Seeing sivadeel’s recent post on the OLPC Project I thought that it may be of interest to know that in the Publications group of the IB we’ve been researching it.
We obtained an OLPC XO laptop this year as part of a ’give one, get one’
scheme (our 'give one' XO went to OLPC Mongolia) so that we could test how well
IB online publications perform on new, more restricted hardware platforms.
My role within Publications group is as ’Research engineer’; looking at how
we deliver our online publications effectively from a technical standpoint. Its
important that we investigate new devices to see where future development
might be required. (See the picture of the CAS guide displayed on an XO - it
works fine!)
The XO is a part of an innovative approach to provide tools for students’ ex-
perimentation and learning. I’ve been really impressed with both the hardware
(virtually indestructible) and software provided. It includes Etoys - arguably the most powerful ’learning by experiment’ software around which, in-
cidentally, you can also run on your Mac/PC. For free.
Part of the XO’s philosophy includes enabling users to form communities;
sharing activities created on the laptop and also providing one-button access
to the source code of the software, so students can learn by dismantling and
reassembling the system’s parts.
It consumes an order of magnitude less power than your current laptop and
its novel display technology works fine in bright sunlight too.
The dynamism and innovation of the OLPC project provides a great example
of community-driven achievement, and as one of its mantras states- “it’s an
education project - not a laptop project”.
Thank you for this very
Thank you for this very interesting article stevel.
Continuing the conversation about new smaller hardware platforms that have a strong educational connection, will you be looking at the ASUS Eee PC?
Following it's adoption by Fresno Unified School District in the US, and RM Education's drive to supply educational establishments in the UK, it looks as if many students and teachers will be using these devices in the near future.
Absolutely jamesfk! I'd
Absolutely jamesfk!
I'd really like to try out an Eee PC - though they seem to be very difficult to get hold of at present.
This is a really interesting time for the delivery of educational information, as the availability of pervasive networking, and standards such as HTML, CSS & Javascript enables the end devices to become simpler and more robust.
We seem to be progressing, however slowly towards Alan Kay's 1968 (!) vision of the dynabook - "a personal dynamic medium the size of a
notebook [...] which could be owned by everyone
and could have the power to handle virtually all of its owner’s
information-related needs".
What we really need, of course is a computer platform which is as powerful, robust and portable as a sheet of paper and a pencil
Thank you for this very
Thank you for this very interesting article stevel.I'd really like to try out an Eee PC - though they seem to be very difficult to get hold of at present
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