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Blogs

Announcements

XO 1.5 in development

A hardware refresh for the XO 1, the XO 1.5, is under development. It will use primarily the same case and spare parts as the original model, but will have four times the memory and four times the disk, and a faster processor.

XO Software 8.2.0 available

See Announcements/8.2.0

Public events

Nov 20, 2008: Changing the World

Details: Events/Changing the World

Thursday, November 20, 2008 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Harvard Science Center D

Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop per Child (OLPC)

Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development, Harvard Kennedy School

Demonstrations by OLPC staff

Older news updates

Weekly OLPC News postings to the community-news mailing list give updates on recent work. You can subscribe to that mailing list. Weekly postings to the list were put on hold at the start of 2009. Below are summaries of older weekly updates.

2005-2006 | 2007 | 2008

Week of December, 14th

G1G1 Brussels: The campaign officially went global last week as the first pallets of XOs arrived at OLPC Europe. Adam Holt deplaned from Boston at almost the same moment, and went straight to work on the repackaging assembly line, which hard-laboring OLPCers there call “The Sweatshop.” The French OLPC Foundation program, known as Un chez toi, un chez moi, is building momentum. They’ve created a viral action to get to the maximum number of people in a minimum amount of time, and have produced supplementary Zimi videos in 13 languages on Dailymotion (http://www.dailymotion.com/olpcfoundation/video/x7f7jj_onelaptop-per-child-zimis-story-fu_school). As we reported last week, they also have a French TV star video on the Dailymotion France homepage (http://www.dailymotion.com/fr/featured). Articles have started to appear: http://www.mood-for.fr/one-laptop-per-child-france-olpc/. Their objective is 1725 new orders in the next two weeks. The European country that books the highest sales gets a red XO. This publication contains confidential information. Distributing or forwarding it beyond the intended recipients, either in part or in its entirety, is strictly prohibited. If you have any questions about this notice please contact robert@laptop.org.

In the UK, Daniel Drake has been working with Racepoint UK, which has secured one big TV spot just before Christmas, plus two radio spots with Nicholas and three significant print spots. The Dutch group has set up meetings for next week. http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPCNL_meetings. Christophe in Austria is working on a program for Amazon’s Germanlanguage webpage, Amazon.de, which will debut next week. In Belgium, OLPC began the SWIFT internal project of G1G3 and conducted demonstrations and seminars at the various SWIFT campuses. In its second week of "telephone boom" for G100(0), the OLPC team contacted 200 corporations with first calls, and had promising results from four of them.

Cambridge: The Change the World (CTW) program is creating a new opportunity for OLPC to reach a wider audience interested in bringing XOs to the world’s children. Under CTW, with a minimum donation of 100 XOs an individual, organization, business or any other donor can now be an active member of the global XO community, with support from OLPC. Jennifer Amaya, Nia Lewis, Julia Reynolds, Darah Tappitake, Mel Chua, Reuben Caron and Frances Hopkins have devoted considerable time over the past two weeks to building a foundation for the program. They’ve ascertained that the key audiences for CTW are teachers, charity groups, corporate sponsors, and people in all of our communities. To hone their message’s tone and content, the CTW team reflected on why an OLPC experience is unique. They went back to the basics, focusing on the elements of an XO program that make learning about the learners, and enable the learners to connect with the world around them. [...]

Week of December, 7th

Development

Perú: Rodrigo Arboleda traveled to Lima and Cuzco to advance on purchase orders for the provinces of Cuzco, Callao, Tumbes and Aucash. He met in Lima with local representative of Tumbes Province. He also met with Jose Miguel Morales, chairman of the Entrepreneurs for Education Foundation, which is working with groups of Peruvian miners to put XOs in mining town schools.

Next, Rodrigo traveled high into the Andes to Cuzco with Oscar Becerra and Raul Díaz Chavez, who is the Peruvian vice minister of education. The three met with the provincial governor, Hugo González, who renewed his pledge to buy 190,000 laptops, 50,000 of them ASAP. Also in Cuzco, Rodrigo helped celebrate the arrival of 4,000 more machines destined for provincial school children. Many of the kids who attended the affair had to travel ten hours on mules, and then by bus, from their remote villages. Rodrigo expects Cuzco’s governor will catalyze action from his counterparts in Callao and Aucash, where Oscar is finalizing similar pledges.

Colombia: Rodrigo then joined Nicholas aboard a Colombian military aircraft to La Macarena, where the Army just deployed 700 machines (Weekend, November 9th and 23rd).

For decades a stronghold of the FARC guerrillas. La Macarena had no TV, no roads and, until recently, no Internet access. Now, thanks to a collaborative effort among OLPC, the ministry of defense and the ministry of telecommunications, there are 700 XOs in the hands of La Macarena’s school children, and the town is fully connected to the world. Children who once knew only killings, kidnappings, land mines, extortion and death can see a ray of hope in their lives. Nicholas gave several TV and other media interviews, met with civic leaders and NGOs and was accompanied by Jason Wishnow from TED, who is going to produce a video of the visit.

Europe: The grassroot groups all gathered in Brussels for the weekend to make plans for G1G1 across the continent. OLPC France has produced a video featuring the French TV star Gérard Klein to promote the OLPC project and the G1G1 in France. See it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k3BzeizM7iZn6ARUiF . Next Wednesday OLPC France will hold a press conference with AMD where Walter De Brouwer hopes to show the video. They also sent out a promotional press announcement: http://olpcfrance.org/xo . The Brussels office began this week to contact the 150 largest European companies with a special offer for G100(0) http://www.olpceu.org/content/initiatives/g100g1000.html Before the end of the year, the 500 biggest corporations in Europe will have been contacted.

Walter gave a talk at the European Commission's Inclusion Days in Vienna entitled "Lessons in educational terrorism." http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/cf/person.cfm?personid=16051&eventId =einc08 Nirj Deva addressed the parliament in PNG about the XO, and together with Michael and Barry successfully persuaded the government to make the XO a priority (Weekend, November 30). OLPC Europe will be their representative in Brussels and approach the EU formally about EDF funding with help from the ACP secretariat. Sam Lounis and Giuila D'Amico attended the annual conference of CSR Europe, the association of CSR departments of European companies. A lot of valuable new contacts came out of the meeting. OLPC Europe now has agreements with seven countries to do cross-border tax deductions for charity at a fixed processing fee. By the end of next year, they hope to have 10 to 20. The Swift internal employee G1G3 starts next week.

Learning

Brazil: Juliano Bittencourt participated in a São Paulo meeting of the five Brazilian 1:1 schools. In the spring of last year, the Brazilian government selected five schools in the country to test different models of educational laptops donated by three vendors. OLPC donated laptops to two schools; one in São Paulo and other in Porto Alegre. Intel donated Classmates to one school in the city of Piraí and another in Palmas. An Asian vendor, Encore, donated 40 laptops to a single classroom in a school in Brasilia. The three-day meeting included the teachers, principals and students of the five schools, plus representatives from the ministry of education, President Lula’s office and several universities involved in the Brazilian 1:1 initiative. [...]

