Countries

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See also

This is a page for unofficial notes about OLPC country discussions. It is mostly opinion and country specific news.

Overview and news

Before the start of production in late 2007, many countries expressed interest in the technology. As in all large products, there is a marching progression of details, counter-proposals, trials, wide trials, and testing. Many countries agreed 'in principle', equivalent to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in the sales process. The exact participation of countries is constantly changing, as is the state of the world: Thailand had a coup, and Nigeria had an election.

As in all sales, nothing is certain until purchases are finalized and units are shipped.

One user has put these forward as fact, but without references:

Orders:

  • Uruguay, Peru, United States (Alabama)

Targets for the laptops donated by the G1G1 2007 program:

  • Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Mongolia, Afghanistan

Deployed Units:

  • Peru: 260,000
  • Uruguay: 300,000
  • Mexico: 50,000
  • United States (Alabama): 15,000
  • G1G1 (give): 80,000 to be distributed among a number of countries - Mongolia, Haiti, Rwanda, Ethiopia
  • G1G1 (get): 80,000 to the US and Canada

Total: 785,000

Levels of country engagement

For local communities

Here are things that a country community should set up as it is getting started:

  • A country page, such as OLPC Peru
  • A country mailing list -- or an existing mailing list that will be used


For deployments

In order for OLPC to fully support

  • Local keyboard and keymaps
  • Technical variables : a smoke test
  • Testing Browse, Chat, and Write in that language
  • For upcoming roadmaps : prepare an integration and test plan in line with the existing schedule for new releases
  • Feedback loop for reviewing the user experience -- how is a country's chosen language, keyboard, activity-set working for them? who is helping maintain same?

Details by region

South America

Argentina

  • 2006 : A commitment from Argentina was announced, but has not been confirmed since production started. OLPC Blog in Argentina in Spanish. A few hundred machines are in-country, but were caught up in customs for a while; no known active school pilot.
  • 2007 : University groups are actively interested
  • 2008 : Working on hardware certification; Ricardo Carrano's mesh work. 3 active contrib-program projects.


Brasil

  • LEC projects; Porto Alegre work w/B2s. Planning to upgrade to MPs and new builds
  • Older projects include a school in Sao Paolo

Brazil is putting its plans for school laptops out to bid. This process began in December 2007, but has not concluded. The government failed to inform bidders that import duties were to be waived.


Colombia

  • Rafael Ortiz and Pilar Saenz in-country helping with their deployment
  • They're setting up their own websites and lists
  • Engaged groups : the city of Itagui (near Medellin); the Marina Orth foundation

Haiti

  • Recently in-country : Bastien, Wanda
  • Local leads: Guy Serge
  • Mailing lists : olpc-haiti, one on a separate server run by Bastien


Mexico

Carlos Slim has ordered 50,000 units, and has promised more. TelMex is coordinating part of the deployment

  • There is interest from ITESM in the south in helping out with their university population


Nicaragua

Februar 16, 2009 The Dutch foundation OpenWijs.nl, inspired by the concept of OLPC, started September 2008 an educational eTwinning project in El Rama, a rural city in Nicaragua with 54.000 inhabitants. The project was funded by the local government of the city Maastricht (the Netherlands) and set up in close collaboration with the city bond Maastricht – Rama. Two volunteers have been in El Rama to train 21 teachers of primary school Horacio. Most of them had never used a PC before. When they knew how to use the XO they have discussed with the educational expert how to use it in their lessons. Therefore they tested several activities and visited the internet, also with pupils in the classroom to learn how to guide them.

Between September 2008 and Februar 2009 two primary schools in Maastricht started also with an OLPC project. Two teachers and two ICT- cordinators have been trained. All pupils group 8 (10 – 12 years old) received their own XO and used it at school and at home. Pupils, teachers and parents are satisfied with the XO, Sugar and the educational activities. The hardware could be faster and supplied with more internal memory.

