi 23:43, 19 December 2006 (EST)

I can imagine that your idea with the sound and text-to-speech functionalities could work provided that localised software supporting it comes with the laptop. Such software would have to be automatically loaded and run in such a way that when you boot it up, it starts to talk and explain by itself. By the way, similar software could support self-learning foreign languages e.g. for better access to the internet content. However, as far as I know text-to-speech is only available yet for very few (mainly first world) languages. Are there already plans or efforts in this direction?

I fear that as so often the poorest of the poor are left out because it is so much more difficult to help them having not the faintest bit of infrastructure. The OLPC project is a huge oportunity to them. OLPC has achieved already so much which seemed impossible that helping also the poorest finally appears feasible by supporting self-learning. This seems worth to be included in OLPC's project plans.

I'm not a project team-member so whatever I say is not official. That said, I can only add that the goal of the project is to provide/propose to governments a laptop that is (financially) cheap enough to be massively distributed to kids while being powerful enough to do all sorts of things. It'll be upto those governments to decide how they'll be deployed, what content will be included (and/or developed), etc. In some target countries schooling is so widespread making your scenario a marginal one (but nevertheless important). In other countries, I agree, things are quite the opposite. An interesting reading is the Learning Vision and its reference to the CREATE project in Costa Rica, where some families moved into a town that had 1:1 computer education just so that their kids would have access to that kind of education. IOW, the population pro-actively flocked to that schooling system.

The 'poorest of the poor' will always be marginal to central efforts, a sad truth. There are millions of kids in sub-optimal schooling systems today, and I find it extremely important to raise that level and the OLPC addresses it squarely. Without the OLPC, millions of kids will be left in the broad swath of population that today we call the 'third world'.

One final thing to note, is that my idea for the "speaking-laptop that will teach a kid how to use it" is just that, an idea. The technical and pedagogical aspects of such a marvel... I can only guess...and dream. --Xavi 12:23, 20 December 2006 (EST)

I start to get the picture now. I was a bit confused about the mission statement given in the front page of http://laptop.org saying: "Introducing the children's laptop from One Laptop per Child — a potent learning tool created expressly for the world's poorest children living in its most remote environments." Probably I understood it too literally.

The OLPC laptop in the present form and with the presently available software seems useful mainly in areas where kids already have access to schools and teachers. This mainly covers developing countries rather than the even far poorer 3rd world countries which probably could not afford to buy OLPC laptops in large quantity anyway. Even if they received those laptops for free they could not make good use of it because they hardly have schools and teachers to tutor the majority of the childern in using them. Don't get me wrong. Each child getting a better education - no matter where - is a gain for all of us on this planet. The OLPC project is well under way to take this cause a great leap ahead. I was just confused thinking that the mission statement really meant "the world's poorest children" and I was trying to find out how this is intended to be achieved.

If things go somewhere according to plan, the result will be millions of kids with a real chance at education where there was barely any (or parody of). And that for me, is not just 'good enough', it's 'not perfect but darn good'!

BTW, "poorest" and "remotest" are terms that are hard to translate into a homogeneous reality. Who is poorer? A homeless in say, Miami, or one in Maputo? I consider Istambul a remote place, but I doubt somebody in Ankara would agree with me. Is distance the factor? Or the time it takes to get there? Or a relative/subjective mix? --Xavi 09:01, 21 December 2006 (EST)

My main questions are answered. I shortened both questions and answers a bit for the benefit of future readers. The emerging discussion might better be continued in a discussion section like the community portal of this wiki. --Roleic 20:25, 22 December 2006 (CET)

Accessibility

What mechanism olpc is going to adopt to make it accessable for child with physical disabilities? Will there be seperate keyboards for blind with braile? Will there be alternate input methods for child with dysfunctioning hands?

--Ankur Sharma, olpc Nepal (ankur@olpcnepal.org)

As far as I know, OLPC keybords are standardized for each country's language/s, but not braille. The OLPC has 3 USB ports to which external (braille) keyboards may be connected (quick search and sample result or alternative method). In order to better gauge the dimension of the issue, the World Health Organization (WHO) has some statistics on the incidence of blindness.

I have posted some observations about Dasher as an alternative input method, not only for physical disabilities but general use too. --Xavi 09:45, 21 December 2006 (EST)

Programming

Does the os suport basic programming.

Short answer: yes.

A bit longer, assuming that by 'basic programming' you mean 'simple programming' (instead of the BASIC language), you have Etoys (Squeak), LOGO, Javascript, Csound, and most other things are in Python. You should also check the pages on software and our software. And since the project is based on an open-source philosophy, even the OS will be accessible to kids to fiddle with.--Xavi 16:49, 27 December 2006 (EST)

I question whether there is some benefit for us or you by getting involved

We are a St. Louis MO based charity doing Health Related activity in many poor parts of the world including Ecuador, Africa, Asia etc. We have recently been asked by Ecuador officials to assist in several different activates, including build schools, clinics, furnish computers etc.(we have a current request for 100 computers that we are trying to fulfill.

