In other words, XO has embraced the procrastination principle that is woven through generative technologies. To the chagrin and discomfort of most educational academics following the project, there is little focus on specific educational outcomes or metrics. There are no firm plans to measure usage of the laptops, or to correlate changes in test scores with their deployment and use. Instead, the idea is to create an infrastructure that is both simple and generative, stand back, and see what happens, fixing most major substantive problems only as they arise, rather than anticipating them from the start.
BigThink.com let us know that they did an interview with Professor Zittrain. Here is a clip of him talking about the OLPC project.
Walter Bender, who left the OLPC Foundation recently, gave an interview to Xconomy.com Walter explained his reasoning for leaving the project. His main dispute was the deemphasis of Sugar and going more mainstream with Windows as an alternative operating system.
“If you read between the lines, the idea is to stop trying to be disruptive and to start trying to make things comfortable for decision-makers,” Bender told Xconomy in an interview Thursday. “Personally, I think that…a role that a non-profit can play is to try to demonstrate better ways of doing things and let the market follow them. But that is a minority opinion [within OLPC], so I left to do my own thing.”
He plans to promote Sugar and help developers who are developing Sugar based applications.
X: When you say “agnostic about learning,” what I take that to mean is that there’s a feeling that the XO Laptop should run Windows, and not just Linux and Sugar.
WB: I think it’s pretty obvious and was obvious from the very beginning that it’s a lot easier to cater to people’s comfort than to be disruptive. Nicholas had that wonderful quote in BusinessWeek about a month ago—that OLPC is going to stop acting like a terrorist and start emulating Microsoft. If you read between the lines, the idea is to stop trying to be disruptive and to start trying to make things comfortable for decision-makers. And that’s a marketing strategy, and one that I think has been adopted by many laptop manufacturers. Personally, I think that the customer is not always right, and that a role that a non-profit can play is to try to demonstrate better ways of doing things and let the market follow them. But that is a minority opinion, so I left to do my own thing.
X: Okay, so talk about how you’ll actually take Sugar and keep growing it, and get it onto other platforms.
WB: There are two parts to it. One part has to do with continuing the momentum around the project. And there’s lots that needs to be done. It’s a generation-one product, and it needs to grow and evolve. But there’s a second piece to it, and that is, how do you actually support this in the field. It’s not mature enough yet to be completely self-supporting. While that is certainly a goal, it’s a difficult goal to achieve. I spent a lot of time in Peru working on the Peru deployment [of the XO Laptop], and one of my goals in Peru was to build a lot of redundancy around support. That’s fundamentally a social problem, and how you solve it is an enormous challenge and one that I’m really interested in. So there is a technical piece and a social-cultural piece and both of them are passions of mine.
The exact form or framework to work on those problems is to be determined. I’m having a number of conversations with people about maybe hosting the program at a university or setting up another foundation, or maybe even setting up something that is a for-profit, open source project. There are a lot of ways of doing it. Maybe there will be multiple ways. I don’t own this, and don’t have any intention to own it. I think the redundancy of that approach is probably important as well.
Negroponte has posted a statement on the OLPC list serv. This is what most news services have been quoting.
People keep asking me:
Yes, OLPC’s commitment to Sugar has changed. It is now larger, not smaller. Contrary to inferences drawn by Walter’s departure, the press and venerable sources such as OLPC News, we are scaling Sugar up, not down. Let me explain.
Sugar is a very good idea, less than perfectly executed. I attribute our weakness to unrealistic development goals and practices. Our mission has never changed. It has been to bring connected laptops for learning to children in the poorest and most remote locations of the world. Our mission has never been to advocate the perfect learning model or pure Open Source. I believe the best educational tool is constructionism and the best software development method is Open Source. In some cases those are best achieved like the Trojan Horse, versus direct confrontation or isolating ourselves with perfection. Remember the expression: perfection is the enemy of good. We need to reach the most children possible and leverage them as the agents of change. It makes no sense for us to search for the perfect learning model.
For this reason, Sugar needs a wider basis, to run on more Linux platforms and to run under Windows. We have been engaged in discussions with Microsoft for several months, to explore a dual boot version of the XO. Some of you have seen what Microsoft developed on their own for the XO. It works well and now needs Sugar on top of it (so to speak).
As a non-profit, humanitarian organization, OLPC has a unique position, from which it can change the world for children and learning. Laptop makers rushing into the low-end marketplace is a perfect example of success of one kind. Another will be what kids do outside school and with other kids around the world. A third is what we do.
