Category Archives: OLPC

One Laptop per Child UK

I spent the weekend in Brussels with representatives from OLPC Austria, OLPC Deutschland, OLPC France and others. We were joined by OLPC Europe and an American imposter who goes by ‘SJ.’

We spent the weekend figuring out the fine details for Give One Get One and making some future plans. One sticking point was the lack of existence of an OLPC community in the UK.

Given travel plans, I’m not a good candidate to get anything formal set up. However, I will happily give advice to people who are prepared to do so (regardless of where I am), so I have taken steps which will hopefully promote growth of a community: Firstly, I have updated the OLPC UK page on the wiki, and will keep it updated as our media efforts for G1G1-UK become public. Secondly, SJ set up an OLPC UK mailing list for us.

Let’s get things moving! Please sign up and introduce yourself on the mailing list if you are interested.

Give One Get One WORLDWIDE

One Laptop per Child: Give 1 Get 1
Give One Get One has gone global!

As of today, you can order from http://laptop.org/global. Amazon.co.uk will take payment. This is the site that was previously used to take European pre-orders, and the following applies for those pre-orders too.

There are currently 44 countries which OLPC can ship to. This list will grow according to demand; donors from other countries are encouraged to pre-order anyway (no payment will be taken unless your order can definitely be fulfilled), as this may trigger your country being added.

Things to be aware of:

  • You will be billed by Amazon.co.uk in Pound Sterling (GBP). If outside the UK, check with your credit card provider for the exact exchange rate and any additional fees that will be applied.
  • You are limited to the payment methods that Amazon.co.uk accepts.
  • A £50.00 handling and delivery charge applies, so the total cost to Give One and Get One is £325
  • The laptop comes with a US International keyboard. Note that this is slightly different from a UK keyboard, for example the @ and ” keys are swapped. There is a photo of the keyboard on the product page.
  • The laptop comes with a 3-prong UK plug on the charger. Consumers from outside the UK will have to purchase an adapter. We’re working on other options too; stay tuned.
  • If you want to Get your XO in time for Christmas, then you should order early. The cut-off date remains to be finalized.

Please help us spread the word! More info on the OLPC blog.

one laptop + one child = change the world

One Laptop per Child: Give 1 Get 1

That’s the equation.

In September, I was lucky enough to travel to Ethiopia to assist with the Ethiopian government efforts of providing laptops packed with educational material to schoolchildren free of charge, as part of the One Laptop per Child program.

After “what on earth were you doing in ETHIOPIA?” one of the first questions people ask during conversation is “who paid for the 5000 laptops?”

The laptops were donated by generous Americans and Canadians as part of 2007’s Give One Get One (G1G1) promotion. These donors purchased 2 laptops; one for themselves, and one for Ethiopia (or another developing country such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda).

When Give One Get One was initiated in November 2007, OLPC was a new idea. Production of laptops had only just started, and while laptops were being loaded onto ships to go to schoolchildren in developing nations, the early timing of the promotion meant that there weren’t really any deployments of the laptops for people to read about. Despite this, a huge number of people demonstrated their belief in the program and their donations resulted in tens of thousands of laptops headed to schoolchildren over the course of the last year.

The first day of G1G1 in 2007 was supposedly PayPal’s busiest day in history. While the huge demand resulted in some fulfilment problems, I saw with my own eyes how the donated laptops sent to other parts of the world are making huge differences in the lives of the lesser fortunate. I wrote a bit about the amazing impact of the laptops on Ethiopian schoolchildren just a few days after they had received them.

Today, OLPC has projects in over 30 countries, and has relaunched the Give One Get One promotion across the United States and Europe. To Give One and Get One, the cost is $399 for Americans or £275 for Europeans (excluding delivery).

Orders from the United States are being fulfilled immediately by Amazon.com who have a large stock of XOs. To participate, head over to laptop.org/xo.

Details of European orders are still being finalized, and you probably want to wait until we have more details on participating countries and delivery dates. However, if you’re really keen, you can pre-order at laptop.org/global. We’ll continue to update the G1G1EU wiki page and OLPC blog with any news.

There are amazing stories from OLPC deployments all over the web. Here are a few to start with:

And some excellent new media to help us spread the word:

G1G1 Europe clarifications

One Laptop per Child: Give 1 Get 1

Give One Get One starts on Monday. I previously wrote about the European launch, which will be in addition to the promotion throughout the United States.

While orders from the US will be fulfilled immediately, orders from Europe will initially be soft, that is, you will register your interest to Give One and Get One for the price of £275 (approximately €322), but you will not be required to pay anything.

Amazon & One Laptop per Child will be working hard to convert those soft orders into real ones in the next few days and weeks. Those who have registered their interest will then receive information on how they can pay, and when they can expect their ‘Get’ laptop to be delivered.

Upcoming Europe travel plans

I’m back from Ethiopia, and after a quick week in the US I’m now back at home in the UK. But I’ve already made some travel plans for a couple of weeks time:

I’ll be in Brussels, Belgium for the week starting on November 10th. Anyone want to meet up?

