Wild Coast

Tara Suri in CosmoGIRL as "The Giver"

Tara Suri has recently launched TurnYouWorldAround.org and Aandolan.org (which means a movement for change in Hindi) is an organization that "implements social-change initiatives and provides youth with the tools to become changemakers." I don't want to spoil the surprise waiting for you if you explore the site for a few minutes.

TurnYouWorldAround - Aandolan's recent project is Connect a Kid, where youth can create projects to fund-raise for OLPC's Give Many program through their school, community, or just friends and family: [Connect a Kid] is an initiative of Aandolan, an organization started by teens that provides youth with the tools to become change-makers. Having partnered with OLPC, [Connect a Kid] works to raise funds to purchase laptops, and also aims to raise awareness about the need for global education. Youth register --- and then work with friends and family to help kids around the world!
Tara Suri on CNN's YPWRThe website and information packet you get post-registration provide fundraising event ideas, action plan outlines, and other useful tools to create, promote, and evaluate project(s). The groundbreaking part of this is that it's a youth-to-youth program, empowering both the recipient of the XO laptop as well as the giver to realize their ability to organize and enact change.

CNN's YPWR (Young People Who Rock) has a blog post up about Tara, and now an interview at cnn.com/video

Disclosure: I work at Youth Service America, where Tara Suri is a member of the National Youth Council, a collection of amazing young people who make the likes of most of us tired with just seeing the amount of good they get done on a daily basis. She's a co-founder of HOPE (Helping Orphans Pursue Education) (when she was 13). She was also named Cosmo Girl of the year for 2007.

GiveMany Tara Suri ConnectaKid TurnYouWorldAround Youth2Youth

After working with science students in the US, a few of us got together and decided that the XO laptops could be used for a lot more good than the various national governments currently allow, so we decided to try our hand at an unofficial OLPC deployment! Our focus was to try and use the XO as a learning tool for the subject of science, for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at a small grammar school in India.

Expanding access to inquiring minds

We started our academic year two weeks ago here in Meerut, India. The 6th, 7th, and 8th graders have been using the XO laptops about half of the class days, alternating with hands-on experiments and required, standardized textbooks.

As there is no state certified content for the laptops, we feel that this "bridging the gap" effort has added merit as compared with a strict XO laptop regiment. Currently, the students are studying various levels of electricity and magnetism.

We're trying to gather as many data points as possible for the OLPC community. We aim to present the findings and unique perspectives generated by this opportunity with larger bodies of educators. By sharing results (and content) with first through third-world organizations, we can fill the gap left between the official OLPC deployments, and those first world individuals with a laptop.

In this way, the XOs can be leveraged by a much larger number of students worldwide: home-schooled students worldwide, G1G1 children, and other schools with a computer to student ratio of less than 1:1. Specifically, we are already understanding and overcoming challenges faced by unofficial deployments of the OLPC learning platform where there is limited support, both in terms of OLPC training for teachers and for the laptops themselves.

Currently we have 5 XO laptops from US donors of the G1G1 program. As there are between 8 and 12 students in the classes that use these laptops, we could use a few more. We have already noted a definite, quantifiable difference in the effectiveness of the laptop when a student has his or her "own" XO laptop vs. sharing with 1 or 2 students, even within class period time limits.

We're definitely interested in acquiring a few more laptops. Because our XO-compliant curriculum is already underway, any XO donated can make a huge difference in our program! Each XO means that two students get to use their own laptop as a learning tool or science experiment setup! If you do have a G1G1 laptop, please consider letting a student learn on it!

Holden Bonwit reminds you that you can still develop code without the XO laptop itself, by emulating the XO.

G1G1 Holden Bonwit India Learning Tools Meerut OLPC OLPC India Unofficial Pilot Xo Laptop

I am Roxana Bassi, an ICT Specialist at the Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative. GeSCI provides strategic advice to Ministries of Education in developing countries on the effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for education and community development.

Recently we have started receiving several requests for assistance in advising regarding 1-to-1 computing solutions similar to OLPC’s. We are working on a series of tools that can be used by any government planning the piloting or deployment of any such project, like the low-cost computing devices toolkit published last year.

OLPC Oceania in action

One of the documents we are working on is an analysis of the educational/pedagogical considerations for these particular types of projects, which are quite many. We are having trouble, however, in finding relevant information about the pilots that have been executed around the world.

The only thing we can find are nice pictures and videos, blogs and content created by students, but we have not been able to find specific pilot planning documentation about any of the projects being executed, or any educational experiences-based analysis of 1-to-1 solutions and its challenges and opportunities in real-world use in our countries.

We would like to ask all of you in the OLPC News community for this information, if you have it available for public distribution, to share the links with the rest as I believe this is invaluable data we have to have to help in designing sustainable solutions for education.

Thanks in advance

Educational Results GeSCI Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative Pedagogical Considerations Roxana Bassi

If you are in Boston on May 20th, may I strongly suggest you crash the invite-only "State of the State" event at One Laptop Per Child headquarters at 1 Cambridge Circle. Starting at 10 am the event sounds like its going to be a watershed moment in OLPC history. Just listen to the breathless press invite:Selected invitees will have the opportunity to hear Nicholas Negroponte give a “State of the State” address on the One Laptop per Child project to date and the evolution of the XO laptop. In addition, attendees will be privy to a discussion on the product roadmap for the XO along with the exclusive unveiling of the next generation of the XO.