Perú: Carla Gòmez Monroy spent the week in country. She planned on working with teachers and students on community-based projects at a secondary school in Tarapoto City. She also visited schools, met with teachers, advised the locals on technical issues and helped with the repair of machines.

As parents in San Pedro de Cumbaza, Perú, held a meeting, their children shot video of the proceedings with their XOs.

Paraguay: Vicenta Cano, the pedagogical advisor to Paraguay Educa, reports that they are putting the teacher training and the pedagogical vision of the project in sync. The workshops for Caacupé's teachers will happen during the vacation period; the first from December 9th to the 23rd, and the second from February 9th to the 16th.

Cambridge: Cynthia Solomon, Brian Jordan, Nia Lewis and Julia Reynolds assembled photos from the laptop countries for tailor-made presentations to last year’s G1G1 donors. The hope is that the real images and stories will help inspire people to donate again this year - despite the sour economic climate - as they see the incredibly positive results already achieved. Claudia, Julia, Cynthia, Brian, and Barbara met with David Sengeh to a discuss a 30 machine deployment in Sierra Leone that will begin in a few weeks. Literacy is a key issue and they will work on ways for using laptops to help develop different literacies among the participants. They brainstormed with David the possibilities for the project in terms of saturation, target population, high school students/tutors and possible activities (applications) for the students. They also discussed what data David needs to gather in order to measure impact.

Week of November, 30th

Give One Get One OLPC is adding two new donor options this weekend, Give 100 and Give 1000, which allow individuals, groups or companies to send laptops anywhere in the world. The difference between G100 and G1000 is not price-per-laptop but the support that OLPC will offer afterward (detailed at laptop.org). However, there is a pricing difference for the 50 least developed nations and the rest of the world, a per laptop cost of $219 and $259, respectively. We also added a mechanism to acknowledge somebody (with either a physical or electronic card) in whose behalf you gave a laptop. The general flow between OLPC and Amazon is illustrated below:

Development

Papua New Guinea: It was a momentous week for the ongoing effort in Oceania as Papua New Guinea (PNG) embraced OLPC to boost basic education and economic development in this poor South Pacific nation. In a keynote speech before a major international conference in the ramshackle capital of Port Moresby, the island country's acting prime minister, Dr. Puka Temu, told attendees that OLPC “will bring enormous benefits,” to PNG. It “will cover over 7,000 educational institutions from elementary to secondary schools,” Temu said, and “benefit over 1,160,000 children and 35,700 teachers." Several small-scale pilot projects, deploying OLPC-donated machines, have been underway in PNG since earlier this year. [...]

Argentina: Antonio Battro met with the governor Santa Fe province, Dr. Hermes Binner, and his staff. Binner told Antonio he is willing to launch OLPC in Santa Fe, beginning with the first schools next March. Crucial to Binner’s decision is the example of his friend, President Tabaré Vásquez of Uruguay, and the enthusiastic report of the CEIBAL experience made by Lilia Puig, a former member of the Argentinian House of Representatives, who recently visited Montevideo with David Asteggiano, Santa Fe’s secretary of state for science, technology and innovation. [...]

Week of November, 23rd

OLPC chose buzz over bang for the opening days of the G1G1 launch. There was minimal fanfare from major broadcasting or print media, but plenty of word-of-mouth and chatter in the trade press, and an air of excitement in the blogosphere. Now broadcast ads will begin to run, and a full-fledged media campaign soon will start. Unlike last year’s campaign, which began with a splash and then attenuated rapidly, we expect to build interest, and sales, as we move ahead. A cornerstone of the strategy is our nationwide billboard effort, which is much more extensive than last year’s. Here’s a map of the deployments: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=10077270797530438 4594.00045b09ae1350c559d9e&z=4 Meantime, OLPC Europe is getting ready for global G1G1. As they await price, shipping and delivery instructions from Boston, the grassroots groups of Austria, Germany, France, Holland and four other European countries working together on the media front. Thanks to loyal fans in Israel, Greece, UK, Dubai, Jordan, Portugal, Italy and Spain and with the important help of AMD - a media team has been set up and is waiting (patiently) to get started.

Development

Washington DC: Nicholas participated on Monday in three CNN shoots (domestic, international and on-line), as well as a Fox News segment. That night, he did a 20second segment with PBS’s Charlie Rose. Also on Monday, Nicholas attended a small meeting - 20 people in all - hosted by Bob Zoelnick of the World Bank to discuss the role of ICT in development. All the usual suspects, besides OLPC, were there. Unfortunately, the conversation turned very anachronistic, with participants harping back to digital literacy as an end, rather than a means. Job creation through outsourcing was regarded as a new and good idea. Nicholas tried to emphasize that the World Bank should try to foster a nationwide culture of learning learning in the young, rather than help establish a few more industrial parks for young entrants to the job markets. [...]

Brussels: Walter De Brouwer reports that during European Development Days in Strasbourg OLPC Europe met with the head of the international affairs department for the city of Bonn, and did a presentation and demo of the XO. They also spoke to Gaudentia Kabaka, the Tanzanian deputy minister for higher education, science and technology, and met President Marc Ravalomanana of Madagascar. . On the corporate front, they held a conference call with Allianz SE, which is highly interested in OLPC and wants to cooperate with us. The chairman of the Industrial Design Institute of Poland will work to arrange a meeting in January between OLPC Europe and the Polish minister of education, as well the prime minister.

Week of November, 16th

G1G1 begins

Last week was a blur in Cambridge, New York and throughout OLPC world wide as we prepared for our first global campaign. Beginning with a Monday morning “war room” session in Patmos, 1CC deployed every available hand to ensure that all will be ready for tomorrow’s launch.

Everyone on the team contributed to G1G1 in some way, and everyone’s ready to jump into action should any new technical challenges suddenly pop up. Seth Woodworth, C. Scott Ananian, Christian Schmidt, Stefan Unterhauser, SJ Klein, Eben Eliason and Henry Hardy worked many hours on servers and new content for laptop.org. The site went live on Friday afternoon. Check it out: http://laptop.org. Great job everyone!

Mel Chua, Adam Holt, Frances Hopkins and SJ organized volunteers to restructure, review and update the many Frequently Asked Questions that have been collected over the last year, http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_FAQ . Paul Fox helped manage and send email thank you notes to last year's G1G1 donors, as well as to this year's list of interested people. More than a hundred thousand messages went out. SJ has helped manage many of the community efforts, website and news efforts ahead of the launch.

Eben created a Global G1G1 GoogleMap which allows everyone to post the location of their XO. In just a few days the map has been viewed more than 41,000 times, primarily by last year's G1G1 participants who received their email thank yous. Add your XO at http://www.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=114558805698125207804.00 0001132ad0d5f3d14f8&z=0 (A direct link from laptop.org will be added shortly).