I’ll then be at OLPC France CodeCamp on November 15th in Paris (announcement).

No time to spend in Paris unfortunately, I’m flying back to the UK right after, but hopefully I can put some names to faces at OLPC CodeCamp.

Ethiopia’s second OLPC deployment

I’m accompanying the ecbp team as they start the 2nd OLPC Ethiopia deployment today. This time, they are working at a school in Addis Ababa. The school itself is similar to another local school that I wrote about in my first week, although smaller (approximately 1000 students, rather than 2800).

Both through mistakenly thinking this school was a public school, and also through the radiance of this photo, I was expecting the school to be more modern and have better facilities than the others I have seen. However, upon arrival I learn that this is another government school, and the facilities are strikingly bare.

As we walk into the school, the first thing that hits me is the noise of many chattering children. I ask the local team if this is their break (although I am doubting that myself, the schoolyard being mostly empty). “No, this is how they learn in class.” The teacher yells a question, and the kids all yell the answer. Or the teacher yells some kind of statement, and the kids repeat it. Over and over again. With many classes in a small area, it’s just a mess of (Amharic) sound.

Later on, I am within earshot of an English lesson. “HOW ARE YOU”, yells the teacher. The kids respond in unison, “I AM FINE THANKYOU.” This repeats indefinitely, almost army-like “SIR YES SIR” style.

The children are very friendly and flock around me, shaking my hand and asking my name. I discover that I have a supernatural ability to control their movement, simply by pointing my camera in different directions. Here is our attempt to get a photo of me with some children — you can actually see me, if you look carefully:

We spend the morning conducting questionnaires, which will generate data for evaluating the effects of the laptops (more data will be collected some time later, and data will also be collected from schools without laptops). Laptop handout starts in the afternoon. Things are nicely organised, with the kids coming up one by one, presenting signed letters from their parents, and signing for their laptops. They obey instructions to not power on the laptop until everyone in the class has signed for their XO. The teachers give out 200-300 laptops in total, with only a little assistance from ourselves.

Chaos ensues as classrooms full of children eagerly power on their laptops for the first time. The Ethiopian team explain that the children must type in their name, although some children do not seem to understand. I use my very minimal Amharic to help them out, but it’s difficult and things get harder as the other children get into Sugar and make noise as they start exploring. “Teacher, teacher” they say, pulling at my clothes. I turn to them and am greeted with “Camera, camera!” as they beg me to show them how to open Record (an instant hit).

Overall, it was a very tiring day, but a lot of fun, and rewarding to see so many happy children. Students from other classes hounded me for laptops as we left; we will return on Monday to finish the job.

Photostream updated.

OLPC Ethiopia updates

Last weekend, I wrote about Ethiopia’s first OLPC deployment. We’ve been back to the school several times since, so I have a few stories to share.

Firstly, Prof Tom Postmes and Dr Nina Hansen visited. They are starting a research project at the University of Groningen to measure the effects of the XOs on the children. On their journey to the school, they describe how they saw a child in a field, tending to his cattle. In one hand, he has a whip for controlling the animals. In the other? An XO.

Later in their journey, still before reaching the school, they find a child under a tree using his XO. Unlike all the other kids, he’s not at all excited about their presence, or them taking photos, and has no interest in seeing those photos on the camera display. He’s glued to his XO screen. They peer around to see what is draining all his attention, and they see the child looking through the Nature images bundle. This kid is fascinated by photos of the Eiffel tower, space shuttles, etc. His horizons just exploded…

The researchers were also intrigued by the way some of the children were using the Record activity. Some of these children do not have access to mirrors, and were using Record to look at themselves. Being social psychologists, Tom and Nina were excited about the changes this will have on the childrens’ self-perception and self esteem.

Back at the office, the OLPC Ethiopia team worked on creating content bundles of the regional curriculum textbooks for the school. They have acquried 39 of the textbooks (grades 2 through 8) as PDF. On Friday, we went back to the school and showed the teachers how to install them (using a customization key).

We decided to add the WikipediaEN activity along with the textbooks. In addition to a heap of textbooks, 600 kids in the middle of nowhere now have 8500 of the most popular Wikipedia articles in their hands. The children learn English from an early age, so I’m confident that it will be of use.

A journalist visited, and we took him to the school on Monday. I’ll leave it up to him to report on his findings, although I will jump in and share my favourite quote: when asked about the parents views of the laptops, the school headteacher explained how the parents view the laptops as “the rebirth of their children.”

The reborn children have not yet received any tutoring about the laptops. Although they have figured out an incredible amount for themselves, they did not seem to have figured out the collaboration features. So, we gathered 15 or so children in a classroom, and showed them how to set up shared Chat, Distance and Write activities over the mesh. They were ecstatic. We told them to tell all their friends, and then we returned to Addis with high spirits.

Plans with other schools are progressing. The Ethiopian way of life is simply less organised than what I’m used to. It’s normal here for people to turn back on their plans, multiple times. Assuming plans stick (hah), I should get to see at least one more deployment.