Nicholas and newly named OLPC President Chuck Kane will also be joined in the discussion by OLPC team members and government officials who have been on the ground in developing countries as thousands of XO laptops have been deployed and implemented into school systems. They will provide updates from countries including Peru , Uruguay and Haiti .Now I don't know about you, but there is one phrase in all that which makes my pulse quicken: "the exclusive unveiling of the next generation of the XO." Now what could that next generation be?

• A production level Windows XO?
• Maybe a Diamondville XO laptop?
• Or go crazy an show Sugar on the Classmate!

No matter what Nicholas Negroponte unveils, it will be the press event of the week for OLPC, and I'm quite sad I didn’t get an invite and will not be crashing the party.

Not that I will feel left out. I'm sure you have your own ideas on what Nicholas should be doing - just read the suggestions of what others would do if they could be Negroponte for a day. Better yet, give me your thoughts on what the "next generation XO" could be...

Chuck Kane Next Generation XO Nicholas Negroponte OLPC State of the State XO Roadmap XO-2

What would a "bottom of the pyramid" approach for the OLPC look like? While the OLPC vision is bottom-up and child-focused, their actual deployment has been top-heavy. There's occasional discussion about releasing the One Laptop Per Child XO laptop into the market to achieve a more bottom-up development, and the OLPC's original selling point to its manufacturers was that even though the profit margins would be slim, the market would be the next billion users (WSJ). So why not go all-in and focus on this record of success in the technology creation/diffusion realm, and apply it in the international development context?

Where the OLPC Project has intersected with the market; it has created new and valuable intellectual property (Mary Lou Jepsen, former CTO of OLPC, believes so strongly in the new technology that she's created her own for-profit company licensing the OLPC technology). The buzz around the XO has invigorated the ultra-mobile/small/low-power/low-cost laptop market; with Asus' Eee PC, the new Elonex, Fujitsu's newest LifeBook series, and of course Intel's already-existing ClassMate has received much more attention of recent.

BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum has already compared the OLPC to the Classmate from a BoP approach; but only focused on education and implementation:But one absolutely critical issue that trumps all the others is education—how best to teach kids at the bottom of the pyramid. So far, the conversation about XO has been dominated by geek stuff, not educational stuff. [...] But where’s the debate over digital lesson plans in local languages, team teaching, long-distance education? [...] Intel may be doing better than the XO. A version of Intel’s Classmate PC is already on sale in Mexico and elsewhere and it is—this is key—bundled with educational material software and teacher support.

An OLPC Entrepreneur?That's all well and good, but it continues an assumption that I'm trying to open up for debate -- is the educational system the best way to distribute the OLPC XO laptops to create sustained development? What would the the OLPC project turn into if changed to a technology-diffusion, bottom of the pyramid approach with the overall goal of improving communities by closing the "digital divide"?

OLPC through BoP

First off, there are some immediately obvious downsides. The project would not be a one laptop per child; egalitarian, education-focused project anymore, which is a big punch in the gut to the OLPC vision. It wouldn't necessarily be a child-only approach -- children could be encouraged with various incentives, but once you go to the market, turning away customers over 18 won't fly for very long.

However, the current situation is limited pilot projects in mostly urban situations, mostly schools which are on-grid with Internet access available, with Peru leading the way in pushing for remote-rural tests. So a market approach loses something, but might make up for it in spread and long-term impact. A bottom-up approach is still very constructivist; and doesn't necessarily have to lose it's child-centric flavor. If the underlying goal is closing the "digital divide" and helping these countries; what you need is a self-sustaining project, not an infinite series of projects and recurring costs to the government for new laptops.

So what does it take for technology projects to self-sustain; leading to community development? You need to create a technology that individuals in the community will adopt, learn, and expand, and a process to enable this. This is technology diffusion as much as ICT4Dev -- you want to find early adopters who will spearhead technology adoption. If you look at similar technology diffusion projects that have been widely successful, some exciting possibilities come to light.

The mobile phone comparison

The first example that always gets dragged out when talking about technology diffusion in developing world contexts is of course the cell phone. The wildfire-like adoption rates of cellular technology are amazing, even (especially?) in developing countries. The Grameen (Village) Phone project has found a micro-credit solution to bring in even those markets unable to normally afford a phone by extending credit (combined with training on using the phone) to individuals in a community, who then use the phone as a business, charging people to use it to call family or government services in remote cities, find out the market value for their crops, and so on. The profits from this micro-enterprise repay the low-interest loan and improve the quality of life of the entrepreneur.

The OLPC costs a bit more than a cell phone, unfortunately -- but the same microfinance concept has been successful in costlier technology projects. In Nicaragua, a local firm called TecnoSol has partnered with an energy corporation, E+Co, to sell photovoltaics, (PVs, solar power cells) batteries, and training to rural farmers and entrepreneurs through a credit scheme. These PVs can cost up to $3,000 for the more powerful (and larger) cells; but for much of rural Nicaragua, there's simply no grid access, and a PV can mean light, water pumps, and even refrigeration for a farm or a store; which can greatly expand business potential (if you're the only place in walking distance with a cold beer, you will meet with success). So this model can scale up beyond relatively cheap cell phones to more expensive objects. This UMich study (PDF) goes into more detail on the Tecnosol/E+Co partnership.