We are not a business, but need to be more business-like: meet schedules, manage expectations and fulfill promises. To do that, we need to hire more developers, work more together and spend less time arguing. Because of public attention, anything we say will be quoted out of context. We can only speak with our actions and those are only one: a reliable and ubiquitous Sugar. That includes being more collaborative engineers ourselves and engaging the community better. Our limitations are not financial, but identifying the required human resources and resolve to do so.
What is in front of us is an opportunity for big change. Sugar is at the core of it. To pretend otherwise would be a joke. That said, Sugar needs to be disentangled. I keep using the omelet analogy, claiming it needs to be a fried egg, with distinct yoke and white, rather than having the UI, collaborative tools, power management and radios merge into one amorphous blob. Otherwise, it is impossible to debug and will be limited to the small, albeit growing, world of the XO hardware platform.
As we reach out to engage a wider community, some purism has to morph into pragmatism. To suggest that this forsakes Open Source or redirects our mission is absurd. Kids will be the agents of change and our job is to reach the most of them. That is not just selling laptops, but making Sugar as robust and widely available as possible.
Negroponte has been fielding emails and interviews about the recent departure of Walter Bender and the state of the OLPC project. Specifically, there is fear amongst Internet technology reporters and Linux advocates that the OLPC may become a Windows only laptop.
Negroponte honed his thoughts on this subject. In an interview with pcpro, he commented on the limitations of the Sugar environment and Linux.
"Sugar needs to be disentangled. I keep using the omelette analogy, claiming it needs to be a fried egg, with distinct yoke and white, rather than having the UI, collaborative tools, power management and radios merge into one amorphous blob. Otherwise, it is impossible to debug and will be limited to the small, albeit growing, world of the XO hardware platform."
"Sugar needs a wider basis, to run on more Linux platforms and to run under Windows. We have been engaged in discussions with Microsoft for several months, to explore a dual boot version of the XO. Some of you have seen what Microsoft developed on their own for the XO. It works well and now needs Sugar on top of it (so to speak)."
Sugar and applications such as Browse currently can not run under Windows. Windows applications that are not specifically designed for the memory and space limitations of the laptop will have difficulty running on the laptop. Firefox 2 can typically take 150 megabytes of ram or more while running.
In an email with the Register, Negroponte clarified his position on Sugar.
“Sugar is a very good idea, less than perfectly executed," he said. "I attribute our weakness to unrealistic development goals and practices. Our mission has never changed. It has been to bring connected laptops for learning to children in the poorest and most remote locations of the world.”
“Our mission has never been to advocate the perfect learning model or pure open source. I believe the best educational tool is constructionism and the best software development method is open source.”
In an interview with AP news, he commented on open source.
"There are several examples like that, that we have to address without worrying about the fundamentalism in some of the open-source community," he said. "One can be an open-source advocate without being an open-source fundamentalist."
Negroponte said the XO will be getting a dual-boot option with Linux and Windows XP. There is no word on the added cost of Windows XP but it's estimated to add $3-$15 to the price of the laptop. The laptop is currently priced around $188.
The OLPC Foundation is busy restructuring its organization to better handle the market and goals. PCWorld is reporting that Walter Bender, former President of Software and Content, has resigned. His position has been removed and is no longer filled.
Walter has posted a farewell message on the laptop.org list-serv.
After more than two years without a break at One Laptop per Child, I have decided to take some time to reflect on how I can best contribute going forward to the goal of giving children around the world opportunities for a quality learning experience. The OLPC Association is making headway getting laptops into the hands of children and it is encouraging to see that other non-profit and for-profit organizations are following suit. My personal interest is in helping build a community of developers, educators, and learners dedicated to advancing the quality of free and open source software for learning and the sharing of pedagogical approaches in this community by adopting the spirit and methodology of the open-source movement
While my goal is to create a complementary effort to broaden the reach of the software and pedagogy--a free and open framework in support of "learning learning", I hope to continue working with the great team at OLPC as well as the various groups that have formed around the world in support of one-laptop-per-child deployments.
Thank you for all of your support over the past two years and for all the feedback and encouragement you have given me.
regards.
-walter
Despite all the rumor and speculation, I personally believe this is business-as-usual as a non-profit reorganizes to streamline its process and staff. As Negroponte put it, they were performing impossible things under tight schedules to get the OLPC produced. There is bound to be shakeups like in any company. Now that the laptop is out, reorganization is possible. I do not subscribe to the rumor that the OLPC will become a "Windows Only" laptop. Sugar and the applications created is too far entrenched to be removed and will always be an option, most likely the default option, for the OLPC laptop. However, Windows XP *WILL BE* an option for the laptop, should a country choose to use it. Negroponte is providing more options and configurations for the OLPC laptop. Meanwhile, Linux and the Sugar environment needs to step up its game to make it a more compelling solution than Windows XP. In my opinion, it currently is.
