Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Autumn 2012
A U T U M N 2 0 1 2 O L P C A S S O C I AT I O N N E W S L E T T E R
IN THIS ISSUE
Editorial Note from the CEO OLPC Hosts Rwandan President at MIT Entering the World of Mathematical Cognition Opening a Window to Cities OLPC Partners with Cloud 9 World Around the World One Laptop Per Child in Charlotte, North Carolina Uruguay Places Second Order for XO-1.75 Colombia Launches Largest Project to Date Honduras Embraces One Laptop Per Child Introducing the XO in Gabon Creating Affordable Solutions One Laptop in Ethiopia One Laptop Per Childs Progress in Gaza and the West Bank Focus Reports Sponsors OLPC Fundraising Campaign Did You Know? You Can Easily Donate to One Laptop Per Child Online Designing the XO-4 Touch OLPC Partners with Neonode for High Resolution Optical Touch Screen One Laptop Per Child Community to Gather in San Francisco One Laptop Per Child Partners with University of the West Indies
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Charlotte, US
Honduras
Gabon
Colombia
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Ethiopia
Madagascar
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One Laptop Per Childs Progress in Gaza and the West Bank
With over 9,000 XOs deployed in Gaza and the West Bank, One Laptop Per Child is advancing its mission to reach the most isolated and remote children around the world.
Since 2009, OLPC and other key organizations have been working together to bring XOs to elementary schools in the Middle East. In collaboration with the American Task Force on Palestine, OLPC made an initial delivery of 1000 G1G1-funded XOs to the Ministry of Education. In partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, OLPC deployed another 6000 G1G1-funded XOs in Gaza and the West Bank. In 2010, 2100 XOs were set up in Gazas Rafah Co-Ed Elementary School, and an additional 500 children received laptops in Ramallah, West Banks Amari Boys and Girls School. In order to establish a sustainable educational environment, all XO deployments included a detailed overview of the OLPC program. Each program involved the development of technical support and learning content. More importantly, teachers and parents were trained to use the XO, assuring widespread involvement and continued participation among community members. OLPCs ultimate mission in Gaza and the West Bank is to achieve XO saturation. None of the existing and ongoing projects would be possible without the contributions of PaleXO, a growing and energetic group of OLPC volunteers based around Birzeit University. PaleXO members have been working with United Nations Relief and Works Agency to recruit new volunteers and to establish similar groups in Gaza. Support from the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization and the Hope & Play Foundation has also been essential to the success of OLPC initiatives. Many children in Gaza and the West Bank have experienced war, poverty and marginalization due to circumstances beyond their control. Together, OLPC and these organizations are bringing invaluable empowerment and joy to these children through transformative educational resources.
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Did You Know? You Can Easily Donate to One Laptop Per Child Online
You can donate funds for laptops to One Laptop Per Child online with Amazon Simple Pay, which allows you to give quickly and easily using the payment and billing information in your Amazon account. You can also donate any amount via PayPal. To learn more about how you can help, visit one.laptop.org/action/donate.
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Internally, Sugar has seen a major overhaul that will benefit all XO users and unlock modern touchscreen features. This work is intended to provide a solid foundation for the coming years of Sugar development. The magic in these modern touchscreens relies on heavy engineering, and to perform it OLPC has joined forces with a team from Open Source Software consultancy called Lanedo to make Sugar work smoothly with
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Paint confusion: Children using the painting activity with the XO-4Touch check their fingertips for ink.
hands on. For users that cannot type easily, but can drive a pointer of any kind, the on-screen-keyboard is an accessibility feature that can be enabled on any XO, even those without touchscreen.
VGA displays (with an adapter). All are plugand-play style. Older XO models still support USB-to-VGA solutions, and the team intends to expand support for DisplayLink, which is a strong industry standard for USB-to-VGA.
