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In troubling news circulating this week it appears that the One Laptop per Child project has shifted its focus soley to large scale deployments.

“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.

Pia has just posted a detailed list of suggestions if you were ever interested in getting your hands on an OLPC XO laptop in Australia and New Zealand. Before she does, though, she makes an important note that I feel that I should copy here. I’ve seen people (especially at ZDnet) somewhat miffed once they finally get their hands on one. And that’s simply because the recipients were middle aged men who thought they were getting something like an EEEPC. So;

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!

The One Laptop per Child project, due to the financial crisis, has had to reduce its operating costs like so many other companies. From the official Wiki:

“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.

While manning the EOL booth at eGames 2008 I was approached by the Internode content team, expensive video camera and all, to do a short interview about the One Laptop per Child  program. Mostly it’s a rundown of the XO unit itself, but we talk about the ideas behind the project and what it might mean for Australia, too.

You can watch the whole video here!

Just in from the mailing list:

“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!

The Journal has a report about a significant new OLPC deployment in the USA:

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

Pia’s gone and done a five point explanation as to why OLPC trials in Australia are important. First, the need. We’ve got such a range of educational situations here in this country, and there is most definitely room for this kind of technology. Second, it helps free up money for similar projects in a tricky kind of way. Third, the strong community support around the project can be capitalised on, not just for Australia’s sake. Fourth, it will give us city slickers a chance to connect with people and knowledge that has previously been unshared. And fifth, again because of Australia’s uniqueness, remote training lessons can be learned here.

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

While doing XO demonstrations at iDEF in Melbourne I had an interesting conversation with a man involved in disabled services. The discussion centred around accessibility and it brought to my mind things I hadn’t thought about before – specifically, where do disabled kids fit into the OLPC picture? Well, that’s partly answered by this fantastic article, quoted below. Once again, by virtue of the open source platform, a solution is being developed without government, without big companies, without having to wait. Read for yourself:

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

It comes as a surprise but OLPC Australia has announced an Australian Give 1 Get 1 program, similar to those currently running overseas. Details are sparse but this is most exciting news, especially for those individuals I talked to during iDEF, who were very very keen to get involved. “Early 2009″ is the penciled in date. IT Wire is carrying a story, and you can always keep an eye on OLPC Australia’s page.

Over at OLPC Friends you can finally get some details on Australia’s first OLPC XO pilot. Pia’s been heading up the project, with an emphasis on remote collaboration rather than school-wide saturation and deployment. Available so far is the technical documentation, with more to follow…

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