“A program for donors to employ between 100 or more laptops for small-scale deployments, called “Give a School,” has been removed from the participation page of the nonprofit’s Web site. The nonprofit is now offering options to directly donate laptops or to make corporate purchases.”(Source)

This could be a serious problem! While there are plenty of XOs out there (near here) to accomplish things with, being unable to buy more units is going to have a serious impact on how things proceed for a lot of the community that supports the OLPC project.

Before outlining how you can get an XO, it is important to understand that these computers are not like normal laptops, they really are specialist collaboration devices meant for children aged 5-12 to be used in the classroom as part of their normal education process. They won’t necessarily make great gifts in isolation, because most of the value comes in collaborating and sharing with others, particularly in an educational setting.

Check out the post over at OLPCFriends and get involved!

“Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining 32 people. While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries. We thank team members who are departing for their contributions to this important mission.” (Source)

While this is sad news I think the hard yards of this project have been done, in many regards. The XO-1 units are fully operational, have a half-a-million user base and a strong support community. The emerging netbook market, spawned by OLPC’s demonstration that you don’t need to pay thousands for a laptop, is going to give birth to technical developments that future XO models will take advantage of. But since the development that I’m interested in (read: content) was not the primary directive of OLPC Inc staff I don’t see this affecting the day-to-day lives of people currently using the tech.  A weak global financial economy is showing us how vulnerable we have made ourselves – OLPC’s rich social economy will demonstrate the true value of the project in the coming years.

You can watch the whole video here!

“Yesterday, iGoogle launched “Themes for Causes” with One Laptop per Child as one of their first 25 causes. “Themes for Causes” are ways to customize your Google homepage to show your support.

http://www.laptop.org/igoogle”

I’ve enabled it on my account.. and i’ve most certainly seen nicer themes, I have to say. Still, a cool way to show support!

Chester Community School in Pennsylvania is deploying 1,400 XO laptops to students, one of the larger deployments of laptops from One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in the United States. The initial rollout will begin this week.

PA Charter School To Deploy 1,400 OLPC XO Laptops : December 2008 : THE Journal

Head over to her blog to read the details, convincing!

For the past year, we have been running a Give Many large-scale donation program with little fanfare, to support groups that have bought XOs in hundreds and thousands for their own school or regional projects…

We have lowered the cost of participation dramatically – to $22,000 for a 100-laptop projects in the neediest parts of the world – and now include in that cost things that all programs need: shipping to an international airport, a spare parts kit, and invitations for organizers to learning and deployment workshops that we are organizing a few times each year.

Change the World one school at a time : Give 100 update | One Laptop per Child

If you want further info on the nine pilots being run in various countries from Papua New Guinea, Niue to Nauru, check out part one of this interview.

Cynthia, the daughter of my friend Sue, has cerebral palsy and uses a small touchscreen with picture icons to speak. Sue explained that this is a costly piece of equipment at $6,000, with a $400 fee when it needs service – expenses that many middle-class families with special needs children in even the developed world cannot afford. I had just received my OLPC through the Give One Get One program and had a sense of curious excitement about this new platform, and little idea of the possibilities. “Hi Matt, what’s that thing?” asked Sue. The green laptop had caught her eye. After I explained, she immediately thought, “Could this help my daughter?”

Free Icon-To-Speech: Open-Source Speech for Disabled – One Laptop Per Child News

Today Pia Waugh has posted on her blog a link to the technical documentation of Australia’s first OLPC trial. The details can be found here and it includes how to work within a typical relatively secure school. This is a great step for proving the value of the project for both Aussie kids, and kids in a “Western” country. It is also a world first of inter-school collaboration and the delivery of specialist services to remote schools.

OLPC Friends Announcement
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Australia%27s_first_deployment

Dailymotion, one of the world’s largest independent video entertainment websites, and One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving education in the developing world, today announced a holiday contest to support OLPC’s Give One, Get One campaign.The contest, which runs from November 17, 2008 to December 15, 2008, calls for Dailymotion users to upload original commercials for the Give One, Get One campaign. One winning commercial will be selected from among the submissions. Along with bringing greater attention to this important campaign, the winning commercial will be aired on a major network/cable TV channel during the period of December 15th to December 31st.

Dailymotion and One Laptop per Child Launch Search for the Best Video for Giving Campaign

Colombia will become the second country to use the One Laptop Per Child Project’s (OLPC) XO laptops running Microsoft Windows XP in schools after signing an agreement for pilot programs in two towns, Microsoft said late Monday.Schools in the towns of Quetame and Chia will be outfitted with the small green XO laptops developed by the OLPC. The pilot programs are expected to expand over time.Download the latest Network World Executive Guide – Virtualization Reality CheckMicrosoft and OLPC will donate the XO laptops and work with teachers on how to use them in schools. The groups did not say how many laptops would be handed out as part of the trial nor when it would start.

Colombia signs up for OLPC laptops with Windows – Network World

No amount of hardware or software can replace a good teacher. However, I remain convinced that hardware, software, and well-thought out tools can help children learn in individualized ways and work very well within the context of solid classroom instruction. It’s for this reason that I believe Intel’s Classmate PC model can be really successful; it was designed to supplement classroom instruction rather than turn kids loose with a PC like the OLPC XO.

Is George Ou right? | Education IT | ZDNet.com

Educational tools, collaborative software, running on Sugar is about as far from a “PC” as you can get. Has Christopher Dawson not seen the large amount of complaints coming from users trying to use XOs as a “regular” Windows based laptop? He recognises collaboration as part of the Classmate PC, but has missed that collaboration is the heart of an XO.

