An OLPC Christmas / OLPC Distribution in October

Holiday Wishes Come True?

Finally some confirmation from up on high! (Mary Lou Jepsen, CTO)
She mentions a possible price-tag of $350.



From the reuters article:

As the foundation prepares for mass production of its first model, the XO, to begin in October, it is looking for ways to subsidize manufacturing of the devices so that it can get more of them into the hands of poor children, Jepsen said.

Profits from consumer sales would go for that purpose, said Jepsen.

"We're trying to get the best deal we can," she said.

She added the foundation is looking at selling the machines over the Internet and talking to companies with "a big presence on the Web," although she declined to identify any by name.

We could speculate on what laptop-conveyance they'll go with, waxing fantastical, but the reality is probably not going to be that earth-shaking; they'll find a tigerdirect-like distributor, or something.

Saying that, I'm not ruling out GoogleDelivery, direct from the hands of Al Gore as he travels cross-country at the head of a fleet of OLPC-laden GoogleVans.

boingboing
reuters

Large-Scale Laptop Production About To Begin

According to this BBC article, the production of the Children Machine is about to be ramped up to get the devices into kids hands by this coming October.

Here's Chris Blizzard going over innards and some power stuff: (courtesy BBC)

The BBC also provides a link to their 'Factfile: XO laptop' which contains a good overview of the technology that makes the Children's Machine what it is. If you scroll-down to the bottom, they have an applet demonstrating how the mesh connectivity behaves (it looks like a slightly modifed version of this one). Fun.

Although I find it a little hard to believe that we'll be able to purchase our very own OLPCs only two months after legitimate distribution starts, I am so excited for this Christmas.

One Blog Per Child

If I were teacher, I would not hide from wikipedia. Many teachers do. Citing it is often forbidden. But why run away from a giant book of everything, when it's fun to read with links and tabs. Better to adapt to it.

Rather than infrequent big projects, students should have lots of mini research projects. Asked and allowed to go questing through wikipedia, following links that interest them. Learning history or science, geometry or UFOs. Their reports would be digital. Blog reports summarizing what they had read. They would be supervised by teachers or by older students as part of their education. Teaching is a valuable skill, and experience is a virtue. And the OLPC is a necessity for this sort of thing.

We need books to outline a curriculum for schools without books. And tell us how to revive the relationship between the pupil and the teacher.

Meanwhile, I think personal technologies will be tearing off in two directions. That of the iPhone, Jeff Han, touch screen magic, and that of the OLPC. $100 laptops, mean the internet is finally everywhere. Breadth and depth.

from OLPC News:

Pop Quiz

The $100 Laptop is not an laptop project it is:
a.) an education project
b.) an Open Source project
c.) an Internet project
d.) the last stand against greed and fascism

e.) the Shiny Abyss, which we each fill with our hopes and dreams

OLPC Reality Check

There have been quite a lot of people trying to impose reality checks on those of us who have put all our eggs in the OLPC basket. OLPCNews has been dutifully covering the praise with the criticism, and as Vernor Vinge said in his recent Long Now speech, it is important to remain open to counter-scenarios, and the signs of their arrival. Here's a slice of negativity pie from Eduardo Villanueva Mansilla, in Lima Peru. Originally written on November 16, 2005, but posted on OLPCNews today.

This new tool, in the best possible scenario, will force a poor country's whole educational system into becoming a very different animal, without consideration of the goals looked after and the possibility of reaching them through lesser, although cheaper and locally produced and locally enabling, means. And in the worst possible scenario, this gadget will end up changing nothing, and the poor will get the chance to receive the worst education possible in full color.

Without doubting for a minute the good intentions of those involved in the project, it is impossible not to think about the whole idea as a world-changing attempt just like many that the computer has brought, and a sort of good intentioned but massive ego trip.

The computer has changed the world in so many different ways but for those imagined by the apostles of computing. This could be the final proof required to make the entire computers-will-change-the- world meme finally moot? I certainly hope so.

Mansilla's main contention is that a computer is not a substitute for an education, and the local environments; the schools and towns, will bend to serve the laptop, not to be served by it. Mansilla is guided by a principle that at times makes me question any technological revolution; wait, how are computers going to make things easier, when they have only ever made things more complicated? Isn't the shadow of every machine a mountain of troubleshooting?