Babylon will be providing searchable dictionaries to OLPC laptops. These dictionaries are comprised of 2,500 words in 16 languages. This is the largest contribution of words and definitions to the OLPC project.
"Education is of much importance to Babylon, which is always seeking to intensify its value, and contributing to such a significant cause is extremely meaningful." Alon Carmeli, CEO, Babylon Ltd.: "Having Babylon's dictionary content integrated into the XO laptops, will not only deliver the world to the children, but the children will have the opportunity to express themselves and explore the world. " Carmeli further added: "Babylon is very excited about the fact that it has succeeded to deliver the dictionary content to OLPC before the next distribution of the 500,000 XO laptops worldwide."
"Babylon dictionaries has contributed a basic set of 2500-word dictionaries with translations in 16 languages for use in OLPC projects. This is the largest coordinated contribution of words and definitions to OLPC to date. There are related projects going on to develop the dictionary projects such as words and speak." - OLPC
Jorge G. Castañeda, former Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico, has recently joined the OLPC Foundation as Board Director.
"After a momentous 2007 in which we began mass production and funded the delivery of more than 100,000 XO laptops to some of the world’s poorest nations, OLPC is restructuring in order to provide access to modern learning to a much greater number of children worldwide," said Nicholas Negroponte. "Jorge Castañeda’s extensive international expertise will be invaluable in helping OLPC fulfill its mission. We are delighted that he has accepted our invitation to join the Board."
"It is a great honor for me to contribute to this extraordinary initiative led by Nicolas Negroponte and to support the cause of children’s education in Mexico and Latin America."
Casteñeda also is an author and columnist. He has written for the New York Times, LA Times, Newsweek International and his books are for sale on Amazon.
Birmingham, Alabama has been the scene of a long political fight to get OLPC laptops to local elementary school students. Announced last November, Mayor Larry Langford has been working with Birmingham City Council to secure $3.5 million dollars in funding. A compromise was reached this last February. 15,000 OLPC laptops will be purchased. $3 million will be spent to purchase the laptops and another $500,000 will be spent on technical support. A pilot program of 1,000 laptops will be deployed to determine the effectiveness of the program.
Despite the approval of City Council, the Birmingham Board of Education has balked at the offer. Several board members have expressed concerns with the program. The program was approved without consultation with the board, members said. One member asked what would come of the remaining 14,000 laptops should the pilot program be a failure. The mayor was not present at the meeting when the question was asked. Another member questioned whether the $500,000 allocated would be enough to connect the 31 schools. The system has 28,000 students enrolled. That's more students than laptops to be purchased.
Others have expressed concern that the project has not solicited competing bids or made requests for proposals. Originally, Mayor Langford proposed giving control of the project under the Birmingham Education Initiative (BEI), a short-lived authority created and appointed by the mayor. BEI has been under scrutiny under the leadership of John Katopodis who was served civil lawsuit charges by HealthSouth Corp. of money fraud. During the debate with City Council, documents of Katopodis' management of his other charity, Computer Help for Kids and other evidence had surfaced.
Katopodis allegedly gave $30,000 of charity money to Marc Anthony Donais, also known as Ryan Idol, a former gay adult-film actor.
Katopodis has since dropped all involvement with BEI stating that his work as negotiator for the project was completed.
"I am no longer involved in any way with the laptop program," Katopodis said. "My role was to secure the commitment from ... (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and One Laptop Per Child), and I did that. The organization documents were drafted by an attorney close to the City Council and I had no input into it. The ball is now squarely in the court of the City Council."
"The biggest problem will be teaching our teachers," board member April Williams said.
Only one board member voted against the pilot program.
The school plans to deploy the pilot at Glen Iris Elementary.
At the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, China, Intel has announced the 2nd generation Classmate PC. Andrew Chien, Intel vice president, Corporate Technology Group and director of Intel Research, said, "Only 5 percent of the world's children today have access to a PC or to the Internet. Education is one of the best examples of how technology improves our lives. We have seen how technology helps teachers create fun learning experiences more efficiently. We have also been touched by children's excitement when they are inspired by technology. The Intel-powered classmate PC is one of the ways we support the IT industry in spreading the benefits of technology in education for children around the world."