In Februar 2009 we hope to start the eTwinning by supplying 80 pupils in El Rama with their XO. However now OLPC stops with the GiveMany programme it is not clear how to succeed. Maybe we can get some XO's from the ministry of Education who received in September 2008 3.000 XO's from TelMex and didn't use them untill now (!). This ministry is very happy with the OLPC projects from OpenWijs.nl and of Waveplace, an American foundation active in the Caribbean. For the next project the ministry will pay the Technico for El Rama who will support the teachers.

Peru

A modest order in Nov. 2007, was followed by an appropriation possible at the end of December for a larger order next year. The first appropriation for 100,000 units came through in Dec. 2007. Since then they have committed to 810,000 units in 2008.


Uruguay

December 14, 2006 President Tabaré Vázquez officially announced his and the country's intention to enter into OLPC and to provide every child in Uruguay with a laptop within two years. Uruguay did a test run in early 2007. In October 2007 an order for 100,000 laptops was placed, making Uruguay the first country to purchase a full order of laptops. An additional 200,000 more laptops have been ordered to cover all public school children between 6 and 12 years old.

See also Ivan's report.


Others

  • Panama -- they have their own activity developers, and national chess player interest

Asia

India

3 Jul, 2006 The Times of India reports that the government of India has rejected the OLPC program for now.

Latest: OLPC project gaining momentum in India through the formation of an OLPC-India foundation. See OLPC India page for the latest details and pilot project for details on the pilot project.

Afghanistan

October 2008: OLPC project has started! The Ministry of Education, Ministry of Communications and IT, Afghan Small and Medium Enterprise Development (USAID/ASMED), Roshan and PAIWASTOON joined the forces and kicked off the OLPC in Afghanistan. The deployment of 10,500 laptops is expected to affect over 85,000 children as the project will be deployed into schools in form of computer labs so to reach bigger audience. In addition, laptops shall serve to parents too and help them educated in areas of increasing the living standards (e.g. how to start a business, how to grow better crops, what are the typical market prices for xy goods...). For details about OLPC Afghanistan visit www.olpc.af (Not much there, better is probably OLPC_Afghanistan.)

Korea -- driven by a few citizens

The content in this section is written by XO Korea, not OLPC.

Korea and XO Korea has a somewhat peculiar OLPC aspect different from other nations; an active OLPC participant without any governmental intervention. Though there is no official announcement from its government level, a few citizens living in the Jejudo Island have been actively prepared XO deployment in Korea, and, undoubtly, there will be XOs all around the nation in a few years, if their efforts are NOT in vain.

Currently XO Korea is a small citizen group, led by Do Young-Min, 도 영민, without any official relationship with the OLPC Foundation, but, in a few weeks, there will be well organized citizen group to deploy XO, to provide XO related services to schools etc., and to develop a game, XO City, which all of XO Korea's efforts are on.


Africa

Rwanda

Rwanda was a target country for G1G1 2007. The government has not placed any orders of its own.

  • 5000 heading out into the rural places now, flashing by mid-August; another 5000 heading out next month.
  • Juliano is currently the local contact, working with RITA and the government education groups. RITA has PDFs of part of their curriculum.
  • Need Kinyarwanda/French options


"In recognition of children being Rwanda’s most precious natural resource, the government of Rwanda has committed to provide one laptop per child to all primary school children within five years. This commitment was confirmed as H.E. President Paul Kagame met with Prof. Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairperson of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) at Urugwiro Village on Tuesday."

Libya

In spite of the MOU described below, there is no deal yet. If there is a deal, it will likely be much smaller. It is reported that Libya is considering other computers. New York Times story · OLPC News (2006-10-14) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

  • Update: all is on hold at the moment.


Nigeria

An early trial in Galadima was the subject of many reports and photographs.

Since the latest election, the new government has shown no interest in OLPC XOs. It may be considering other computers. Although we have not seen an announcement of a Nigerian deal, it is listed in an OLPC press release as one of six countries signed up for the laptop.


