OLPC = One Laptop Per Child. Give open source connectivity to someone

[jeanna]

Hi Everyone,

Last summer my son called me to tell me of "the perfect thing for you , mom. It is soo you!" he said.

It is called OLPC "One Laptop Per Child"
http://laptop.org/

The laptop uses linux OS. Called SUGAR
It is made rugged and kidlike for gradeschool children.
The children learn to internet and learn to learn, and program opensource style etc.
The target is children in "underdeveloped" countries.

The price to donate one laptop is $199.00

But there is a very sweet deal starting this coming monday, November 17, 2008. This deal is that you will be allowed to also buy one of these for yourself (or someone here in the overdeveloped world) when you buy one for a child in an underdeveloped country.

I bought one to give last summer. There is a simple thank you that comes, but the giving is its own reward, of course. I do not know where it went. There is no attempt to do the followup marketing to make you feel good. So, that is it. {It is likely that I opted out of a list.}

Today, I got an email thanking me again and letting me know that the "give one get one" (G1G1) program will be starting on Nov 17 and will also be offered in Europe.

I decided to begin this thread to inform all my "friends" here in this open source community about the OLPC program.

I am very grateful my son informed me about this and perhaps some other open source folks will also be grateful to learn of this.

Thank you

Jeanna

[jeanna]

One more thing,

Before I posted the first post, I searched in the blog for information and found the following story. I think it is helpful to see it works. so here it is so you can see too.

==========
http://olpchild.blogspot.com/2008/10/flower-of-hope-peru.html

Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Flower of Hope - Peru

OLPC has a significant number of laptops in Peru.

Here is a little flower of hope, not theory, not marketing, not whitewashing, not panacea; but an actual phenomena, set against the backdrop of the Andes mountains, among people who are living on the edge of poverty.




". . . The fathers, I later heard, all decided an education could stop their children from having no choice but to work the field all day as they did . . . So their parents started having them help out only when necessary, and left them to read and write on their XO the rest of the time."

It is not a sudden flash of light and everything is better like a Hollywood movie. Instead, we see living proof of the hope that education can bring, under the right conditions, through the choices people make. How precious it is.

I was struck powerfully through reading a blog entry by Ivan Krstic, who was on the ground in Peru, interacting with the people, and asking some good questions. A brief summary of what struck me is below, and I also invite you to read his blog entry on that visit, "Astounded in Arahuay", which has more pictures and information: http://radian.org/notebook/astounded-in-arahuay

What changed in the 8 months since the laptops arrived?

1) Ivan: "As there are few roads in and around Arahuay, the children don’t communicate much outside of school â€" with anyone. The teachers started independently pointing out to Mr. Navarro that this was changing once the laptops arrived: kids started talking to each other outside of school hours over the mesh, and working together more while in school. They started talking a lot more with each other in person, and conquered their previously paralyzing fear of strangers."

2) Ivan: "The second thing, Mrs. Cornejo jumped in, is that the kids used to be pretty selfish, an unsurprising consequence of the abject poverty in much of Peru. It’s not that the kids are starving, it’s just that they don’t have very much; what they do have, they’re reluctant to share. With the laptops, the kids had to turn to each other to learn how to use them. Then they realized it was easy to send each other pictures and things they’ve written â€" and it became commonplace. The sharing, asserts Mrs. Cornejo, extended into the physical world, where once jealously-guarded personal items increasingly started being passed around between the kids, if somewhat nervously."

3) Ivan: "Finally," opened Mr. Navarro, and hesitated. He gave me another long look, clearly unsure if to proceed. I put on my best smile, and assured him it’s exactly the things he would hesitate to tell me that I want to hear most. He cleared his throat, and in a conspiratorial, low voice â€" despite the fact we were in an empty room in the town hall â€" explained he was sure, in the beginning, the pilot would fail.

“Children’s fathers used to seethe with fury when the laptops were passed out, because the kids no longer wanted to help work in the field all day,” he continued.

Mr. Navarro speaks in slow, measured sentences. He is thoughtful and confident, both reminders â€" along with his weathered face â€" of being, for many years, foremost a teacher.

“I didn’t know how we’d stop the fathers from revolting and making the kids return their XOs,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “The kids solved the dilemma for me: they taught their fathers how to use the Internet and a search engine.”

“Then they started showing them the work they were doing for school. The reports they wrote, the pictures they took, the notes they compiled. And the fathers had actual proof that their kids were learning,” he concluded.

========================

Here again, is the little flower of hope, as seen in the difficult decision parents made to allow their kids to spend time learning and exploring.

". . . The fathers, I later heard, all decided an education could stop their children from having no choice but to work the field all day as they did . . . So their parents started having them help out only when necessary, and left them to read and write on their XO the rest of the time."

[exxcomm0n]

Nice idea jeanna.

It takes the focus of education out of the teachers hand and into the students so they can investigate the things that interest them and get an education motivated by interest rather than the goal of no summer school.