Adam and Kim Quirk helped prepare the Amazon storefront. They worked on everything from policy statements to help pages, links, terms and conditions, and release management. Many hours were spent on the phone with the very patient and helpful people from Amazon US and Amazon UK. The storefronts will be live at six am Monday, EST. Mel announced that community testers have set themselves a short term goal of having all 28 G1G1 shipping Activities documented and tested before Christmas. She also reports that work on scripts for configuring XO/XS test beds now has some community volunteers. Our thanks go out to those volunteers!

Along with just about everyone else in the office, the test team was involved in a number of G1G1 activities, from organizing video footage to updating support documentation. We have deployed a new machine at the MIT colo in anticipation of the G1G1 campaign. A major effort to prepare the website, wiki and infrastructure for increased traffic has been underway, as well. The infrastructure changes meant that OLPC’s primary public-facing machines and services were unavailable from approximately 16:30 to 21:30 Tuesday, November 11th. Web, wiki, and mail services were impacted. Scott Ananian spent much of the week shoring up web services in advance of the launch. Our wiki and web site are now running in well-documented virtual hosts, from content version-controlled in git. Our wiki now sits behind a reverse proxy, in a configuration closely matching that used by the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikipedia. We also have in place low-bandwidth fallbacks in case of high load. Work will continue to gradually unload and untangle the over taxed pedal.laptop.org.

A highlight of the week was a visit to 1CC by Tom Brady, quarterback for the New England Patriots, who came by to shoot a video for G1G1. The XO amazed him. Brady asked if some machines could be sent to his sister’s school in California, as well as a second shipment to his other sister, who is working in Uganda. Our pro bono partners at Racepoint, Mediacom and Taxi have devised an impressive media campaign. Several new videos begin tonight (Sunday) on the OLPC You Tube channel, as well as on Google TV, laptop.org and elsewhere, and they include an excellent animation on our mission. New content will debut throughout the week.

FaceBook members can join the OLPC cause and invite their friends to do the same. Additional FaceBook and Google gadgets will be updated in the next few days. Tomorrow, G1G1 will be featured on more than 4,000 billboards and other outdoor venues nationwide. Commercials will air on all major broadcast channels, cable and on radio. Newspapers and magazines will begin with print ads.

Don’t miss Nicholas tomorrow night on PBS with Charlie Rose, who is devoting his program to OLPC. It also will run on charlierose.com. If you’re near Boston on Thursday night, the 20th, come to Hall D of the Science Center at Harvard to hear Nicholas and Calestous Juma speak. The topic of the 7:00-9:00 program is “One Laptop per Child: Changing the World.” The OLPC staff will put on demonstrations. Sponsors include the Harvard College Global Hunger Initiative and multiple other Harvard groups. Light meals will be provided. OLPC’s regular business proceeded apace as well: Development Arkansas: Nicholas spent a morning with the senior Walmart management at their Bentonville headquarters exploring a broad agenda that ranged from the Foundation to their 4000 retail stores to on-line sales and logistics. The next step is a more focused discussion. The idea is an agreement, if we have one at all, by 1/1/09.

Week of November, 9th

G1G1 has gone global. Nicholas announced to delegates at the World of Health IT conference in Copenhagen last week that all 27 EU member states would take part this year. Meanwhile, the SWIFT company in Brussels said that G1G1 will be promoted internally - as G3G1 - throughout its worldwide operations, including the company’s major east Asian offices in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. With re-launch just eight days away, there will be an all-hands meeting in Patmos on Monday at 11:00 to discuss status and to solicit ideas. As Ed Sullivan used to say, this is going to be a really big show. We will have more than 3,000 billboards and outdoor spots ready to go up next week in many different locations throughout the United States. Mediacom continues to solicit national and local television, radio, digital and print space for G1G1 commercials and messaging. Two commercials to run on Google TV, major television stations and elsewhere are wrapping in South Africa. [...]

Week of November, 2nd

Antonio Battro presented Pope Benedict XVI with an XO on Friday at the Vatican. The occasion was a papal audience for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, of which Antonio is a member. They spoke about OLPC’s philosophy and objectives in the developing world. Benedict seemed deeply pleased by our work. Antonio is in Rome to address a plenary session of the academy. Development New York City: John Lennon will be a spokesperson of sorts for OLPC in the upcoming G1G1 campaign – with Yoko Ono’s blessing. Taxi is preparing scripts and working on special effects to present Lennon in his own voice on 15- and 30-second videos. Lennon will say that he could only imagine what you can do now. In parallel, MediaCom, with one of the world’s largest media communications agency networks, is working on placing TV, print and web ads.

Also in New York, Nicholas and Mayor Michael Bloomberg kicked off the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s bi-annual meeting at the Waldorf Astoria. Attendees heard an appeal for pro bono ad space in weeklies and dailies. The same afternoon, Nicholas was the closing speaker at Ad Age and Creativity's annual "Ideas” conference.

Brussels: Walter De Brouwer brings news from around the world: In Central Asia, the government of Kazakhstan wants to meet OLPC in Astana in the coming weeks to discuss contract issues. The project under discussion involves 25,000 laptops, but depending upon negotiations the number of machines could rise. (A small XO pilot already is up and running in Astana.) The Benin and Botswana delegations were impressed with what they learned at the ACP meetings. Benin is arranging a follow-up meeting for November in Strasbourg. Botswana has invited a team to meet with its prime minister in Gaborone. Caribbean. This week Louis Michel, the EU commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, announced a renewed collaboration with Cuba for education aid. The OLPC Europe team had several meetings with the Cuban delegation. Among the victims of hurricanes Gustav and Ike was the Cuban education infrastructure; 40 percent of the island’s schools were damaged. There is a possibility of a major OLPC deployment. In the Pacific, OLPC Europe has finished its preliminary work for Michael Hutak and Barry Vercoe from Brussels Vanuatu seems ready to make an order of 40,000 units as discussed with the Minister of Education, Charlot Salwai, and Director General Daniel Lamoureux. Also Raelyn Esau, the deputy director of policy & planning at the Tongan ministry of education, and Josefa Natau, director of the ministry of education of Fiji, were enthusiastic about going forward with OLPC. Michael and Barry will follow up. Europe. Bonn’s mayor, Bärbel Dieckmann, has invited OLPC to make an official presentation and discuss Bonn’s support of sister cities.

Afghanistan: The ministries of education and IT will be working closely with Roshan, the country’s leading cellular provider. They have agreed to provide connectivity for the program, including all hardware infrastructure and one year of internet access. The MOE has also partnered with Paiwastoon, a leading Linux/Open Source provider in Afghanistan. Their CEO, Mike Dawson, attended the OLPC May event in Cambridge. Paiwastoon will lead the localization into Dari/Pashto. Dr. Habib Khan is working with a technical assistant, Salman Minhas, who has helped with Dari/Pashto translations. In the next few weeks, Dr. Habib and Salman will travel to Kabul to hold teacher preparation workshops. Dates for travel will be determined, following the installation of a new education minister and depending upon staff availability.

