One Laptop Per Child News

Resumen en español al final del artículo

I don't think I need to repeat yet again that I'm a huge fan of Guzmán Trinidad from Uruguay and his great work around using various Sugar Activities in combination with sensors connected to an XO (e.g. #1, #2, #3).

In order to make his work more accessible he recently compiled a list of all of his project videos on his Web site. While looking through them I discovered a new one which shows off a cool matching game:

If you want to learn more about Guzmán's work and watch his videos then head over to his Web site or YouTube channel.

---

Resumen en español (tomado desde la descripción del video): Un juego para los más chicos: La XO-1 monitorea la resistencia entre los cables conectados a la entrada de micrófono. Cuando se ponen en contacto eléctrico entre sí (mediante un cable que une la imagen del personaje con su nombre ubicado por detrás del cartón) el programa TurtleBlocks imprime en pantalla el número de coincidencias encontradas y alienta al jugador a continuar su búsqueda!

.

Get OLPC News daily - enter your email address:

Resumen en español al final del artículo

At the end of last year Negroponte announced that pre-pilots for his tablet-based helicopter deployment model would be starting in early 2012. It's been fairly quiet about these efforts since then but earlier today ITProPortal.com posted an article with some bits of information about how the pre-pilots are coming along.

Regarding the environment that these pilots are taking place in:

Privately funded at this point, 20+ Android powered Motorola Tablets have already been dropped off in a village where there are no reading and writing skills - "You won't even see printed labels or words on bottles, these people have never even seen words" said Negroponte.

On the actual use of the tablets:

This time, however, Negroponte's team left boxed Tablets in a village and within three hours, the children had opened the boxes and worked out how to turn the tablet's on. After just a couple of weeks of unassisted use, the children were seen competing with each on the recital of the alphabet, learned from one of the many pre-installed apps.

Unfortunately this information is fairly thin, especially given that the project has now been going on for several months already.

I also wish that ITProPortal had inquired about how Negroponte is evaluating the impact of these pre-pilots, especially considering that 20+ tablets is a fairly small sample. However the article's author asks readers to "watch out for further updates" so hopefully we'll learn more about how these efforts are coming along over the coming weeks and months.

---

Resumen en español: Al fin del año pasado Nicholas Negroponte anunció que iba a empezar un pre-piloto por su modelo de implementación de helicóptero. Un artículo corto que se publicó en ITProPortal.com hoy reveló unos bits de información interesantes. Por el uno el entorno del pre-piloto es una area donde la gente no sabe leer o escribir. Por el otro Negrioponte dijo que pocas semanas despues de la distribución de los 20+ tablets los niños ya estaban compitiendo en alfabeto que habían aprendido con los apps que estan en los tablets. Me hubiera gustado leer más sobre el proyecto y en particular como estan evaluando su impacto pero espero que los futuros articulos que el autor prometió tendran esta información.

.

Get OLPC News daily - enter your email address:

Resumen en español al final del artículo

Earlier today OLPC Australia announced that it will receive $11 million from the Australian government which will allow the organization to expand its program by 50,000 XOs. Per the government's budget Web site:

The Australian Government is providing over $11 million to support the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Program which will deliver over 50,000 custom built laptops to primary students in regional and remote Australia as part of a 12 month pilot program. The OLPC Australia Organisation (OLPC Australia) aims to support the learning opportunities of indigenous children, particularly those in remote Australia, by providing primary school aged children with a connected XO laptop as part of a sustainable training and support program. Participating schools will also receive information and communications technology (ICT) coordinator professional development, local repair kits, and access to helpdesk and online support. The Government will also continue its support of OLPC Australia through its listing as a deductible gift recipient for taxation purposes to 2015-16.

We reached out to Rangan Srikhanta (OLPC Australia's CEO) for a first reaction and he said:

This is a momentos day for OLPC Australia and what started as a dream is now a reality. This significant investment from the Australian government is further vindication that the XO can help children anywhere. We look forward to leveraging the 50,000 laptops committed by the Australian government to seek further corporate and school commitment to the program. The 50,000 XOs will be delivered via OLPC Australia's One Education initiative.

We will provide you with more information about their One Education initiative and its progress over the coming weeks and months. But for now all I can say is congratulations to the OLPC Australia team for this well deserved and important step forward!

---

Resumen en español: OLPC Australia anunció hoy que recibirá 11 millones de dólares del gobierno australiano, que permitirá a la organización ampliar su programa con 50.000 XO.

.