The new Classmate PC can can take 4GB flash or up to 30GB PATA hard drive. The classmate now supports mesh networking like the OLPC. It's not known how 3rd party applications will take advantage of this. A 0.3 megapixel webcam is available as an option. A nine inch screen is also available although the resolution is still 800x480. Windows Vista is still not available for the Classmate, only Windows XP. Windows XP is scheduled to cease of all OEM and retail sales this June 30, 2008. However Microsoft has announced that all ULCPCs (Ultra Low Cost-Cost PCs) such as Asus's EeePC, OLPC with Windows, Intel's Classmate will be the exception.
Although Intel recently announced their new Atom processors, the new Classmate doesn't make use of them.
Intel will license the reference design to 3rd party vendors who will sell versions of the Classmate to consumers. The CTL 2goPC is one of the first vendors to sell the Classmate. Starting at $400, the new Classmate PC is not close to the OLPC's $188 price tag. It does compete with the Asus EeePC which is $399 and is comparable in feature set.
Here is a comparison chart of the first and second generation Classmate.
First Generation
Second Generation
Processor
Intel ® Mobile Processor ULV 900 MHz, Zero L2 cache, 400 MHz FSB
Intel ® Mobile Processor ULV 900 MHz, Zero L2 cache, 400 MHz FSB
Chipset
Intel ® 915GMS
Intel ® 915GMS
Memory
DDR -II 256 MB or 512 MB
DDR -II 256 MB (Linux only) or 512 MB
Storage Device
1 GB Flash (for Linux), 2GB
1 GB Flash (for Linux), 2GB/4GB Flash, 1.8 HDD
Operating Systems
Windows XP Professional / Linux
Windows XP Professional / Linux
LCD
7" 800 x 480 color LCD
7" 800 x 480 color LCD 9" 800 x 480 color LCD
Network
10/100M Ethernet + 802.11 b/g WLAN with Antenna
10/100M Ethernet + 802.11 b/g WLAN with Antenna, Mesh
The sounds and instruments included with the OLPC laptop are available for download on the laptop.org website. However in recent days, over five terabytes of data have been transferred. The servers are being overwhelmed. To better serve users, the sound archive can now be downloaded over Bittorrent at Mininova. There are over 6,500+ sounds available in 16bit mono. Dr. Richard Boulanger of csound.com donated the sounds for the OLPC project. These sounds are free to use under the CC-BY license.
The MIT Media Lab announced the creation of the Center for Future Banking. Bank of America will be providing $3-5 million dollars in annual funding in a joint collaboration with the media lab.
"We are bringing together the creative, multidisciplinary research of Media Lab faculty and students with the real-world business experience and deep-domain knowledge of our Bank of America colleagues-all in a highly innovative environment that promotes unconventional thinking and risk-taking. In doing so, we hope not only to discover the principles that will transform banking in the next decade, but also to advance our basic understanding of the rapidly changing relationship between people, technology, and society in the twenty-first century.", says Frank Moss, Director of the Media Lab.
Professor Deb Roy, Chair of MIT's academic program in Media Arts and Sciences, will serve as the Center's Founding Director and Principal Investigator.
The Center for Future Banking will attempt to strike that balance, according to Moss and Roy. It will do that by engaging to some extent in varieties of “directed research” that Media Lab scientists managed to sidestep for many years.
In general, Roy says, the center’s work will fall into two categories: rethinking the banking experience and understanding and leveraging insights into consumers’ banking behavior.
Moss, in describing the new arrangement, is careful to emphasize that the Media Lab isn’t selling out. “It is partly [going to be] directed research—but you’ve got to be careful to distinguish ‘directed’ from ’secret,’” he says. “We are not going back on our openness. But it is partly collaboratively directed by the bank. There will be certain structures we have to allow the bank to have a voice in what kinds of problems we look at. But the faculty will maintain 100 percent authority over what kinds of students they bring and what kinds of research they are publishing.”
The MIT Media Lab was co-founded by Nicholas Negroponte. In 2000, he stepped down from the organization as the lab was losing major funding after the dot-com crash.
Taiwan Review has written up an article about the early problems of getting the OLPC project running. There were significant manufacturing hurdles to create the laptop. From the article:
"Normally, when we design a commercial notebook, we have Microsoft's Windows or other software that will run on the device."
In March 2006, when the XO-1 motherboards were ready for testing, OLPC held a "country conference," which was attended by "delegates" from the governments that intended to purchase the machine. The result was a decision to upgrade the XO-1 with a more powerful CPU. This was no minor modification.