Palestine: After several months of working with USAID in the West Bank and Gaza, we have secured official donation numbers and approval to ship XOs from both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. The Palestinian ministry of education has been working on teacher preparation and deployment plans, and eagerly awaits the first bulk shipment of XOs. Representatives of the MOE have attended the past few OLPC Cambridge workshops.

Perú: Ongoing production of their order had been interrupted by Perú’s inability to secure a competent shipping vendor. Robert Fadel, Gustavo Marrioto, Rodrigo Arboleda and Jeff Mandell spoke by telephone with Oscar Becerra, Hernan Pachas and their extended teams. The group discussed pricing for new orders, ordering opportunities for provincial governments as well as deployment, and, of course, shipping. The immediate solution is that Perú will be quoted the CIF Price as Ex-Works, but it will include free shipping. This, apparently, absolves them from the need to issue an RFP for a shipping vendor. OLPC and Perú will revise their current framework agreement to update the above and other terms. Perú will develop an internal process for the consolidation of provincial government orders. Perú remains firmly committed to OLPC and is discussing a 500,000 unit order in 2009. Production: The chart on the following page details OLPC shipments over the past year. This chart is not a sales or a production forecast but actual distributions of XOs. Because of the chart’s scale not all deployments are shown; however, it does reflect nearly 99% of all XOs built as of October 24. The numbers in the “In Country” and “Kids” columns overlap. Also a built XO is either “In- Country” or “In-Transit”. Do not reproduce or republish this chart without first contacting Robert Fadel.

Week of October, 26th

Development

New York City: Nicholas met with Joel I. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States. There are more than 1.1 million students in New York’s 1420 public schools, as well as 80,000 teachers. PS 5 in the Bronx (PK-5, 682 students) is fully operational; all kids in all classes have their own XOs. A second school is about to begin saturation deployment. The discussion with Klein included how to rollout all kids in NYC, including options such as doing all first graders, versus doing grades one to three in one third of the schools. A curious detail emerged. NYC classifies laptops as having a 3-year life expectancy and thus they are not eligible as capital equipment expenditure. The federal government requires five years. This puts the XO in a unique position.

Brussels: OLPC Europe spent the week at the ACP Secretariat, meeting with, and do demos for, ministers of education gathered for the annual council. They spoke with teams from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, Djibouti, Lesotho, Swaziland and Togo, plus advisors from Burkina Faso, Ivory Cost, Mali, Gabon, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Seychelles, Botswana and Mauritania. Discussions were initiated with the ministers of education from Cuba and Dominican Republic. OLPC Europe renewed acquaintances with the MOE’s of Barbados and Jamaica, and also did demos for those from Fiji, Vanuatu and the Philippines.

ACP representatives from Mozambique, and Togo, check out the XO.

The meetings all went very well. Countries in the southern part of Africa will coordinate together in order to use the Regional Envelopes of the EU development budget. The group will include South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Malawi, all of whom have already submitted proposals. Contracts will follow. Thursday Carla Gòmez Monroy had an OLPC and XO training session with the SWIFT ambassadors. On Friday, Walter De Brouwer and Giulia D’Amici attended the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) hosted in Cagliari, Sardinia. The IGF was strategically hosted in Sardinia in preparation of the G8 countries which will convene there in June of next year. IGF will submit a discussion agenda to the next G8. Walter gave a talk on the "ultimate openness" of OLPC towards the "lock-in" of other projects. During the Forum, OLPC met Carlo Prado, Special Advisor to Gilbert Gills, the former Brazilian minister of culture. Gills will take the OLPC message back to Brazil and will talk to President Lula.

Week of October, 19th

Learning

Mongolia: Yondon Otgonbayar, the newly-installed minister of education, science and culture, is quickly becoming the high-level champion necessary for the success of the OLPC deployment. The Russian-educated Otgonbayar, 43, most recently served as general secretary of the ruling Mongolian Revolutionary People’s Party. He is revising the distribution plan in order to increase allocations in favor of the countryside, local partnerships and saturation. The major challenge now lies in striking a balance among commitments made to certain schools by the past MOE, President Enkhbayar’s promise to provide computers to each province and the multiple factors necessary to ensure a successful rollout. There will be a new project manager for the national laptop initiative team. With the minister's permission, this week ICTA, MECS and OLPC hope to jointly recommend a candidate for the job who understands our objectives for Mongolia and has the skills and background necessary for a successful implementation.

Elana Langer visited several pilot schools as well as ones that received XOs during the ceremonies in June. In School 51, Elana found many of the teachers were using the computers in interesting ways. A two-day workshop is scheduled for this weekend to help advance the skills of teachers and students primarily in Schools 4 and 20. Elana also worked with teachers in School 4 to re-flash their computers into Mongolian. Bulgan, a member of the core team, finished the translation of Turtle Art and Scratch this week. The project unit is distributing versions of the program to all laptop schools. A Peace Corps volunteer in Hatgal is doing some wonderful work supporting the XO in the local community. There are 200 computers at his school and he is trying to work with teachers and students at each grade level to strengthen their skills and bolster their self-confidence on the computer. He has been asked to help at a neighboring village, and will do so next weekend. Elana updated the national donors’ meeting on OLPC’s progress in Mongolia. This was an opportunity to thank Minister Otgonbayar in the presence of the members of the donor committee for his swift attention to the challenges the laptop initiative has been facing. It was also a chance to reintroduce the need for local partnerships to the donor community, which included ADB, World Bank, World Vision, UNICEF, UNESCO, GTZ, JICA, Save the Children and several other organizations. The reception to the project goals was extremely positive. After the meeting, representatives from many of the organizations, including ADB, World Vision, UNICEF and UNDP, approached Elana about collaborations.

Cambridge: After attending the recent OLPC learning workshop, two Cambridge city officials discussed bringing the XO laptop to local schools and community centers. The meeting was attended by Ken Reeves, a city council member and former mayor of Cambridge; Mary Wong, the executive director of the Cambridge Kids' Council; research assistant John Clifford; and Stephanie Guirard, a resident of Newtowne Court. By the end of the meeting, the group was "unequivocally" behind an XO deployment, they said, and decided it would be best to implement a laptop project throughout the city. This is an exciting possibility, as it would provide a local deployment to show visitors, as well as a convenient site for testing the technology under real-life conditions. Their plans were announced Friday night at the Cambridge Kids' Council meeting. Board members were very supportive. One parent on the board called the idea "brilliant." The next step is for Cambridge to approve funding. Work also continues on developing support materials for more powerful learning activities, such as storytelling that incorporates programming and a variety of media.

