One Laptop Per Child

One Laptop Per Child

One Laptop Per Child: laptop.org

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

—Nicholas Negroponte

Developing World

Why OLPC instead of:

• Food
• Clean water
• Medicine
• Electricity
• Cell phones
• Text books
• Teachers

Why OLPC

This is not happening:

No one is asking us to choose between these. No one is asking us at all.

What's Really Wrong

• Total production of food is enough to feed everyone.
• Famine almost always is preceded by war not just drought.
• The World Bank estimates that $800 billion are lost to corruption each year [1]. $2-3 billion in Nigeria each year. [2]
• We cannot save the third world.
• We could start by doing no harm, but no one is asking any of us that question either.

Why OLPC

Why?

• Because we can
• Because someone will
• Because now is unique time

Why

"This is not just a matter of giving a laptop to each child, as if bestowing on them some magical charm. The magic lies within- within each child, within each scientist-, scholar-, or just-plain-citizen-in-the-making. This initiative is meant to bring it forth into the light of day."

—Kofi Annan

Countries

• Brazil
• Argentina
• Nigeria
• Libya
• Thailand
• Uruguay
• Rwanda

The Hardware

• "XO"
• AMD Geode 433MHz processor
• 256 Mb RAM
• 1 Gb internal flash drive
• 6" x 4.5" screen
• 1200x900 b&w resolution
• 800x600 color resolution
• Camera, 640x480 30FPS

Power

• Battery: NiMH 16.5 Watt-hours, LiFeP 22 Watt-hours, 2000 cycles
• Average (target) 1 Watt power consumption
• Flexible power input (10-20V, safely handles -40-39V)
• No hand-crank :(

The Deployments

• Teachers receive a laptop
• School server:
  • Internet connection (fingers crossed)
  • 300Gb hard drive
  • Multiple configurations possible
  • 100% humidity in parts Brazil and Nigeria
  • 105 degree F in parts of Libya

Education

• For 6 to 16 year olds
• Laptop follows child (even after school)
• "Constructivist" educational principles
• Learning by doing
• Peer teaching
• Emphasis on process not outcome
• Not copying the clerical education in US schools

Economics

• $150 laptop should last 5 years
• Laptop cost goes down over time (laptop power doesn't go up)
• Textbooks can cost $20/year (paper alone)

The Software

• UI is called "Sugar"
• Written in Python, C, C++
• UI based on GTK event loop, Cairo vector graphics (hippocanvas), Dbus for inter-process communication
• "Telepathy" for communication (based on Jabber)
• Gecko (Mozilla) based browser
• Not a single-runtime environment
• Also Smalltalk / Squeak / EToys

UI Principles

• Avoid words:

  • Need translation
  • Some countries are multilingual
  • Laptops intended for pre-literate children

• Still localized:

  

UI Principles

• "Activities" instead of "Applications"
• Focus on the action, not the tool

UI Principles

• No overlapping windows
• There's not enough room
• Distracting
• Except chat

UI Demo

(demo here)

UI Principles

• Collaboration in all activities
• Multiple users working on a single document

Security

• Applications run in isolated environments
• Users do not have passwords

Storage

• There's still a boring filesystem
• The filesystem is for programs, not for people
• The filesystem is a perfectly good hashtable
• The filesystem is not a good document storage system

Storage

• Documents should be versioned
• Documents should be well indexed
• We don't trust activities anyway, so activities don't get access to files, only users get access to files
• ... So we have to rethink some of the UI anyway
• ... So we can change how documents are access by software and intercept all changes

Storage

• The "Journal"
• Shows a history of actions
• Some actions have artifacts
• The artifacts are documents
• The process is educational, the documents aren't really (an overstatement)

Storage

Software Status

• A lot of work yet to do
• Core system is stabilizing
• The web is available, acts just like normal
• Locally-hosted web applications will work
• Installation is hard -- use images!

Chicago

• I'm in the process of setting up a local group
• Give me your email and I'll subscribe you once it is setup
• http://laptop.org
• http://wiki.laptop.org
• http://chipy.org (Python in Chicago)

References

These slides are in the public domain; please feel free to use or excerpt them in whatever way you like. Though preferably to help promote OLPC, of course. You can check out the source with svn co http://svn.colorstudy.com/home/ianb/olpc-presentation (the original source is in presentation.txt and was rendered to HTML with rst2s5).