[KDE-India] Fwd: Re: Possibility to get a OLPC developer's board

[Knut Yrvin]

This forwarded dialog with José "L. Redrejo" Rodríguez. He is the 
project manager for the computer solution at Extremadura. They runs 
80.000 PC's at 180 schools and public centers. 

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Subject: Re: Possibility to get a OLPC developer's board [Reply-to: 
debian-custom-list]
Date: Mandag 26 juni 2006 03:59
From: Knut Yrvin <knuty at skolelinux.no>
To: debian-custom at lists.debian.org
Cc: José "L. Redrejo" Rodríguez <jredrejo at edu.juntaextremadura.net>, 
debian-edu at lists.debian.org

Søndag 25 juni 2006 20:24, skrev José L. Redrejo Rodríguez:
> At LinEx we have interest in this project, next Friday I'll have a
> meeting with Jim Getty and will get more information to know if it
> makes sense for us to work on it.

One of the interesting things about the OLPC is that it will be
deployed from the pupils from the first day, and they will relay
heavily on kids learning from each other. The "Hole in the wall"
experiments lead by Sugata Mitra shows that this really will help kids
getting better in English and math. The kids get more social and
cooperative, and more interested in school.

- News article:
  http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/5865

- Scientific articels:
  http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/docs/Paper06.pdf
  http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/Publications.html

One of the challenges is to make the desktop as easy accessible as
possible for pupils that cant read at all, and making the desktop
"grow" when the pupils are getting older.

On the technical part is quite a challenge, because it's gonna be
suited for learning. Things has to be light weight and in the same
instance be easy to use.  I found this web page discussing memory
usage:

http://kegel.com/linux/comfort/

There is no memory that could handle OpenOffice.org on the
OLPC-machine. Interestingly this is an advantages in lower grades.
OpenOffice.org are made for bureaucratic work, and are suitable for
headmasters and the office workers at the schools. It's not a learning
tool made for teaching when the kids are 6-7 or 9 years old. They
really hate that application.  A simple and easy to use text tool with
cool fonts and drawing capability is more in line for teaching
purposes when using computers for pupils in their four fist years at
school.

Is also a factor that the length of the education in developing
countries is often not more than 5-6 years, if the kids are lucky. At
GUADEC 2004 a person from the Telecentros project in Brazil told that
the kids really didn't get any school at all. It was no schools, and
it was no teachers. So the effort on choosing good applications for
learning is a difficult and probably the most important part of the
OLPC project. The technical things are doable. Our experience as
engineers says that. But to understanding the usability environment
for lower graduates, it still science, as the the "Hole in the wall"
experiments shows.

> I think we could collaborate in points 1 & 4, as we have experience
> in working with installers, and we have begun the project
> Futura[1][2] thinking in the obsolescence of the computers we have
> at our schools. Even if our hardware requirements are still far from
> the OLPC machines, I think the same developments could apply pretty
> easily.
> [...]
> [1] http://guadec.org/node/420 
> [2] http://forjamari.linex.org/docman/view.php/54/37/futura.pdf

This is good.

As you probably know I'm starting at Trolltech as a Community Manager
in August. A lot for my work will be in contact whit the universities
and university colleges to get students working with free software as
part of their education. 14 student projects has contributed to the
Skolelinux project since 2002. Professional engineers from the
industry has contributed as external "customers" for the students.  I
believe subsystem in the OLPC is a excellent to make students both
making something useful, and to get them to know free software.

http://d.skolelinux.no/info/studentgrupper/index.html.en

Anyway:

I think we should we coordinate our effort on the debian-edu list and
debian-custom list. :)

Thanks

Knut Yrvin

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