Development

Brussels: The OLPC Europe team held very positive discussions this week with government representatives from São Tomé and Principe, Vanuatu, Sudan and Swaziland. Giulia D’Amico met in the OLPC offices with José Antonio Martínez Rubio, BT’s Head of Global Financial Services. Following the discussion held last month at Sibos with Luis Alvarez, BT’s President for EMEA, OLPC Europe is exploring ways to bring BT onto the its board. BT has proposed providing support in cash and in kind (connectivity and manpower in the 120 countries that BT serves). A written offer soon will be submitted. Justyna completed a detailed analysis of EDF and EU budgets for the government of Papua New Guinea. Her report also was forwarded to Michael Hutak. Further agreements were made for the next ACP meeting in PNG, where Nirj Deva will address the Parliament and lobby on OLPC’s behalf. Nicholas put OLPC Europe in touch with key municipal officials in Bonn. As a result, after an upcoming round table conference with partner cities – where Bonn will be introduce the OLPC program - it will offer a list of cities where it would support deployments. Walter De Brouwer provided Poland’s Institute of Industrial Design with a dozen XOs, together with information on OLPC. He expects articles on the laptop program will be appearing in the Polish press.

Week of October 13

Release 8.2.0 is ready! Congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to make this release happen. The new features and upgrade instructions are available at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Release_Notes/8.2.0

Development

Colombia: Chuck travelled south last week to meet with government officials, foundations and the private sector as Colombia prepares to embrace OLPC, rolling out initial XO purchases and gearing up for substantial future deployments. There was excitement everywhere, from Bogotá to Barranquilla, Cartagena and Medellín. He found that Rodrigo Arboleda has done a masterful job of bringing the XO to the attention of practically everyone in his native country who can help advance the OLPC program.

His report: “In Bogotá, the mayor and local governor met with OLPC and a number of Colombian foundations, including the group from Institute Alberto Merani. Funds are being earmarked to deploy an initial 20,000 computers in Bogotá’s more challenged schools. A presentation was made to 800 teachers to highlight the advantages of the XO and to provide validation of success stories highlighting current rollouts throughout the world.

“Initial testing of the XO has been very positive, and education funding is being redirected to obtain more systems. A meeting with the minister of security revealed that approximately 1000 XOs are being purchased so that children in the FARC terrorist region can be supplied with the computers in an attempt to drive the children's future away from terrorist behavior and provide them an access to the outside world through the XO and newer learning techniques. In Barranquilla, OLPC visited the new Shakira School, which will be opening in January. All 1,500 students will receive an XO of their own, and the laptops will play a pivotal role in the school’s technology education center. In addition, the Santo Domingo Foundation will use private donations to purchase thousands of XOs for schools throughout the region.

“In Cartagena, the mayor, multiple foundation groups and private business leaders met with OLPC to put a game plan in place to buy XO's for the 90,000 students in the city’s public schools. Government money, private donations and a local G1G1 program will be combined to raise the necessary funding. Several of the local public schools are already deploying XO's with tremendous initial success.

“The last leg of the trip included a visit to the Marina Orth School, located in a very poor neighborhood of Medellín. The school’s founder is Maureen Orth, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Medellín who is also the widow of the late Tim Russert. XOs have already been deployed in the school. With the local help of Motorola, Internet access is working nicely. The ceremony to launch the XO in the school was attended by many high level government officials, and was featured throughout Colombia on radio, TV and in the newspapers.”

Photos of Chuck’s trip will appear in next week’s issue of Weekend.

Peru: President Alan García hosted a two and a half hour breakfast for Peruvian business and political leaders – and Nicholas – at the government palace in Lima. Garcia ad libbed a 30-minute speech that sounded as if the OLPC learning group wrote it for him. Then a dozen six-year-olds, each from a different remote village - none had ever been to Lima, let alone the palace - were brought in to demonstrate the XO. Poised and clearly unawed by the grand surroundings, they all were excellent envoys. There are 110 people (growing to 150) working for Oscar at OLPC Peru. Forty-five are in education, 30 are technical and the rest are in logistics and administration. This is in support of 40,000 school laptops, another 21,000 now stored in Lima and about to go into schools, 24,000 more about to ship from Shanghai and 40,000 on the assembly line. The plan, as presented to García, is to deploy more than a million machines in Peru next year.

Miami: Nicholas presented to the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) conference at the request of Admiral Jim Stavridis, who heads the U.S. Southern Command. This was a government and private sector conference on terrorism and drugs. The admiral gave Nicholas his talk’s title: "Education: The AntiDrug." One result, long overdue, is that OLPC will be brought before the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in the near future. We need their support in Afghanistan.

Italy: Walter De Brouwer and Giulia D’Amico traveled to Milan to renew acquaintances with Mayor Letizia Brichetto-Arnaboldi Moratti, who received them along with Sen. Fiorello Cortiana of the Green Party, head of the Italian delegation for the IGF and WSIS, as well as Sen. Paolo Glisenti, head of the EXPO 2015, Milan’s upcoming World’s Fair.

Main themes of the Expo will be sustainable development, global cooperation and new technology. The EU is helping Moratti with funding for projects in the ACP countries, and this is where OLPC enters the picture. Walter and Giulia handed Mayor Moratti a single page with E X P O printed on it.

She caught on at once. The mayor agreed to become OLPC’s champion in Europe, and to join our team of international ambassadors. More important, the outlines of a new initiative, eXpO Milan 2015, were discussed. Walter reports, “We are counting on 100,000 units spread over several African cities. Mayor Moratti will inform the Italian Ministry of Education and Vivianne Reding, EU Commissioner for ICT.”

Back in Brussels, the OLPC Europe team continued discussions with visiting officials from the developing world. These included Joseph Ma'ahanua, the Solomon Islands’ ambassador for the EU, and Mimoza Halimi, the Albanian ambassador. They also spoke with Gerhard O. Hiwat, Suriname’s ambassador, and with enoys from Togo and Madagascar. At the EU Parliament, Walter, Giulia and Ahona met with Amir Hossain Amu, who is running for prime minister in Bangladesh. Ahona presented OLPC in Bengali to Amu.

Giulia represented OLPC during the World Urban Habitat Day organized by UN Habitat. Walter, Michael and Giulia welcomed Paula Linhearth to their offices. Linhearth works for Lufthansa, which has decided to join OLPC in a joint deployment for Burkina Faso. Finally, an OLPC blog has been created under SWIFT Community.net (www.swiftcommunity.net/olpc). Brooke Peterson, who recenty joined OLPC Europe, will update the contents. This blog will help to spread the OLPC message among SWIFT employees worldwide.

Ghana: Matt Keller and Robert Fadel met with government officials, as well as the board of the Ghana Laptop per Child Foundation (GLPC), to finalize the purchase of 10,000 machines in the coming weeks. Their visit concluded with a nationally-televised press conference and meeting with President John Kufuor, who pledged both publicly and privately to bring a million laptops to Ghana by the end of next year.

GLPC chairman Ken Ofori-Atta and President Kufuor are looking at several financing schemes, including a telecom tax which would generate substantial sums over the next several years, and might accelerate deployment. While Kufuor is set to leave office at the end of this year, a member of his party is sure to succeed him as president. What is more, the leading vice-presidential candidate is a member of the GLPC board and a leading supporter of the initiative.

Kufuor intends to name the project in honor of Kwadwu Baah-Wiredu, the popular minister of finance and economic planning, who was an enthusiastic early supporter of OLPC. Baah-Wiredu died in South Africa on September 24th while receiving medical treatment, the same day that Matt and Nicholas first met in New York with President Kufuor. Largely because of Baah-Wiredu, Ghana will become the first country of Sub-Saharan Africa to purchase XOs.

