Visit to Vung Vieng Village - OLPC Vietnam

OLPC VietnamVisit to the Vung Vieng Village -

Report (June 2010)Serge Stinckwich

[email protected]

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)

• OLPC = US NGO

• OLPC Goal : «to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.

"It's an education project,not a laptop project."

Nicholas negroponte

te

100 $

XO-1

XO-1 as an ebook reader

• CPU : 433 Mhz AMD Geode

• 1200x900 LCD (with sharp images)

• 256 Mb DRAM, 1 Gb flash memory

• Internal SD card slot, Wifi

• Water-resistant keyboard

Localized keyboard

• 1.6 million laptops (october 2009)

• Laptops are sold to governments to be distributed through the ministries of education

• Laptop are property of the child

• G1G1 program

Distribution models

OLPC in Asia

Warranty applied only if you disassemble the

machine, Nicolas Negroponte.

Sugar

• Sugar is a free desktop environment (GPL) designed with the goal of being used by children for learning.

• Sugar does not use the «desktop», «folder» and «window» metaphors (focus on one program at a time).

• Activities, no applications !

• Work on XO-1 laptop or included in Linux distributions. Mostly written in Python

• Hundred of activities: math, physics, programming, english, serious games, ...

Pilot Experiment in Vung Vieng

• Vung Vieng is located in Bai Tu Long Bay, Vietnam

• 40km from mainland

• Deployment in nov 2009 by Nancy Severs (US volunteer)

• 12 XO + solar panels

• Every laptops are working correctly and are used everyday by children. Children enjoyed using XOs.

• Kids know how to use their computers.

• XOs are not part of the curriculum of the children

• Sustainability problem: teachers stay only one year in the VV school.

• Only a limited set of activities seem to be used by children. Not enought vietnamese contents.

After 6 months

What to do now for OLPC Vietnam ?

• Build a user community for SUGAR in Vietnam

• Build OLPC Vietnam

• Develop vietnamese contents

• Write (or translate) vietnamese documentation

• Train teachers

Follow OLPC-Nepal path

• OLE Nepal started 3 years ago

• 30 people (15 contents developers)

• 4 keys for success (according to Rabi Karmacharya): 1) content, 2) educators 3) network 4) capacity

Some projets for OLPC Vietnam developers

• Translate OLPC documentation, books, flyers in Vietnamese

• Translate Activities in Vietnamese (Scratch)

• Test EToys in Vietnamese (font problems)

• Develop vietnamese curriculum

• Developers training: Sugar, Python, Squeak, ...

What do now for VVV ?

• Made an evaluation of activities used by children

• Reinstall machines with a selection vietnamese activities, update to the last version of Sugar (0.82.1 => 0.88)

• Train teachers, develop local support (parents ?)

• How to scale up to others villages ?

Some useful links

• OLPC : http://laptop.org/

• Sugar: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/

• EToys: http://www.squeakland.org/

• OLPC Vietnam: http://olpc.vn/

• Smalltalk-vn: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/smalltalk-vn

Thank you for your attention.

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