These projects have many factors contributing to their success, but the underlying key for both is local knowledge -- what local demands are going unmet that could turn enough profit to repay a loan and create a small business? With the Grameen Phone, community members had a variety of different needs that they were willing to pay small fees for, if a phone was available to "rent" time on. In Nicaragua, providing electricity in an area with no access to the power grid has obvious benefits, many of which can be monetized.

The same entrepreneurial idea can feed development, using the OLPC technology instead of (or possibly in addition to) cell phones and PVs. Set up a group of in-country micro-lenders who can walk someone through the usage of the OLPC XO laptops, evaluate requests for laptop loans with local situational and social knowledge, and help with initial setup. Provide micro-loans to individuals with an idea of how to use the laptop in a way that could generate enough revenues for repayment and self-employment. Work with local social customs and systems to find the best way to create social pressure for loan repayment (only x amount of money is available on a rotating basis?), as well as adapt to local markets and needs.

Perhaps some business ideas will also require Internet connectivity -- can this be rolled in as an additional service to the OLPC via a GPRS/EDGE/etc. cell phone connection, a local ISP, or some other solution (satellite uplinks would probably be too expensive unless they're shared with others; perhaps one could get installed and shared among a geographically close group of XO entrepreneurs via the mesh?). Perhaps some plans would also need an energy source to charge the laptop (the yo-yo charger can only do so much) that could be provided or supplemented with solar or wind energy and a UPS battery backup? Maybe a small portable printer (and ink?) is also needed for some ideas -- it all depends on the idea and the local market's need and ability to pay for the services balanced against the cost of the items, marginal costs of ink/paper/cell phone data costs, and how low micro-loan interest rates can be safely set.

Can the OLPC turn a BoP profit?Keeping the educational focus

The bottom-of-they-pyramid microfinance approach doesn't even have to drop the education focus. While the returns on education are much to slow to repay loans effectively in most cases, grant programs or other implementations could focus on child usage. For example; the XO could be on sale for anyone; but only young entrepreneurs could qualify for the micro-loans, and they'd have to provide some explanation of how this would fit into their learning. Schools or education-oriented civil groups could to buy on credit in bulk, provided they could support both an educational aspect and a profit-making aspect. Grants could be available to even younger children participating in educational programs, skimming profits off of the loan system and successful entrepreneurs in a new G1G1 style program.

Below are a few ideas (presuming some form of Internet, probably cell-phone-network enabled) that could combine the OLPC, community development, and education with making a bit of profit. There are a million other possible things to do with the laptop, using its built in hardware and software tools as well as adding other open-source software to it, so this is by definition an incomplete list. Only local agents can really know what the local demand for OLPC-related services would be, so take these as very basic, generic ideas:

• Youth could create radio programs with local advertising -- youth gain experience in writing, public speaking, budgeting, aspects of radio operation (physics lesson on radio waves?), as well as marketing. Local industries could advertise goods during their radio program, and this isn't even getting into the FOPSE (For-profit Social Enterprises) possibilities like the LapDesk.
• The OLPC could be used as a traveling/home-visit cybercafe and "digital office" (some tasks might require a portable printer as well) to provide services like:
  • Letter/resume transcription and/or typing
  • Contact (skype/voip with family abroad?)
  • Interaction with eGovernment services
  • Access to current market prices for locally produced goods
  • Manage an eBay store of artesania / handcrafts
  • Remote basic medicine and consultation with urban-based doctors
  • Of course, email/chat/web surfing/entertainment and the like if there's a demand for such services
• Schools (or other groups) could offer the public training and adult education -- the laptop is built to support education; so it's an ideal machine to support training in basic computer skills (typing, mousing, etc.); literacy and numeracy, and so on.

So, readers -- can this work? Does this "cheapen" the laptop-as-educational-revolution? Does that matter if a more substantial and sustainable development project emerges?

Bottom of the Pyramid Bruce Nussbaum GPRS Muhammad Yunus Nextbillion Photovoltaics TecnoSol

Can the Transkei afford to keep the Wild Coast “wild”.

May 07, 2008 Edition 1

TONY CARNIE & BABINGTON MARAVANYIKA

THE battle between supporters and opponents of two major development proposals along the Wild Coast intensified yesterday when a group of local residents, councillors and chiefs journeyed to Pretoria to lobby in favour of sand mining and a new toll road. (more…)

Are you an XO laptop user looking for great computer accessories? Like SD cards, keyboards, USB memory sticks, and even OLPC t-shirts to show your One Laptop Per Child pride? Then for your shopping enjoyment, may I introduce you to three XO Accessories stores:
Walter Bender's XO View

• OLPC News XO Accessories Store: I've put together a list of Amazon.com goodies to supply you with a whole quiver of green gadgets to color compliment your computing theme. My favorite - a green gamer mouse to avoid the XO trackpad.
• Auntie Mame's XOExplosion: The Mass XO User Group leader has add-ons and tweaks for the G1G1 owner to find more joy in the XO experience. My favorite - XO View, an exclusive XO camera viewfinder.
• Brady Pierzchalski's I Love My XO: Offering six accessories separately or as a "travel pack" perfect for the XO on the go. My favorite - the signature USB flash drive.