As matters stand, The GLPC board will implement Ghana’s OLPC program, and secure additional funding for it, as well. The Board is comprised of leaders from all sectors of Ghanaian society, including the chairman of one of Ghana's largest banks, the director of the Kofi Annan Centre for ICT, the director of primary education for Ghana, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and the new minister of finance.

A classroom in remote Bonsaso, Ghana, where XOs have been deployed since early this year.

Before Matt and Robert met with GLPC, the board planned to distribute the 10,000 XOs to more than 200 sites. Now that they are familiar with the saturation model, a more focused deployment will take place, with President Kufuor’s blessing. Next month, Ghana will send ten people to Cambridge for training. Prior to their visit, a basic deployment plan will be agreed upon. This marks the beginning of what we hope will be a fully saturated country within two years.

[...]

Week of October 6

Rwanda officially launched of their laptop initiative last week. President Paul Kagame presided over the ceremony in conjunction with Education Minister Théoneste Mutsindashyaka. The event was attended by the Rwandan prime minister, the supreme court’s chief justice, the entire cabinet, and leaders from civil society and the NGO community. Five hundred students and their teachers from the first laptop schools also were on hand. President Kagame, Minister Mutsindashyaka, Nicholas and David Cavallo spoke to the gathering. Kagame committed his office to bringing laptops to every primary school child in the country.

A highlight for the children came when they lifted their XOs to take pictures of the president and discovered that they could also frame themselves into the shots, so that they would appear in the picture with Kagame. Afterward, the Rwandan core team, along with Juliano Bittencourt, Brian Jordan and David, led a workshop. The students developed projects depicting their own visions for What Rwanda will be like in the year 2020. For the most part, they programmed in Scratch, using images they photographed, downloaded or drew. The adults were amazed by the kids’ visions, and by how much they were able to construct in a very short period of time. The president’s science and technology advisor was bowled over by their prowess, imagination, and strong optimism for the future, including their own roles in it.

The Rwandan core team and steering committee participated in a separate workshop. David and Juliano made presentations, as did Richard Niyonkuru, the Rwandan government OLPC coordinator, Guy Serge Pompilus, the Haitian government OLPC coordinator, Tony Earls and Maya Carlson of Harvard School of Public Health and Bruce Baitke of Green WiFi. David and Juliano also spoke before a session of the East African Legislative Assembly, which was meeting in Kigali. They found tremendous enthusiasm among the parliament members. Several made strong commitments to bring OLPC to their countries. A few of them visited the Kakugu laptop school in Kigali the following day, which prompted further excitement. A day later, under the headline, “EAC MPs Want OLPC Adopted in All States,” the New Times of Kigali reported that delegates attending an East African Community interparliamentary relations seminar in the city called for adoption of the OLPC program by all five EAC members: Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and Uganda, as well as Rwanda. We applaud their excellent judgment.

Week of September 28

New York City: The opening of the United Nations General Assembly afforded Nicholas the opportunity to press the OLPC case before high-ranking government officials from around the world, all conveniently gathered on Manhattan. It proved a highly productive week, beginning with talks Nicholas and Matt Keller held with Don Pastor Micha Ondo Bile, Equatorial Guinea’s minister for foreign affairs. Bile requested a proposal detailing the costs and requirements for rolling out XOs for Equatorial Guinea’s 70,000 primary school children. Matt has been invited back in November to make a formal presentation to the minister of education and other officials.

Ghana was next. President John Kufuor, in the final phase of his administration, reiterated his desire to see each Ghanaian child equipped with a laptop. Kufuor also said that achieving this goal would be a fine way to honor Ghana’s recently deceased minister of finance, the person most instrumental in bringing OLPC to Ghana. Don't be surprised to see the XO injected into this year's presidential race in Ghana.

President Pedro Pires of Cape Verde made it fairly clear that Portugal - its former colonial ruler – would be working with his administration to bring computers to Cape Verde. Given Portugal's recent partnership with Intel, this most likely means some kind of arrangement involving the Classmate. Pires nevertheless repeated several times that the XO would revolutionize education worldwide. Obviously, he had been briefed somewhat extensively on OLPC. The president left the door open by asking what it would cost to supply 20,000 laptops to children living in rural parts of the country.

Paraguay’s president, Fernando Lugo, along with his Finance Minister, Dionisio Borda, and State Secretary Alejandro Hamed, met with Nicholas and Raúl Gutiérrez and Cecilia Rodríguez Alcalá from Paraguay Educa. Nicholas opened the meeting with an overview of OLPC deployments worldwide, focusing on Uruguay. President Lugo raised three important issues. He wanted to know about teacher training, regional solidarity and the design of a national plan for laptop deployments to begin next year in his country. Minister Borda asked how different nations were funding their deployments. He also explored issues related to connectivity. The president asked Nicholas if billionaire financier George Soros, well known for his philanthropy, was an OLPC contributor. Nicholas said that Soros was not, as yet, and explained the different financing methods used in Rwanda, Peru and Haiti. President Lugo emphasized the need to learn from the XO deployment at Caacupé, and to plan with members of Paraguay Educa for a nationwide deployment in 2009.

Nicholas and Elana Langer met with Dr. Yondon Otgonbayar, Mongolia’s newly appointed minister of education. The issues included rollout of the current 8000 laptops, local team leadership and local budget (past due to teachers and forward line items). Elana presented a critique of the current plan, signed into effect moments before Dr. Otgonbayar’s predecessor left office. A new plan will be presented this weekend by e-mail. The timing is excellent. The minister's first day in office (in the literal sense) is Tuesday. Elana will be back in Mongolia one day later.

Nicholas then met with the Afghan Education Minister, Mohammad Haneef Atmar. Five thousand laptops are ticketed for Afghanistan; some have arrived already in a public-private deployment recently announced by the Afghan government. http://www.moe.gov.af/news/Sanbullah/15September2008.htm Too many groups are helping, so the ministry needs to assert more control. Luncheon was spent totally on briefing Atmar on constructionism and the five principles of OLPC. This was a challenge, given his point of entry, which was to build computer labs with XOs, as few as 20 per school. “Not sure how we got there,” Nicholas reports, “but we seem back on track.” Habib Khan will spend two weeks in Kabul in October.

Week of September 21

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/2008-September/000146.html

Rwanda: Preparations continue for the workshop to be held next week in Kigali. There is tremendous pride among Rwandans in hosting such an event. It is part of an effort to dramatically transform the nation into a knowledge-based society that pursues just and equitable social and economic development. OLPC plays a major role in this.

Mongolia: Elana Langer and David Cavallo held numerous meetings with government officials, NGOs, and grassroots organizations as Mongolia prepares for the distribution of the laptops for the new school year. There are some delays as the new government comes into place next week, but significant progress was made in addressing issues to date. After the new government takes shape, Elana will return to finalize the implementation plan and to help further develop the local staff and core team.