Europe

the Netherlands

Februar 16, 2009 The Dutch foundation OpenWijs.nl, inspired by the concept of OLPC, started september 2008 an educational eTwinning project in El Rama, a rural city in Nicaragua with 54.000 inhabitants and Maastricht, the Netherlands. The project was funded by the local government of the city Maastricht and set up in close collaboration with the city bond Maastricht – Rama.

Between September 2008 and Februar 2009 two primary schools in Maastricht started with an OLPC project. Two teachers and two ICT- cordinators have been trained. All pupils group 8 (10 – 12 years old) received their own XO and used it at school and at home. Pupils, teachers and parents are satisfied with the XO, Sugar and the educational activities. The hardware could be faster and supplied with more internal memory.

Two volunteers have been in El Rama to train 21 teachers of primary school Horacio. Most of them had never used a PC before. When they knew how to use the XO they have discussed with the educational expert how to use it in their lessons. Therefore they tested several activities and visited the internet, also with pupils in the classroom to learn how to guide them.

In Februar 2009 we hope to start the eTwinning by supplying 80 pupils in El Rama with their XO. Two other cities in the Netherlands want to start also an eTwinning project with their city bond: Zoetermeer - Jinotega / and Nijmegen - Masaya However now OLPC stops with the GiveMany programme it is not clear how to succeed. Maybe we can get some XO's from the ministry of Education who received in September 2008 3.000 XO's from TelMex and didn't use them untill now (!). This ministry is very happy with the OLPC projects from OpenWijs.nl and of Waveplace, an American foundation active in the Caribbean area. For the next project the ministry will pay the Technico for El Rama who will support the teachers.

Another Dutch foundation is active with OLPC projects in Russia, India, Nepal and Mongolia: Metersmakenvoormillennium

Marten Vijn has set up an OLPC repaircentre and is supporting small pilots, for example in Leiden

Republic of Macedonia

This is FYROM, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/macedonia-school-computers

Every Student in the Republic of Macedonia to Use Ubuntu-Powered Computer Workstations

Popular Linux Distribution To Appear On More than 180,000 Classroom Desktops Nationwide

LONDON, November 20th, 2007 - The Republic of Macedonia Ministry of Education and Science will deploy more than 180,000 workstations running Canonical’s Edubuntu 7.04 as part of its "Computer for Every Child" project.

Every Student in the Republic of Macedonia to Use Ubuntu-Powered Computer Workstations November 20th, 2007

Macedonia is installing 180,000 computers running Ubuntu. Schools run in two shifts, so this gives each of their 360,000 schoolchildren a computer while in school, but not at home.


Romania

OLPC News, an independent news site, has noted reports from Romania that the government has rejected the OLPC program. hotnews.ro reports, 

House Commission head Lia Olguta Vasilescu said they believed the
700 million euro needed for the procurement of the laptops was too
much an amount and would weigh heavily on the Education Ministry
budget. Vasilescu also said that "beside that the laptops are simple
toys, they’re not even have an expiring date". "We, the Parliament,
do not want to support this project because there’s no money" for it."

The quoted figure of 700 million euros does not make sense, since there are only about 2.5 million K-12 students in Romania, according to UNICEF population figures.

Note: Only 930.000 kids between 6-14 years.

United States and Canada

See OLPC United States

Alabama

See http://catmaran.com/olpc/#sugxterm for some of their work to sugarize new activities.


Other OLPC Groups

see also: Category:Countries

diaspora project

OLPC News (2006-07-01)

Extremadura is the poorest region of Spain; it is also the site of the first large-scale deployment of Linux desktop systems in the world, primarily into schools. Over 80,000 desktops have been deployed to date, with near saturation (>50%) in high schools, but fewer numbers in elementary schools (typically in computer labs). The deployment is seen as a success, and is now spreading beyond schools and libraries to the regional government as a whole. Jim visited the project in order to gain insight into the issues that arise in the schools. Although Extremadura's experiences are only partially applicable to ours, they are generally positive.

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