Personally, I'm very happy to see an XO aftermarket spring up, both for the laptops themselves, and their accessories. Each of these sellers are supporting OLPC by increasing the usability and popularity of the XO, and in the case of these three accessory stores, donating a portion of their profits to support OLPC programs.

Actually, I think Auntie Mame says it's the best:"By giving first-world users a venue for tweaking their XO's, we're increasing visibility. By giving developers a venue to market their developments, we're increasing the product's viability as an educational resource."So do your best to support OLPC, and America itself - go shopping!

G1G1 I Love My XO SD Card USB Memory Stick XO Keyboard XO Laptop Accessories XOexplosion

In his argument for the need to have Windows XP on the XO laptop, Nicholas Negroponte puts forth a compelling reason for the change to a proprietary operating system from the current Open Source platform in his technology Review interview:
An XO laptop marketing flaw"When I went to Egypt for the first time, I met separately with the minister of communications, minister of education, minister of science and technology, and the prime minister, and each one of them, within the first three sentences, said, 'Can you run Windows?'" Negroponte says.

One future possibility is a "dual-boot" version of the OLPC machine, in which either Windows or Linux can be launched at start-up. If such a scheme were to materialize, Negroponte says, "I expect we will do a massive rollout in Egypt."I believe that Negroponte's obsession with Microsoft Windows is a yet another strategic error - separate from any Open Source vs. proprietary discussion.

The "Does it run Windows?" question shows that OLPC's marketing is flawed in a very basic way. By focusing on a $100 price and on the term "laptop", Negroponte has Ministries of Education thinking of the XO as a cheap business laptop - a $100 Dell or Toshiba. In this comparison, the XO will always fail.

The XO is a specialized learning tool specifically designed to empower education for primary school children in rural and remote communities - 4-12 year olds in need of an educational experience suited for their developmental level. As such it should be compared to other learning tools; chalkboards, libraries, and textbooks - then the comparisons are much more interesting and compelling.

Once you look at the XO in the educational context, the question of "Does it run Windows?" becomes irrelevant. Or think of it another way - when was the last time you wondered if the Leapfrog came with Windows?

As long as Negroponte continues to allow the XO to be called a "laptop" instead of something like "Children's Machine", Ministers will continue to use variants of the "Does it run Windows?" question as a way to ask for a $100 MacBook per child.

Once they have Windows, the Ministers will complain that the XO is slow, or doesn't run Microsoft Office. And when did you ever think that an appropriate software for young children?

Yet, if the XO was again called the Children's Machine, or better yet "the best educational tool for primary school children in the developing world", which isn't as catchy as "$100 laptop" but mush more accurate, I'm willing to bet a Linux kernel that Egypt would look at OLPC quite differently.

Add in teacher training, local support and maintenance, and all the other aspects of implementation that OLPC refused to support in the past, offered in a partnership with the Ministry through a well-staffed implementation team, and there would be a much different reception.

For a great example of this idea in action, just look at OLE Nepal. Not a peep about Windows XP on those XO's.

$100 Laptop Leapfrog Microsoft Office Nicholas Negroponte OLPC Windows XO XP on XO

Guy Rogers

A COMMUNITY group and an environmental organisation have issued a joint call for “political leadership” to resolve the tense stand-off around the disputed Xolobeni mine site on the Wild Coast. (more…)

SUBMISSIONS by three government departments were handed over at a Human Rights Commission hearing yesterday as part of the commission’s probe into charges that the community is not being consulted about the Xolobeni mining project in Pondoland. (more…)

Tara Suri in CosmoGIRL as "The Giver"

Tara Suri has recently launched TurnYouWorldAround.org and Aandolan.org (which means a movement for change in Hindi) is an organization that "implements social-change initiatives and provides youth with the tools to become changemakers." I don't want to spoil the surprise waiting for you if you explore the site for a few minutes.

TurnYouWorldAround - Aandolan's recent project is Connect a Kid, where youth can create projects to fund-raise for OLPC's Give Many program through their school, community, or just friends and family: [Connect a Kid] is an initiative of Aandolan, an organization started by teens that provides youth with the tools to become change-makers. Having partnered with OLPC, [Connect a Kid] works to raise funds to purchase laptops, and also aims to raise awareness about the need for global education. Youth register --- and then work with friends and family to help kids around the world!
Tara Suri on CNN's YPWRThe website and information packet you get post-registration provide fundraising event ideas, action plan outlines, and other useful tools to create, promote, and evaluate project(s). The groundbreaking part of this is that it's a youth-to-youth program, empowering both the recipient of the XO laptop as well as the giver to realize their ability to organize and enact change.

CNN's YPWR (Young People Who Rock) has a blog post up about Tara, and now an interview at cnn.com/video

Disclosure: I work at Youth Service America, where Tara Suri is a member of the National Youth Council, a collection of amazing young people who make the likes of most of us tired with just seeing the amount of good they get done on a daily basis. She's a co-founder of HOPE (Helping Orphans Pursue Education) (when she was 13). She was also named Cosmo Girl of the year for 2007.