Haiti: The island has been hammered by four major storms. Unsurprisingly, there has been considerable damage and multiple disruptions. Progress continues, however. In addition to repairing the storm damage to infrastructure, Guy Serge Pomiplus, the government’s laptop coordinator, has begun a new XO content development effort to help the children learn more about hurricanes and disaster prevention.

Cambridge: The learning team hosted the introductory workshop in Cambridge this week. Participants included representatives from Colombia, Palestine, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, the University of Wisconsin, the International Relief and Development Organization, the World Council of Churches, the Seed Foundation and the International Education Exchange. Participants worked on various learning activity projects including Turtle Art and group storytelling in Scratch. The week ended with discussion groups on real world OLPC implementation. Workshop feedback was positive. A partnership was formed between the University of Wisconsin student team and OLPC Paraguay. After the storytelling sessions one participant commented; "now we can see the true potential of the XO.”

[...]

Lebanon: Matt Keller attended a moving ceremony in South Beirut commemorating the September 17, 1982, slaughter of a thousand or more Palestinian refugees, many of them children, at the Sabra and Shatila camps. Local leaders this year brightened the otherwise somber remembrance by also passing out 400 XOs, all donated by OLPC, to children living in the camps. They attend a school operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The deployment is being managed by an NGO called the SabraShatila Memorial Scholarship Fund, which is scheduled to buy an additional 800 laptops. Matt’s report: “OLPC was the star of the event. Roughly 3000 people attended, including many members of the press, local politicians, and UN officials. Among them was the mayor of South Beirut, with whom I spoke. ‘The American government sends bombs to kill the innocent,’ he said, ‘and the American people send us computers for our children. We are very grateful to OLPC. This means opening up the world to our children.’ It was a fairly intense moment.

“The children themselves were simply ecstatic. The thought that they were getting these laptops was almost too much for them to grasp. In fact, it came close to actually being too much. People began grabbing and pushing. Some adults tried to make off with laptops. But order was restored by security, and the would-be thieves were stopped at the gate. “I also met with Dr. Ghinwa Jalloul, one of only six women in the Lebanese parliament, and chair of its IT committee. After two hours of discussion, we decided to work together to bring the XO to the children of Lebanon. The question, as always, will be funding. But this marks the beginning of what could be an excellent partnership.”

Week of September 14

http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/2008-September/000145.html

Week of September 7

New York City: Nicholas and Chuck met with Taxi and The Barbarian Group to review the ad campaign for Give One Get One, now scheduled to launch again on November 17th. Three platforms – ad jargon for themes or stories - were presented. One was about lighting the world. Another was about growing a mind. The third was about "Generation XO." The latter two will be explored further, with art work starting as soon as next week. As previously reported here, Amazon will distribute the laptops for us and handle all payment and fulfillment. Contrary to published speculation, XP will not be offered in Give One Get One. Learning

Rwanda: It was a sunny Friday, September 5th at the Kagugu Primary School in Kigali where the national government officially launched OLPC in Rwanda. Many national officials, the press and various international organizations attended. The ceremony included more than three thousands students who received their XO laptops.

The impressive event included traditional music and dance, performed both by the children and by professional dancers – living reminders of Rwanda’s proud past and abundant future promise. The school was fully prepared for the occasion. The electrical infrastructure had been expanded. Wireless connectivity via Vsat was installed. Decorations were in place. Education Minister Théoneste Mutsindashyaka and Prof. Romain Murenzi, a senior science and technology official in President Kagame’s office, both spoke to the gathering of their shared vision of how OLPC can improve education in Rwanda, as well as the country’s economy. They also announced that the government will create a fund to support a full XO deployment to all of Rwanda’s two million primary school students within five years. Jerome Gasana, Director of the Regional ICT Training and Research Center, is providing full support for the national core team as they work in the schools. They have learned that their approach to teacher development is much more important than content. What they do is much more important than what they say. One small strategy that works well is to discuss and reflect together with the teachers after each practice. Terms like projects, learning by doing and hard fun are becoming a part of the teachers’ vocabulary. It is also important to note how much the local core team is starting to own the project, a positive development reflected in the way they defend the XO against criticisms and advocate the importance of the project for primary education and President Kagame’s program of national goals, called Vision 2020

Haiti: Between hurricanes, the recruitment and qualification of potential pedagogical and IT staff at each regional school center (EFACAP) continued. The Haitian OLPC core team visited two of the five regions scheduled to receive laptops. The good news is that one region (the "plateau central") has more electricity than expected. The bad news is that after Fay, Gustav and Hanna, the start of school will be delayed in some regions. The Haitian team continued to work on designing activities and putting them on the Haitian OLPC initiative wiki. Three XOs were upgraded to Joyride 2388 and to the latest Kreyol translation. These machines will go to professional translators, along with instructions how to test the translation and report errors and suggestions. The team also is designing new materials for training EFACAP technical staff. At week’s end there came more good news with the installation of Michèle Pierre-Louis as Haiti’s new prime minister. The previous government was dismissed in April after food riots erupted around the country. Pierre-Louis has been head of the Knowledge and Freedom Foundation (FOKAL), which is supported by George Soros.

Mongolia: The school year started September 1st. In two separate televised speeches, President Nambaryn Enkhbayar reaffirmed his commitment to OLPC in Mongolia, heralding “the year of the success of OLPC.” The minister of education and the director of primary and secondary education were both shown using their XOs in televised ceremonies at schools.

The new government is in the process of being assembled. The prime minister will remain the same. Other ministers are expected to be chosen before the end of the month. Schools and districts have begun to pick up the laptops. A Dutch couple purchased three servers, three switches and 15 access points. They are being donated to help support three schools in the capital. The director of Project READ is preparing to buy 2000 computers. Their rollout will begin in December. Cambridge: OLPC will hold a learning workshop on September 17 through 19 at the OLPC offices in Cambridge. This is in addition to the regional workshop to be held in Kigali, Rwanda on September 29 through October 2. Please invite key people involved in learning and project development to both workshops.

Week of August 31

Birmingham: The XO eXpO was held on Saturday, August 23, at the McWane Science Center. The capabilities and functionality of the XO laptop were presented to 154 business and civic leaders, educators, and educational administrators. Guests came from around the city, the state, and as far away as Panama. In addition to OLPC President Chuck Kane, the numerous speakers included Michael Wilson, principal at Glen Iris Elementary, our pilot school, Prothaniel Harris, a 5th grade teacher from Glen Iris, the Birmingham City schools director of instructional technology, a Birmingham city councilman, a professor from the computer and information sciences department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the president of the board of education and two representatives from Mayor Larry Langford’s office. Nine Glen Iris students who created campaigns using Scratch to teach their communities about health care issues showed eXpO participants their projects and taught general use of the laptop. Another highlight of the Expo was a robot controlled via the XO laptop and the Wiimote from Nintendo's Wii Gaming System, created by Tyler Williams, an MIT student and a member of the OLPC team to Mongolia.