This appears to be a marketing issue. But marketing not towards the customer (the weird thing is the kids receiving these things  don’t care what they’re called) but marketing towards potential social supporters. I’d hate to see such a huge effort tangled up in lexical semanics.

One Velociraptor Per Child’s mission is to increase the Darwinian fitness of the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-energy, internet-enabled velociraptor with content designed for collaborative, practical, self-empowered survival.

[M]etabrain [E]ntry [L]og » One Velociraptor Per Child

“”Total cost of ownership”
(TCO) is often underestimated, sometimes grossly, when calculating costs of ICT in education initiatives in developing countries. Estimates of initial costs to purchase equipment to overall costs over time vary widely; typically they lie between 10-25% of total cost. That said, there is a dearth of reliable data, and useful tools, to help guide education decisionmakers in their assessments of the true costs of educational technology initiatives.” (source)

So you can head over to OLPC News on the 6th to watch, or check back later as the event is being recorded.

How much does it really cost to introduce and sustain computers in schools?

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): A Study of Models of Affordable Computing for Schools in Developing Countries.

11am – 12:30pm (Washington DC time)

6 November 2008

As for me, I’m tired but glad things went well. There are plenty of things I learned, one important one is that you need practice to demo a large number of these things effectively. Being intimately familiar with the devices will make the difference when trying to pitch their case, and that takes time.

So what’s next? Basically wait and see what the powers-that-be decide what they’ll do next (In Australia, specifically) we’ll see something solid on the OLPC wiki (wiki.laptop.org) shortly, I believe. More to follow…

It is clear that the One Laptop per Child effort requires strong involvement from governments to be effective. The insistence by some that Windows be packaged with the laptops reflects policies and legislation that were born in a Microsoft world, so these policies give lawmakers limited options. It might not be that they’re opposed to open source solutions – it’s just that bureaucracy is difficult to change once it’s set up. Earlier this year it was reported that Egypt was interested in the OLPC venture only if Windows was the operating system. At the same time we know there is great support for FOSS in Egypt, we also know that Egyptian bureaucracy is the slowest of the slow.

Throughout the chatter today I haven’t seen a single mention about cross-compatibility. I see the heart of the XO as collaboration, both in terms of users and extended community. So my question is, are Windows and Linux XOs going to be able to wirelessly mesh? And, I’ve asked before, is software developed for Windows based XOs going to be compatible with Linux XOs?  Does this mean we’re going to need two separate communities working on basically the same thing, without the ability to share? What happens when kids form different schools meet and some of them aren’t able to join in due to incompatibility?

A dual-boot option goes some way to alleviating my concerns, but there’s a fiscal cost associated with it that takes the machine further away from being affordable. I guess we wait and see!

“The reason the political leadership has never bothered with providing quality education in public schools is because most moneyed politicians ship their children abroad for quality education leaving children of peasant workers to fend for themselves at home.” suggests Jerry Okungu.

Pointed. At The Australian National University we have a huge international student population, but they’re not all rich. I have a Sudanese friend who spent most of his childhood in Uganda, and his family managed to send him across to Australia. His African perspective was incredibly valuable when it came to studying International Relations and I’m grateful he was there.

So, some get lucky. But we’re also lucky to receive them over here. The OLPC Project (which Rwanda appears to be committing hundreds of millions of dollars to) will let the unlucky ones at least get some access to the level of education I was fortunate to have.

Read the article at New Vision and see what Rwanda has planned.

“One thing that has always intrigued me about the OLPC project: Given Negroponte’s fundraising prowess, why did he not set up OLPC as a for-profit? The professor said he did not want shareholders clouding his mission and moral purpose of this project, which is about educating children in the most disadvantaged parts of the world. Had there been profit objectives, that last billion may not have been the best place to focus.“

Well, the recent turbulence within the OLPC organisation (wait… and the economy at large..!) says that you’ve got a lot more to fear from upper management than ma-and-pa-shareholder. Conflict over the moral purpose of the project, and just how best to go about it, have not been avoided by being a not-for-profit. Besides, as I suggested before, if OLPC’s XOs sit within a unique and new market (where social capital is regarded as profit) allowing shareholders to buy into your company is a great way to let them directly contribute to the cause. Not only that, they stand to receive dividends.

Something to think about, anyway…make sure to check out her article.

I’ll have more to say when I’m up and running.

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For Immediate Release 14 October, 2008 

One Laptop Per Child Open Day 

Computing Assistance Support & Education (CASE) will be hosting Canberra’s first One Laptop Per Child Open Day Monday 27 October 2008 3.00pm at Volunteering ACT 55 Chandler Street (corner of Chandler and Cameron Streets) Belconnen. 

Pia Waugh, open source software expert and One Laptop Per Child community member, will be speaking about the success of the OLPC project around the world and the opportunities it provides for educational projects in our region. 

Following the event CASE will hold it’s 10th Annual General Meeting for members. 

Come and play with the OLPC XO devices on display, and find out how this unique technology is being used in educational projects around the world. 

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I’ll be giving a presentation on the technical aspects of the XO itself (nothing too complicated), and then we will be on hand to demonstrate some of the features and answer questions as best we can. Pia will be talking at the end (at 5, is the plan). I’ll be covering the event from this blog, so be sure to check back here!