GiveMany Tara Suri ConnectaKid TurnYouWorldAround Youth2Youth

I am Gaurav Chachra, founder member of OLPC India Student Chapter. Well, I've demonstrated XO to a couple of engineering students in India. And one question is common: Can it run Windows XP?

Looking for Windows XP?

We have been working on Windows since we first saw computers. Switching to a totally new system is a tough thing and not everybody can adapt. Why people demand XP to be available on XO? Because these people are used to Windows. And this has a major impact on acceptance of OLPC in various countries.

But whom are we targeting? Children. Children who are going to get technology in their hands for the first time . And that's where Sugar came in. A platform that works on the psychology of the learning process.

I gave my little cousin XO to play with. She was excited and took minutes to learn & enjoy it. And now, she doesn't think Windows XP is a good idea. But people need XP on OLPC. People who have been using Windows for years. People who also form the part of the government to decide on approving or rejecting OLPC. People who are not the target of OLPC.

But isn't acceptance the most important issue?

Yes, Egypt thinks XO should run Windows. It thinks so because government officials are habitual to it. But the children of Egypt are not. If they don't accept it today, tomorrow definitely they will when OLPC will prove by the great experience of countries who have accepted it today.

Why is OLPC in hurry? OLPC is a movement; a transformation process for developing world. As it grows, nations will feel its need. Then why is OLPC is looking for short term goals instead of the great vision with which it initiated.

XO laptops for inquiring minds

Shouldn't Open Source be just a means to reach the children and not center of OLPC's working? I never fail to repeatedly state in my presentations, "It's an education project, not a laptop project." - Nicholas Negroponte. Nicholas said this. And we repeat this with pride.

This is the pride of being a part of this social mission where providing education is the primary goal. Education is freedom; and that is what open source is. Freedom. That's the reason open source community full heartedly supports OLPC. A proprietary software snatches the freedom, then how are we advocating education? By the new vision, OLPC is much more a laptop project. Now I tend to lose the pride.

I know OLPC will get worldwide acceptance if it sticks to its original vision. Our organization, OLPC India Student Chapter is constantly working to make Indian government realize the importance of OLPC. It will definitely be a slow but rewarding process.

I'm still optimistic that OLPC will get back to the original mission for which I, and a huge lot of enthusiasts were passionate about.

Gaurav Chachra OLPC India OLPC India Student Chapter Windows XP XO Acceptance XP on XO

Nicholas Negroponte has finally found his new CEO for One laptop Per Child. After a year of fruitless searching, he's tapped Charles Kane, OLPC's CFO and a former software company executive, to lead the organization on a daily basis.

Charles Kane of OLPC

And what does Charles say about OLPC's mission, now that he's running the show? According to Technology Review, Charles is very clear: it’s a laptop project."The OLPC mission is a great endeavor, but the mission is to get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible," he said. "Whether that technology is from one operating system or another, one piece of hardware or another, or supplied or supported by one consulting company or another doesn't matter."

"It's about getting it into kids' hands," he continued. "Anything that is contrary to that objective, and limits that objective, is against what the program stands for."Now what might Charles be referring to when he talks about things limiting the program? Charles doesn't say explicitly, but we can always look to Nicholas Negroponte, still Chairman of OLPC, for an answer. And he's very clear on what he finds as a distraction to One Laptop Per Child's success:"I think that means and ends, as often happens, got confused," he says. "The mission is learning and children. The means of achieving that were, amongst others, open source and constructionism.

In the process of doing that, open source in particular became an end in itself, and we made decisions along the way to remain very pure in open source that were not in the long-term interest of the project."So kids, there you have it. The time, effort, energy, and passion of an entire global network of FOSS experts and supporters who have coded and promoted thousands of hours for OLPC, are actually a hindrance to success.

Now why is that? How could that be? Oh, let us have our Dear Leader tell us what he believes is the true roadblocks to XO laptop adoption:
An empty OLPC soul"When I went to Egypt for the first time, I met separately with the minister of communications, minister of education, minister of science and technology, and the prime minister, and each one of them, within the first three sentences, said, 'Can you run Windows?'" Negroponte says.

One future possibility is a "dual-boot" version of the OLPC machine, in which either Windows or Linux can be launched at start-up. If such a scheme were to materialize, Negroponte says, "I expect we will do a massive rollout in Egypt."Yes, Nicholas, with Windows XO, you will have a massive roll out of low-cost laptops. It will be a great win for you, for Quanta, and maybe even for the OLPC organization.

Its only too bad you'll be celebrating alone.

The children, constructionist educators, and the entire FOSS community that brought you to this point, will not be cheering. In fact, I date this week as the beginning of the end for Open Source support of the OLPC organization. It sure marks the end for me.

Walter, you want a blog?

Charles Kane Constructionism FOSS Nicholas Negroponte OLPC Open Source Windows XO

So let's say that your XO laptop keyboard doesn't work. No matter if it's due to the "sticky keys" problem, or if you happened to dunk it in the kitchen sink in a foolish waterboarding test. Either way, you'll need to strip your XO keyboard.

Saturday night, I stripped my XO, and for your enjoyment, took a few photos and made two videos of the process. First, me, mid-fix:Yes, I was a little frustrated at that point, burning through a Saturday night alone with too much technology. Still, I powered on and hacking away, I finally made the XO laptop work again:Of course, I still have a few screws loose. Any clue where they go?