Both children and adults came away excited about the XO laptop’s potential. "It looks like a glorified toy,” said Mr. Harris, “but they are not toys. Children need to be doing things that are hands-on. It kind of takes away a lot of the negative behaviors they otherwise would have because they are engaged." In an added program feature, Magic Seth, former Media Lab student and impressive technological magician, utilized the laptop for 2 magic shows.

Through the XO eXpO, Birmingham - the Magic City - has been exposed to the magic that is possible through the combination of the XO and a community coming together to make a difference. The event was covered by local Fox, ABC, and NBC affiliates, and both the Birmingham News and Birmingham Times. Links: Birmingham News Fox News ABC News University of Alabama Birmingham

Rwanda: This week the 11th Rwanda International Trade Fair was held in Kigali. The Rwanda Information and Technology Agency – RITA – set up a booth and highlighted the OLPC project as one of its main initiatives. Carine Umutesi, RITA’s long-time liaison to OLPC, brought one teacher and some students from the project pilot school in the Rwamagana district to demonstrate the XOs. Rwandan President Paul Kagame opened the fair and spent considerable time in the RITA space interacting with the students and watching them present what they have learned so far. The laptops were running the alpha versions of Sugar 8.2 localized to the local language, Kinyarwanda.

President Kagame and Nkubito Bakuramutsa (left), RITA's executive director, visited the RITA table for a first-hand look at XOs in action.

The preparation for the OLPC launch on September 5th is moving quickly. Many challenges such as the electricity infrastructure in the schools, translation of software to the local language, and digitization of text books are being solved so that the project can begin properly. Coordinator Richard Niyonkuru is now working full-time dedicated only to the OLPC initiative. Besides helping with preparations for the deployment, Niyonkuru is also visiting many governmental agencies and stakeholders in the country to promote awareness of, and coordination with, the project. As a result of Richard's initiative, the team began working both in a medium-term planning for the next year, as well as a five-year vision for the project. The plan for rollout is shifting to begin in the poorest areas of the country. Using this strategy, it will be possible to take advantage of other governmental initiatives to cut such costs as infrastructure. The idea is also to promote the project not just as a ministry of education initiative, but as a broad-based governmental program. In order to achieve this objective, the government will use the OLPC Regional Workshop, to be held from Sept. 28 to Oct. 1st, as a vehicle to promote awareness inside the country and to attract international donors.

Mongolia: A functioning government at last should be in place by the end of next week. Cabinet members, including the minister of education, are expected to be changed. On September 18th, OLPC will co-host a roundtable discussion about its role in Mongolian education among government officials, funders, NGOs, countryside representatives and the media.

Haiti: This week has been interrupted by Hurricane Gustav. Everyone on the team is fine and our building stood up firmly against the rain and the wind. But Gustav did delay recruitment of the EFACAP staff, which is now expected to occur toward the end of next week. Emmanuel has gathered information on the various schools that will be part of the initial rollout. [...] We hope to feed the database with geographical information, using geolocalization services like OpenStreetMap or Google Maps.

Medly and Beatrice have been working on several educational projects. One focuses on birds for 10-year-olds. Another is about discovering plants. While jotting down ideas for these two projects, we discussed the appropriate level of details required for instructions. We agreed that we should have various levels, from step-by-step guides to general and suggestive directions. The idea is to have a sufficient variety of materials to reflect the various teaching needs, the various teachers' profiles, and to encourage initiative. Since these materials will be online on the wiki, any activity is apt to evolve (and perhaps fork) in any direction. We tried to put some activities online and refined the forms for doing so.

We also started to work on the technical training. The first XO dissection will happen on Monday [...] Reading the reports from Mongolia, we realized how important it could be to have a Linux User Group in Haiti. People on the team were encouraged to be the proud initiators of such a LUG. They liked the idea, so this might eventually happen. It is hoped that such a group would serve as an effective proxy for gathering volunteers around OLPC Haiti.

Wanda is working with the tech team as they gear up to test the solar panels received from OLPC. [...] Also talks with the tech team this week were really informative in efforts to develop a better idea of how to address the technical needs in Haiti. The project coordinator has just signed an agreement with a publisher, which will bring a considerable amount of educational content to the XO. We will have four or five people dedicated to adapting this content to the XO. They will come and work here in the building at Rue 2. We will upgrade 4 XOs to the latest version of Sugar and activities, switch them to the latest available translations, and send those prepared XOs to linguists for review. We will integrate their corrections during September. Two big milestones for September: the teacher/tech training, and visiting the schools to fix as many electricity/connectivity issues as possible (and make a plan for fixing those we cannot afford to fix right now.) On the political side, Haiti has a new government and a new minister of education. The impact on the project is not predictable but things look fine so far!

Cambridge: Members of the Learning, Technical and International teams participated in a comprehensive telephone review of ongoing deployments, with specific attention to Mongolia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Birmingham. For each of these discussions the Cambridge team was joined by on-site OLPC-ers. Emphasis was placed on technical performance and immediate needs. One recurring demand was for improved networking and collaboration performance, particularly in large schools, as well as power, both management and solutions to lack of infrastructure. The knowledge and idea transfers that occurred during these calls is leading to more persistent feedback and support loops, particularly as the number of deployments continues to grow.

- From the Field**

Landlocked Mali is vast – nearly twice the size of Texas – remote and impoverished. Half the West African country’s 12 million citizens are under 16 years of age, and illiteracy estimates run as high as 70 percent. Mali, in short, is ideal for an XO deployment. In mid-July, 30 machines donated by Laptop magazine arrived in the little Mali village of N’tentou, which is within the larger city of Ouéléssébougou, about 25 miles south of the capital, Bamako. There, Salimata Fandjalen Bangoura, a former Laptop employee, took charge. Her report:

“The eight-week program began with the teacher and volunteer training. They had no previous experience or knowledge in computer use, so it was necessary to familiarize them with the XO and computer technology before they took on the students. This was very important to help the teachers feel more comfortable teaching the students and answering their many questions.

“The first few days there was no electricity in the school, so the XOs died pretty early in the day. When the electricity was finally installed, the XOs were charged in the classroom. So far, the most popular activities are Chat, Write, Record, Calculate and Memorize. The students are learning very fast, and are very appreciative of the opportunity. They even want to have sessions on the weekends. They share what they learn and know with their families, and the demand for an adult program is very high. Students who are not in the program flock to the school courtyard and windows every day. They are eager for their chance to come and learn how to use a computer.”

OLPC so far is not widely known in Mali, a situation Salimata and the OLPC team hope to remedy later this year with a demonstration tour of the country. They are hoping to find financial support for a second-stage deployment, 1600 laptops – with Internet - in two local schools.

For more, go to http://blog.laptopmag.com/olpc-mali-village-teachers-learn-to-use-thexo

“We want to inform and educate people on the potential of the XO,” she writes, “and what it could mean for the educational system in Mali. I believe this would be important in raising awareness and gaining support within the country.”

Press

More articles can be found here.