But the death of schools at the hands of OLPC? Eh. So what. Like most people who enjoy tv-links, gmail, and blogging, I never got much out of school. To see the classroom replaced with something else, does not fill me with fear. I hope the next evolution in education is a real one, a good one, and inherently linked to the Internet. And this is where people misunderstand the $100 laptop. It's not an education project and it's not a laptop project, it's an Internet project. Once we give everyone the Internet, nothings going to matter. Adapting Vinge, the Internet must swallow all bureaucracies, within the century, if mankind hopes to survive and to thrive. It's kind of like the opposite of privatization.

However, will the Internet alone be enough to educate the children? In a recent video of the OLPC design team on OLPCNews, a top Engineer revealed a secret goal of the project; to indoctrinate a generation in the open source philosophy. Sounds plausible, possible, and a great first step in tearing down all known businesses and governments. But will there be any benchmarks for it? As I write, Chief Executive Bush is getting ready to veto a Democratic budget for Iraq that has benchmarks for measuring success. Similarly, Chief Negroponte has denied the need for benchmarks or even trials of the system with children. At times Negroponte's stubbornness has seemed frightening, but also strangely reassuring.

When will we know if this is working? Within the year. How will we know if this is working? Trust us, it will be so big, no one will be able to miss it.

Portuguese Wikipedia, April 3, 2006 - 248 907 artigos

Run OLPC's "Sugar" under OS X

According to a post on BoingBoing, the OLPC developers have released an app to let your computer emulate the Children's Machine.

I'm going home to try it right now.

update:

Might have jumped the gun a little, now that I'm home I can try to elaborate.
The developers have been posting [disk] images of the Sugar OS, and it looks like they've been doing it for some time (possibly since the Beginning) ...

Anyway, so the deal is, you can download an emulator from these fine people, who've developed a virtual machine (a la parallels, but free), then run the olpc image of your choosing under your new vm. Not a new idea, not an OLPC-released app, and not nearly as point-and-click as I initally thought. However, I have calmed down some from my initial enthusiasm -- and I'm still excited. Of course I'm still excited!

Sadly, I do hear it's kinda sluggish under Q (those attempting under parallels had more promising results). But I'll see for myself shortly.

It looks like I'm getting my first taste of the Children's Machine much sooner than expected.

OLPC Specs

[LINK]

The Dream Machine

Few things in the world or on the Internet inspire me with as much hope for the future as the One Laptop Per Child project, or as it is sometimes known the $100 Laptop. The goal is to give the poorest children of the world the tools necessary to really learn. Providing Universal Access to the Internet is the first step in creating a world worthy of the 21st century. Since I think that the OLPC is the greatest product and revolutionary idea to come out of Planet Earth in years, I will be writing about it a lot. Here are some early thoughts and links.

A Close Look at the OLPC
Here's a somewhat nerdy look at the laptop itself, which will do more than any laptop on the market today. It's a the most in depth article I've seen on what is actually in the machine. I'll try and make my own simple account of the machine's features soon.

Demo of the Interface
Screenshots of an operating system better than the one your using right now.

Powered by Hand
The $100 Laptop will use between 1-5 watts depending on use and can be powered for 10-30 minutes with one minute of pulling. The generator can also be used for cellphones, lights, anything.


Answers for Doubters
India: Hole in the Wall
"An Indian physicist puts a PC with a high speed internet connection in a wall in the slums and watches what happens." from a Businessweek Online Daily Briefing, March 2, 2000.

Frequently Asked Questions about the OLPC project

South America
I feel that much of what I read online about the machine imagines it's use primarily in Africa. Since the climate in Africa is some of the harshest in the world, it's great that the laptop has been designed with that continent in mind. However, looking at the OLPC Implementation Map I'm struck by how much this will change South America. It is the countries themselves which will be purchasing the machines by the thousands, and of the seven that have signed up so far, the two largest are Brazil and Argentina.

A quarter of the populations of both Brazil and Argentina are under 14, according to the CIA Factbook. Here are some more facts:
Argentina has 10 million children
Brazil has 48.5 million children
Argentina's literacy rate is 97%
Brazil's literacy rate is 86%
Literacy is defined as the ability to read and write among those over 15.

As of today the Portuguese Wikipedia contains 237,821 artigos. When Brazil's 48.5 million children start posting, well, we'll see.