Fixing OLPC Kitchen Sink Loose Screws OLPC Help Sticky Keys Strip XO XO Hack XO Keyboard

The XO laptop keyboard is designed to be water and dust resistant, to keep it functioning in the harsh environment of a child's daily life. In fact Walter Bender braged that you can submerge the bottom half of an XO in water without damage.

Being drunk brave enough to take Walter at his word, I decided to show my friend Carl Weaver just how cool the XO laptop keyboard is, by waterboarding it in Carl's sink:Now you might be wondering how the XO laptop fared with Northern Virginian tap water streaming across its keyboard while I randomly hit keys.

Short answer: not so well. Long answer: video:Yeah, I really shouldn't drink and XO test. It's not safe, nor a good use case. I don't expect children to get blitzed on Carl's homemade hooch and and be the fool like me.

Carl Weaver Homemade Hooch OLPC Keyboard Walter Bender Water Damage Waterboarding XO Testing

Zanele

I am a tourism lecturer and this topic was discussed with my second year students. It is amazing how much our students are aware of the need to sustain our environment. What is not clear here is how strong is the power of the community? Does the community really have the last say? Those who support the mining should understand that jobs come and go, but once the environment has been destroyed , there is no second chance.

This is a very difficult question with many political and legal levels,and
part of the reason why the mining rights application has caused such
controversy.

Legally, the land in question is not owned by the communities who live
on the land, although they have lived there for many, many generations. It
is communal land held in trust by the Department of Land Affairs on behalf
of the communities and technically therefore, the Department of Land
Affairs (State) holds the ‘custodinainship/ title’ of the land. >
Any decision that the Dept Land Affairs makes about the land is
supposed to be made only after full consultation of the communities who reside upon
the land.

The area falls under the municipal jurisdiction of the OR Tambo
Municipality, which holds the ‘economic power’ of the area, in that
state funds for regional development are directed through local
municipalities, and ‘development’ projects such as road infrastructure/ provision of
electricity etc are controlled from municipal level. Some areas inland
in the municipal area are thought to be in favour of the mining, because
it will obviously not directly affect them ( they do not live on the land
to be mined) and they see benefits in terms of mining revenue’s/ job
opportunities for themselves, but of course mining will mean that those communities living on the mined land will loose many of the benefits they currently get from the land so it will have huge negative impacts on those communities who live on area earmarked for mining.

Although OR Tambo municipality is the means through which state
development is driven, many of the local rural communties still feel more
comfortable with, and have a allegiance to, traditional methods of consultation
where the local chiefs are seen to be the custodonians of communal and
tribal authority. However, in Eastern Cape, unlike Kwazulu Natal, the local
chiefs have no legal title or custodonianship over communal land. ( In KZN
the local chiefs have legal power as custodonians of communal land and
therefore no decisions can be taken about land use without local chiefs
permission). One therefore has a situtation in E Cape where the preferred
historical method of decision making of many traditional rural communities ( ie
by traditional tribal council) is undermined by provincial and state
ordance that gives no recognition to the preferred communal decision making
processes, but gives these powers to municipal and goverment officials
who often do not even come from the local area.

This means that the system becomes highly open to abuse. Although in
theory decisions about land use are meant to be made with the full
consultation and approval of communities, in reality this does not always happen in an unbiased, totally open manner conducive to free public participation
and democratic decision making processes. Part of the reason being that
communities are not always given unbiased/ objective information about
various projects from which they can make an informed, educated
decision. A controversy about the EIA public participation process is that project
proposers ( eg mining company) are required to hire and pay for the
EIA consultants, so, although EIA consultants are meant to be objective,
the fact that they are employed/ paid for by project proposers raises
questions about the extent to which EIA consultants are able to operate in a
totally neutral, objective manner. ( If EIA consultants gave results that
conflicted with too many project proposals they would probably soon find
themselves unemployed!)

The system leaves all sorts of leeway for various parties to manipulate
the situation in various ways, or for correct processes not to happen due
to incompetent/ inefficeient public servants tasked with overseeing the
process. Alleged contraventions and neglect of various of these is why
the HRCommission is now being called to adjudicate the matter. The issue
opens up many questions about human rights and environmental rights as
enshrined in the constitution, state interventions, and the way public processes
of decision making are conducted and organised, and the rights of communal
land dwellers.

It would seem that the current political setup and land rights issue
undermines the ability of communal land dwellers to determine the
future of the land that they have been occupying for centuries, this in
contravention of constitutional rights to self detemination, free information and
expression, education, and other basic human and environmental rights.
Because communities lives are closely intertwined with land use, a
change in land use will have profound impacts on the social
co-hesion, traditions, economies and cultures of Wild Coast
Communities.

Hopes this gives some understanding of the complexity of the
situation. From SWC side, it would be very interesting for SWC if tourism
students could be set a project/ assigment to suggest ways to ‘kick start’
tourism in the Wild Coast region in a way that was conducive to promoting local
communal land rights, local social upliftment and participation, and
conservation. We would be very interested to hear any idea’s along
these lines.

Your host is Benjamin Mako Hill who graciously allowed this re-publishing of his original post from Copyrighteous for OLPC News.