Or name is Wings of Hope and you can view our website at www.wings-of-hope.org to get some idea of what we do and who we do it for, both locally and around the world. We are a volunteer organization with pilots, nurses and support people stationed in many countries in poverty stricken areas. We are non political, non religious based, have no ethnic motivations nor any other motivation based issues except to help people in need.

We furnish air transport service to poor people in the central part of the United States to get them to health care facilities. We set up health clinics in poor areas of the US and we Donate aircraft to many areas of the world to be used as Air Ambulances. The website above will reveal a lot about Wings of Hope activates.

I saw the article in Popular Science about your computers and I just feel there is something that we can offer that will advance your cause. Our relationships appear to be with the kind of folks you are trying to reach. If you feel we can be of any assistance to your efforts, we would like to discuss the issue(s).

Please Contact our Director, MR. Douglas Clements, www.woh206@earthlink.net or 636-537-1302, 800-448-9487.

Keith Barbero, WOH Board Member

--Hunter 10:45, 28 December 2006 (EST)

From what has been publicly displayed this is mainly a government program that has to have approval from the hosting country to be implemented. Depending on the type of services you are offering this may or may not be a a program that could fit in to your NGO's aim. But if you are intrested from the stand point of ONE LAP TOP FOR EVERY CHILD then you should keep in touch and ask more questions as they come to you. Thanks Hunter

Availability

Hi

You could make this wonderful PC available to everyone on a commercial basis. Charge USD 150 or 200 for it (I would at least buy one) and let the profit sponsor kids in the 3rd world. This would also up the produced volume getting the hw costs even lower.

Just an idea :-)

-s

--Hunter 11:00, 28 December 2006 (EST)

Thanks for writing in but unfortunately this is a closed market program for those that are underprivileged in nations out side the USA. Fortunately there are many programs in the USA that offer free computers for children and many others around the country. You can find this information on the internet or your local directory. The lap top seems very nice for the price$100.00 but it is not really a main stream product for regular use and if put up in the general market it could run about $700.00 (US) Thanks Hunter

-- djradon 19:59, 31 December 2006 (MST) Why not sell them in the U.S. for whatever the market will pay? I'd pay $700 for one to use as a test machine for olpc-targeted software.

Investment?

How can an individual invest in olpc? I use ------------.com for my investments.

Given the scale that the OLPC is targeting, it can only be compared with (supra) national efforts, so investment is done by governments, not individuals. Purchasing an OLPC is, again, done by governments or their agencies, not individuals. So if you want to invest money, paying taxes and participating in your community would probably be the best approach. If you want to invest time and energy (a 'soft' investment, but much harder than just pouring money) you can get involved through this wiki (to whatever shores that may lead you).

I edited your reference to a (financial) site because I don't consider it to be appropriate. Others may disagree.--Xavi 00:39, 1 January 2007 (EST)

What about poor kids in our country (USA)?

As a technology professional, I see tremendous value in OLPC. I see OLPC changing the way we educate our children. I understand that school children in the USA have more opportunities than school children in most parts of the world. However, we do have school children in this country that need the help that OLPC can provide.

Why are children in the USA not even on the deployment radar? Why not sell the laptops to schools in our own country? Are our poor not unfortunate enough?

Disclaimer: This is a personal PoV.

I feel that if attention is given to the 'developed poor' (a noble and worthy action in itself) the OLPC effect in 'poor countries' will be diluted and risks being subverted away from the 'global poor'. Much in the same way that big-pharma targets 'developed ailments' (ie: Viagra) due to their profit and growth requirements instead of working in third-world diseases like malaria, chagas, and others.

In a nutshell: I would prefer the OLPC stays focused where it can do the greatest good.--Xavi 10:22, 1 January 2007 (EST)

security

i just learned of this project today and am very excited about it. one of the things that holds poor children back is lack of experience. children have so many marvelous ideas in their heads, but if a child doesn't know that architects or engineers exist, he or she can't hope to become one. not that becoming one is the point. the point is having a future to hope for as well as something to enjoy in the present. the children will develop these computers in ways none of us can imagine. some will create great works of art. some will become business moguls. some will find ways to help others. what a wonderful thing. i can also see how this project might become another economic project for the whole village. like the entrepreneur who buys a cell phone and sells minutes of its use, somebody's going to buy a hard drive and a USB cable. or do something else i can't imagine. i hope mohammed yunas knows about this. which brings me to my concern. as described on these pages, these machines are incredibly useful. i want one myself. i can wait until the idea makes it to the open market, but many adults are not so patient. i can see these powerful machines and their mesh network ability being very attractive to bandits, drug dealers, the parents of the children who can use them in their businesses and so on. it's not just that the children would lose their laptops. i am concerned for their safety, and that this will become another tool to enslave child for the benefit of adults. (i'm not talking about the child keeping the books for a family business, which helps the whole family.) i have no doubt that the minds who designed these incredible machines can solve this dilemma as well. i think you have probably already thought about this, but i didn't find where the site addressed it. i felt it would be wrong not to bring it up to be sure the children are protected. thank you for doing this for the world's children. i look forward to learning more and finding ways to contribute. dee pearson

Buying One

How would I buy one of theese machines? please email me if you know at princesskatie_1993@yahoo.com thank you!