Get OLPC News daily - enter your email address:

Resumen en español al final del artículo



Over the weekend I was catching up on some reading of various olpc related blogs. In doing so I discovered that Laura Hosman's IIT team in Haiti and Sameer Verma and other folks from OLPC San Francisco had both recently found cool ways to repurpose the famous OLPC hand crank:

The IIT team turned them into mobile phone chargers:

So what to do with the excess ones we had? We decided to repurpose them into cell phone chargers, since that seemed like a more realistic use for them: phones need less charging/use less power, charge on 12 volts, sometimes you just need enough power to make a short call or send a text, and in today's world, even out to the ends of the earth, where there's no reception and no powering source, people still own mobile phones! Also, the teachers at the EFACAP school had asked whether they could use the solar system for charging phones, and we felt it was something valuable to add in to the system.

In early April Intel launched its long-expected tablet reference design which is called Studybook. On the hardware side of things the specifications which we wrote about in late March very fairly accurate but I'm including the list again here for the sake of completeness:

• Display: 7" with 1024 x 600
• CPU: 1.2 GHz Z650 Atom (single core)
• RAM: 1GB or 2GB
• Mass storage: 4GB to 32GB
• Cameras: 0.3MP (front) and 2MP (back)
• Weight: 525 grams
• Battery life: up to 5.5 hours
• Dimensions: 13.5 x 20.7 x 1.65 cm
• I/O: 1x full-size USB, 1x 3.5mm audio-out, 1x HDMI, 1x MicroSD, 1x SIM card (for the optional 3G modem)
• Extras: WiFi, Accelerometer
• Options: Bluetooth, 3G

In terms of the operating system local manufacturers will have a choice between Windows 7 (and in the future possible also Windows 8) and Android.

Resumen en inglés al final del artículo

Gracias a un correo de Cristina Abell encontré este video donde Laura Marés de relpe (Red Latinoamericana Portales Educativos) presenta los resultados de un estudio llamado "Tablets en educación - Oportunidades y desafíos en políticas uno a uno". El estudio completo está disponible como PDF pero en todo caso les recomiendo ver el video de la presentación.



El estudio me parece una excelente base para tener discusiones más enfocadas sobre el uso de tablets en la educación. La verdad es que a pesar del fuerte movimiento hacia tablets con productos y servicios como el Archos Child Pad o Apple iBooks 2 yo sigo siendo escéptico.

Resumen en español al final del artículo



Over the weekend I heard about an OLPC community BBQ which will take in Elora, Ontario near Toronto next Saturday, May 6. The event will bring together some of the key people working on OLPC projects in Madagascar and Haiti as well as members of the Canadian OLPC community.

Below I'm copying the full invitation which the ever-enthusiastic Laura de Reynal (Flickr, Twitter) of OLPC France's Nosy Komba project sent along.

Join us May 6th in Elora, Ontario, to share our vision about different small deployments, about our dreams for all those incredible OLPC startups in Jamaica, Haiti, Madagascar: they have a lot in common and share the same vision! Lets build it together! Yes you can contribute:

Sunday May 6th, 2PM
Elora, Ontario (1hr West of Toronto)

(Editor's Note: Over the past 2 weeks we have provided you with different views on IDB's ongoing evaluation of Peru's OLPC project and the many discussions around it by Oscar Becerra and Marta Voelcker. Now when we saw this blog post by Eugenio Severín and Julián Cristiá from the IDB's education blog we immediately thought that it was a great complement to the aforementioned perspectives. Thanks to Eugenio for kindly allowing us to re-publish their post here.)



Artículo en español en el blog del BID

We have recently published a Working Paper and a Policy Note presenting the results of the impact evaluation of the "One Laptop per Child" program in Peru, developed by the IDB in collaboration with the Peruvian government itself. Since this is the first large-scale experimental evaluation that has been done in the world, it has stirred up expectations, but can offer important lessons on how to implement programs that provide students with computers and what kinds of results we can expect from such programs.

In my point of view the IDB study on OLPC Peru should have evaluated or valued the process of innovation going on. The "Error Message" article by The Economist magazine is a consequence of a study that is not pointing out the main good thing going on in Peru, which I assume is the learning process to innovate education.

What economists and most people do not realize is that the world needs to innovate basic education, but to explain what change is that, is not easy because there are changes advocated by different theories and motivations.

I think that a study that intends to evaluate a 1-to-1 deployment at this moment should first focus on the context and theories that explain how development is connected to digital technology access and use in education. Among many the IADB itself has published papers that explain this (Disrupting Innovation, 2010). Kozma, Infodev, Warschauer, and many others have good publications with contributions for this theme. A treatment/control group study ignores the value of innovation itself and value of the new outputs.