There are 3 things I think are instrumental in something like this changing the face of education as we know it, and all are realizable @ this time.

1.) A moderated mentoring forum with classical education titled subject areas, but a search function that you could type an occupation or interest topic into, and have it post the education areas or sub-forum topics where they could find already answered questions or post their own.

2.) Online gaming.
Before you laugh, the broad appeal (I'm sitting a few feet from an addict now) and interest capturing potential they have make them a perfect introductory educational tool.
"Quests" can be undertaken by (self formed) groups of internet connected kids (yes, I know this brings up another whole kettle of fish w/ global internet access) of many segments that will teach teamwork, individual study, improvisation, using research materials/ search engines, and providing the (educational) basis for more involved and intricate quests while fulfilling the criteria needed to be allowed to enter them (further the education).
As they get older the games become more individualized quests (courses) with treasure (grades) that allow them to buy "free" (unhindered) study or web access (minorly filtered for  p0rn and adware) in areas of interest outside of quest norm with standard tests @ the end of each subject that passing will allow the rebate of some of the purchase "treasure".
The "game" could also have a database of it's "players" and construct the "quest" for each group as it goes along to present more of a certain type of goal if it seems to be a weak point for the group to help them understand the underlying concept while touching on a broad spectrum of materials taking into account the histories of the group members so that each "quest" can be a more advanced one than the last time while still exercising the principles learned formerly.
The database would know how to structure the "game" for the maximum benefit of the group and can assign goals to individual players. The group benefits from the "one room schoolhouse" theory as it can be comprised of lots of different ages and experience levels that let kids tutor kids, and not even realizing their doing it!
They're just trying to get the game moving again.

It could be funded by advertisers.
Not in the "game" itself, but the research sites allowed for the game could have a 5-10% advertising space allowed for the underwriting advertiser sponsoring that area of study for that level (this is a tricky thing I know, and fraught with issues).
But make the fiscal structure like National Public Radio in the USA with donations and/or grant funding via taxes?

3.) Free filtered global internet services
If truly global 'net access were an option (the topic of which got me into another field of study and different thread on OU) this could be offered with the laptops for "game" access and WWW access through a filtering server that would not allow access to anything but research approved sponsored (via business or donations above) sites with specific areas of classical study to be used to solve the 'quests'.
Minorly restricted 'net access that is timed (like mentioned above) could be allowed for the quest points won by individual players.

There's lots that could be done with this, and lots of ways it could go wrong too, but if a non-profit business model was set up correctly with the right amount of oversight, it could be the next educational tool that brings global educational opportunity.


Very nice subject BTW, and it gives me some good ideas for Christmas.

[jeanna]

Thanks ex, but it really wasn't my idea. I just bought one for a kid in Peru, I think.

The non profit is already in place. I guess this has been in the works since BEFORE ms was even a company.

One of the parts I like most about it personally is the mesh networking. The kids can use the wider international internet if the server at school is on, but because linux is sooo network enabled, the computers themselves make a wireless internet (LAN without a server machine, I guess) with neighboring computers. So in a remote village in the mountains, the kids can internet with each other.

I appreciate your comments, but please realize, I was merely reporting. (but come monday, I will G1G1, because I really want to see what this little computer is all about).

Green ears and all. 

I know what you mean about christmas presents. It would be a really nice gift to give one get one in someone else's name as a gift to them.

thank you,

jeanna

[jeanna]

I made a mistake calling sugar the os. The OS is a linux kernel of FEDORA. the sugar is the GUI. oops!

Here is a little more info. This time from wiki.

Sugar
graphical user interface originally developed for the One Laptop per Child computer/education project and as of May 2008 being developed under the umbrella of Sugar Labs. Sugar is used on the OLPC XO-1 laptop computer and is also available as a session option on Ubuntu and Fedora. Unlike more traditional desktop environments, it does not use a "desktop" metaphor and only focuses on one task at a time.

Main contributors to the project include Christopher Blizzard and Marco Pesenti Gritti, Eben Eliason, Tomeu Vizoso, Simon Schampijer, Dan Williams, Walter Bender, Christian Schmidt, Lisa Strausfeld, and Takaaki Okada. The free software community has also contributed greatly to Sugar. Released under the GNU GPL, Sugar is free software.

It is written in the interpreted Python programming language, whereas most other environments are written in a compiled language such as C. Sugar is also referred to as the OLPC Python Environment. It is composed of the Python language, GTK GUI and Gecko HTML engine.[1]

----

Now, it would seem that ms is making a very biggg effort to take this open source operating system away. There were rumors all summer about a dual boot. I am glad to see that this is not the case. However, I did see that there is a trial using ms windows in 2 towns of ecuador. Now, I wonder why anyone would want to get stuck with a laptop that requires perpetual virus software in a remote poor country?? These computers will be completely diseased within a few months.

=====

Vive le self-empowerment!!

jeanna