"Change the CPU and you're talking about a completely new machine," [Dandy] Hsu says. (General manager and vice president of the Quanta's Educational Product Business Unit)
The project almost came to a halt when Quanta Display backed out of the contract to manufacture the display.
Then, later in March, came devastating news. Quanta had recently completed the sale of its subsidiary, Quanta Display, and new owner AU Optronics decided not to manufacture the XO-1 screen, the most critical component of the project.
This literally almost killed Mary Lou.
The XO-1 appeared dead. OLPC's chief technology officer, Mary Lou Jepsen, disappointed and exhausted from more than a year of intense work for OLPC, left Taiwan for home. Hours later, she was near death as well, having gone into adrenal failure on the flight to Boston.
The project was saved by a new manufacturer, Chi Mei of Taiwan.
In April 2006, two weeks after her illness, Jepsen returned to Taiwan and approached the Chi Mei Group, a Taiwan-based conglomerate, to ask if it would manufacture the XO-1's display.
Negotiations between Chi Mei and OLPC were quick. In May 2006, Jepsen and Negroponte both came to Taiwan to sign formal contracts.
AMD praises the laptop for being innovative.
Bill Edwards, chief strategy officer at AMD, the company that supplies the CPU for the XO-1, described it as the "first fundamental revisit of personal computer architecture since IBM launched the PC in 1981."
The article follows up with an interview with Mary Lou Jepsen.
Peru is poised to deploy 25,000 laptops to students. Peru is one of the OLPC Foundation's largest deployments. In December 2007, Peru announced a signed contract for over 260,000 laptops. Initially President Alan Perez announced in October 2007 a 40,000 laptop purchase with an option to buy 250,000 later on.
Peru has been conducting a pilot program in Arahuay with early beta OLPC laptops. Peru will be ramping up the deployment. Technology Review reports 400,000 laptops will be deployed throughout Peru.
Most students will be without Internet access. Many of the schools are in remote mountain villages. Internet access is sparse to non-existent. Some will have access to satellite data uplink. As a whole, software and other data will need to be delivered to the teachers by more conventional means such as memory sticks.
In other South American countries, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim ordered 50,000 laptops for Mexico.
Myjournalcourier reports that last Thursday morning, Lt. Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois gave first-grade students of the Illinois School of the Deaf (ISD) in Jacksonville brand-new OLPC laptops. From the article:
Principal Sue Brosmith reminded them the computers were not toys. And, if they broke the computer, they won’t get a new one. The children can take the computers home and get to keep them when school is done.
“We’ll pretend we’re on ‘Oprah,’” Ms. Brosmith said as she handed out the computers by grade.
The school currently doesn't have WiFi Internet access yet, but the children are able to collaborate and share over the OLPC wireless mesh. They hope to have wireless access soon.
Last November, 40 OLPC laptops from the Give-1-Get-1 program were given to Illinois School of the Deaf as part of a grant from Western Illinois University and the lieutenant governor's office. Earlier this month, the governor's office also gave Forest Park School District 91 students 100 OLPC laptops. In February, 33 OLPC laptops were awarded by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn to third graders as part of a statewide essay contest. The essay topic was, "How can a laptop change your community and change the world?" A video of the contest can be viewed here.
Quinn and other local state officials are pushing the Children's Low-Cost Laptop Act (HB 5000) into law. The act will provide state-wide a fund for elementary school students in up to 300 schools with low-cost laptops. Any school can submit an application for funding.
NPR is reporting a recent OLPC rollout in Kliptown, South Africa. One hundred laptops localized to Zulu and English were distributed to children of the Kliptown Youth Programme. Larry Weber, a friend of Nicholas Negroponte, and his son and two daugthers flew from Boston, Massachusetts to hand deliver the OLPC laptops. The children and Thulani Madondo, director of the Kliptown Youth Programme, gladly accepted the laptops with open arms. From the report:
"Kliptown was one of the stops. We spent a few days out of our stay here and we were so touched by the sense of community that these people had. They were so welcoming to us and we just wanted to do something for them and come back and see them again."
"First we have an oven that goes up to 180 degrees, make sure that nothing melts. We drop them 10 times from five feet and see if anything breaks. Nothing broke. We dump them in a bathtub and then, my favorite, was burying them in the sand and then taking it out and see if they still work. And they still work!"
Kliptown, a suburb of the former black township of Soweto in Gauteng, South Africa, is located about 17km south-west of Johannesburg.
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