In the last week, Nicholas Negroponte gave this unfortunate interview decrying "open source fundamentalism" and hinting the possibility of a warmer relationship with Microsoft. Predictably, this has elicited an ongoing response by OLPC News and on the OLPC development mailing lists.

Ben Mako Hill and XO laptop

Just a few days before Negroponte's statements hit the press, I gave a talk at Penguicon called Laptop Liberation where I talked about why I thought that OLPC's use of a free software operating system and embrace of free software principles was essential for the initiative's success and its own goals of education reform and empowerment. I've been saying similar things for some time.

My main point boiled down to something that, appropriately enough, Nicholas Negroponte was fond of saying back when the project was still called the $100 laptop: an extremely cheap laptop is not a matter of if, but of when and how. This technology will define the terms on which students communicate, collaborate, create, and learn. These terms are dictated by those with the ability to change the software -- by those with access to computers, the source necessary to make changes, and the freedom to share and collaborate.

Constructionism -- OLPC's educational philosophy -- is about putting powerful tools and control over those tools into the hands of learners. It is about learning through exploration and creation -- about shaping one's own educational environment. Constructionist principles bear no small similarity to free software principles.

Indeed, OLPC's stated commitment to free software did not happen by accident. OLPC convincingly argued that a free system was essential for creating a learning environment that could be used, tweaked, reinvented, and reapplied by its young users. Through these processes, the XO becomes a force for learning about computation and an environment through which children and their communities can use technology on their terms and in ways that are appropriate and self-directed.

We know that laptop recipients will benefit from being able to fix, improve, and translate the software on their laptops into their own languages and contexts. Much more importantly, however, are all of the uses for the laptops that OLPC has not -- and can not -- think up.

A future constructionist learner

OLPC is a powerful tool for learning, but ultimate power is only in the hands of those that can freely use, change, and collaborate in defining the terms of their learning environments. In its commitment to software freedom, OLPC chose not to be arrogant by assuming that it knows how its users will use their laptops. Flexible environments designed for constructionist learning and a free software platform protect against this arrogance.

Constructionism and free software, implemented and taught in a classroom, offer a profound potential for exploration, creation, and learning. If you don't like something, change it. If something doesn't work right, fix it. Free software and constructionism put learners in charge of their educational environment in the most explicit and important way possible. They create a culture of empowerment. Creation, collaboration, and critical engagement becomes the norm.

OLPC does not get to choose if educational technology happens. If we work hard at it though we might get to influence the "how" and the "who." Proprietary software vendors like Microsoft want the "who" to be them. With free software, users can be in power. What's at stake is nothing less than autonomy. We can help foster a world where technology is under the control of its users, and where learning is under the terms of its students -- a world where every laptop owner has freedom through control over the technology they use to communicate, collaborate, create, and learn.

This, to me, is the promise of OLPC and its mission. It is the reason I've been involved and in support of the project since nearly day one. It is the reason I left Canonical and Ubuntu to come back to school at MIT to be closer to the then nascent unincorporated project. It is the reason that OLPC's embrace of constructionist philosophy is so deeply important to its mission and the reason that its mission needs to continue to be executed with free and open source software. It is why OLPC needs to be uncompromising about software freedom.

As an adviser and sometimes contractor to OLPC, OLPC does not need to listen to me. But I hope, for all our sake, that they do.

Update: Richard Stallman and the FSF have published another essay on the same topic focused more on pure free software (i.e., less education specific) objections.

Your host is Benjamin Mako Hill who graciously allowed this re-publishing of his original post from Copyrighteous for OLPC News. Hill is an OPLC adviser and contractor and a director of the Free Software Foundation.

Benjamin Mako Hill Constructionism Educational philosophy Free Software Foundation OLPC Ubuntu

Gabe, focused on XO activities

Let's begin with a warm-up test on what the OLPC should be about. Choose the right answer out of each pair:

1. Developing Countries parents want their kids to take pictures and write down their thoughts
2. D.C. parents want their kids to learn English


3. I'd say music creativity is essential for every kid to to be educated in
4. I'd say grammar and spelling is essential for every kid to be educated in


5. the biggest challenge to development is widespread corruption
6. the biggest challenge to development is that children don't get to explore, experiment and express themselves

Look for the official answers on OLPC's website Those answers are not necessarily correct. Now, I do not think that, as stated, OLPC's goals are "wrong". Rather, I'd say they are shortsighted. We need much, much more. Even "Content" on the wiki seems almost like an afterthought. The 'educators' list is pretty much inactive.

The main problem that our Matter of Education has to deal with is to actually give chances to kids to achieve their giftings beyond what their current educational system can offer. OLPC, and/or other such initiatives are to be the "bridge" that have-nots can take to get what the "haves", well, have.

To solve learning inequity is our community's duty.

Humor me for a minute and let me take the easy ones out of the way. Writing and language arts are life skills. Those who struggle with these will find their inability to communicate according to convention makes them less effective trainers, leaders, teachers.

OLPC, as currently exists, incorporates Language Arts training? No. Should it? Yes. English is the de facto lingua franca that connects ideas and ideals in our world in our day. The role that Latin has in the previous sentence is the role that terms and expressions in the English language have in every other language now, especially in matters relating to science, technology, manufacture, business.