The team has been careful to preserve the sunlight-readable screen and long battery life. The microphone input jack still supports connecting humidity and light sensors to use them for science experiments and learning programming. The laptops still work in hotter and colder environments than others, and still work at higher altitudes too. For established deployments, it is also important that almost all XO spare parts remain compatible. Existing and new laptops can trade parts and share parts inventory to protect the existing investment and save money. New XO-4 motherboards can be used to repair or upgrade older units at a very modest cost. A new release of our operating system is planned for early 2013bringing all the new software versions to existing XO laptopsso environments with a mix of earlier laptops and the new XO-4 can have an integrated user experience. When you open an XO-4, there are lots of things insidemost of them invisible, hiding in the details. Millions of engineering hours and thousands of sleepless nights from the team, work to ensure this is the right machine for the next generation. For the next few months, the team will be busy in the test labs, pounding keyboards and making sure everything comes together right on time for the start of production.
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OLPC Partners with Neonode for High Resolution Optical Touch Screen
The new XO-4 Touch laptop will be equipped with a state-of-the-art, high-resolution touch screen that is both responsive and eco-friendly, thanks to a partnership with Neonode, the worlds leading provider of optical touch-screen solutions. The next generation XO-4 Touch laptop will still be rugged, cost-efficient and fast, but Neonodes MultiSensing technology will equip the XO Touch with the highest possible resolution in full color. Even with a 300 dpi resolution, the screen will be fully visible in bright sunlight. The XO-4 Touch interface will respond to gestures, multitouch, and sweeps: Touch can be used even to activate the machine in sleep or off mode. Energy efficient engineering will enable the machine to be powered though alternative power generators. One Laptop Per Child is proud to partner with an organization that shares its appreciation for innovative and transformative technology. Neonodes MultiSensing touch solutions will ensure that children around the world will have first-rate educational software at their fingertips.
Touch, a truly pioneering and sustainable device that shows the broad versatility of our technology. This market entry confirms that our MultiSensing technology makes it possible to create a top class product that is both affordable and extremely energy saving and still has a user interface that is radical enough to satisfy the uncompromising demands of knowledge and entertainment thirsty children. Our company philosophy is to contribute to a better and happier world, and we have the opportunity to do so by supporting OLPCs mission.
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Courtesy of Zamora Tern Foundation
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Courtesy of Zamora Tern Foundation
On October 19 to 24, 2012, One Laptop Per Child members and volunteers gathered at the OLPC San Francisco Community Summit to ask the principle questions, What have we done? and How can we improve? The intensive summit examined the progress of XO deployments around the globe and examined areas both technical and social where OLPCs educational infrastructure can grow. This past year brought impressive efforts and results to OLPC. Projects around the world have matured as XO training procedures and curricula development have been fine-tuned. OLPC has also gained important insights by conducting helicopter style deployments,
where children with zero XO training have demonstrated innovative learning using the laptop. Part of the Summits purpose is to offer an opportunity for people to reflect upon and appreciate the dedication of OLPC members and the transformations that they and the XO have delivered to children and their communities. New hardware such as the XO-1.75 and the upcoming XO-4 bring promising developments in XO software. Attendees of the Summit discussed how such improvements can best benefit children and their learning processes. The possibility of delivering an eBook program through the XO was a particular area of interest during discussion,
along with talk of building better evaluation methods to track a childs usage pattern. Summit members also considered new School Server software, new ways to access the Sugar Learning Platform and new deployment and volunteering opportunities amongst other topics. It is events such as the San Francisco Community Summit that maintain OLPCs innovative nature. Discussions at the summit will directly translate to an enhanced XO product, and thus a better quality of education for the citizens of tomorrow.
One Laptop Per Child Partners with University of the West Indies
XO initiatives in Jamaica and the Caribbean
One Laptop Per Child has partnered with the University of the West Indies (UWI) to establish 1:1 computing programs in Jamaican primary schools and across the wider Caribbean. UWI is a regional institution of higher learning in the Commonwealth Caribbean with four established campusesCave Hill, Barbados, St. Augustine, Trinidad, Open Campus, and Mona, Jamaica. OLPC will be working directly with UWIs Mona Campus in Kingston to facilitate initiatives in Jamaican elementary schools. The first step is to prepare the OLPC Jamaica volunteer community by providing fundamental training in XO deployment. To ensure the quality and sustainability of OLPC in Jamaica and the Caribbean, ongoing support will be offered in all areas of XO integration.
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Quanta Computer
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