If you don't depend on it outright, your speech and notes are peppered with it. Besides parent, teachers and administrators want to have better English training for the kids and even themselves. Is it part of the current OLPC? No. Should it be? Yes.

An anti-corruption tool?

Corruption Management

This is clearly my favorite trainable skill. Just as in the more popular field of risk management, it is unlikely that corruption will ever be totally eradicated. Even in such paragons of development and civilization as Scandinavia and the Netherlands it will rear its ugly head from time to time. The real issue with corruption worldwide is that it is arguably the number one factor that establishes, serves and protects injustice, abuse, exploitation, and ultimately poverty and all its children.

Aid for development that is not fighting corruption is often its very life, what makes corruption thrive. The canonical water well project with ineffective accounts, where most pumps end up sold away and the last one turns out to be "owned" by the village chief, not only denies water to the village but also reinforces patterns of successful dishonesty, without even gaining any goodwill for the donor country.

I believe that we can agree that corruption has to be fought, by all means available, especially education. Yet, if the general trend I have perceived is anything, I suspect there isn't much support for doing it with the XO. One argument that will be parroted is that this is the One Laptop per Child, and corruption is a grownup thing.

Refuting this notion is easy. First, corruption is everybody's problem. Next, corruption breeds in untruth, sheepish compromise, and bullying/abuse scenarios, and none of these is age-dependent. We clearly can and should develop suitable training resources on the XO to learn to recognize truth and also to prevent bullying, a real problem in many places.

To learn to stand up with what is truth is harder. I haven't yet found anything that beats experiential education done right, which sadly is quite high maintenance.

An easy button will not help

The XO is for grownups too

Early corruption avoidance should be addressed among kids. Yet the most important point is to recognize, accept and implement grownup-directed training and content in the XO - of course besides better and more for kids themselves.

This, among others, for the very obvious reason that the home XO might be the only twenty-first century educational tool that will enter many a hut, cabin or hovel, and quite a few community leader's homes. And hopefully, the XO will be the one that is not held hostage by the corrupt shackling a people.

Finally, this is simply something that needs doing. As such, it is really deeply irrelevant if the OLPC has right now corruption management as an educational goal, because it doesn't matter how many of those green thingies a country buys or is given, doesn't matter how much international aid it gets, neither whether missionaries, teachers or volunteers move in.

What matters is that we turn this training into a priority, fast track OLPC project. As long as corruption is not addressed an its endemic rule broken, there is no chance a people will develop and become what it can become, respect the environment and hold its own to protect itself, treat its sick, raise its young unto righteousness, and generally make true that having faith in better times ahead is real, rather than empty, meaningless fiction.

Yamandú was teacher in several countries for over 15 years and wrote a book on Uruguayan Education.

Anti-Corruption Tool Corruption Management Developing Countries Educational Goals OLPC Project

I am Dave Wallace and I like to do visual astronomy and night sky photography while traveling.

StarChart on the XO laptop

For this purpose, a full-blown planetarium program with its ability to show telescopic views, invisibly-dim objects and control telescopes was overkill. What I wanted was simply a program for the XO laptop that could answer the question:"What's overhead next week and 5000 miles from here?"So my StarChart Activity was designed with those requirements in mind.

Design:

The program's catalog is small on purpose: If you're limited to the Mark One Human Eyeball, keeping track of all the stars in the Tycho catalog is way overkill. So my catalog only contains data for the 1800 brightest stars, the moon, the sun and six of the planets.

Setting the time for some other location or for some future or past instant requires that the user enter the time and zone offset -- this avoids having the program try to predict the correct time zone. "Right now" is easier, so I have the option of plotting the sky as of "now" (and updating the plot once a minute).

Setting location can be very approximate for a whole-sky chart. Knowing your location to within a couple of degrees of latitude and longitude is more than sufficient. I allow several options with respect to display color, provide the ability to show the chart in "star chart traditional" (east on the left) or "map" (east on the right) orientation, show or hide the constellation stick-figures and let the user choose how many stars to plot by their brightness.

Planned Improvements:

The ability to share the activity data is not currently implemented. And I want to re-format the toolbars so all controls are still visible when the screen is rotated. Those two additions will complete "version one".

For version two, I'm tempted to extend the program to make it useful for an observer with binoculars. This means the observer has both magnification and greater light-gathering capability than the program is currently set up for. So I'd need to add the ability to show just a selected, small patch of the sky on demand and I'd have to show dimmer objects.

Kids enjoying StarChart

The catalog would therefore have to include about 10,000 more stars and represent the brighter Deep Sky Objects. I'd also like to be able to show the name of a selected star and of its constellation. This would be a teaching aid.

Educational Use:

Besides being an aid for viewing the night sky, the star chart can show how the sky looks from somewhere else and/or at some other time. You can demonstrate what it means to live on a round, rotating planet.

You can show that the sky moves one way as the year progresses while the moon moves the other at about 13 times the rate. You can show how the planets seem to move roughly in the same path. You can even show that the moon will occult the planets and eclipse the sun. Even if your inside

I suppose it even could be used to teach Python programming for the XO. At least it helped me learn to do it! You can read about my adventures in programming the StarChart Activity on the OLPC News Forum.

Dave Wallace Mark One Human Eyeball OLPC News Forum OLPC Planetarium Star Chart Activity StarChart