Visit to Vung Vieng Village - OLPC Vietnam

OLPC Vietnam Visit to the Vung Vieng Village - Report (June 2010) Serge Stinckwich Serge.Stinckwich@gmail.com

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) • OLPC = US NGO • OLPC Goal : «to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self- empowered learning.

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

XO-1 as an ebook reader

• CPU : 433 Mhz AMD Geode • 1200x900 LCD (with sharp images) • 256 Mb DRAM, 1 Gb ﬂash memory • Internal SD card slot, Wiﬁ • Water-resistant keyboard

Localized keyboard

Distribution models • 1.6 million laptops (october 2009) • Laptops are sold to governments to be distributed through the ministries of education • Laptop are property of the child • G1G1 program

OLPC in Asia

Warranty applied only if you disassemble the machine, Nicolas Negroponte.

Sugar • Sugar is a free desktop environment (GPL) designed with the goal of being used by children for learning. • Sugar does not use the «desktop», «folder» and «window» metaphors (focus on one program at a time). • Activities, no applications ! • Work on XO-1 laptop or included in Linux distributions. Mostly written in Python • Hundred of activities: math, physics, programming, english, serious games, ...

Pilot Experiment in Vung Vieng • Vung Vieng is located in Bai Tu Long Bay, Vietnam • 40km from mainland • Deployment in nov 2009 by Nancy Severs (US volunteer) • 12 XO + solar panels

After 6 months • Every laptops are working correctly and are used everyday by children. Children enjoyed using XOs. • Kids know how to use their computers. • XOs are not part of the curriculum of the children • Sustainability problem: teachers stay only one year in the VV school. • Only a limited set of activities seem to be used by children. Not enought vietnamese contents.

What to do now for OLPC Vietnam ? • Build a user community for SUGAR in Vietnam • Build OLPC Vietnam • Develop vietnamese contents • Write (or translate) vietnamese documentation • Train teachers

Follow OLPC-Nepal path • OLE Nepal started 3 years ago • 30 people (15 contents developers) • 4 keys for success (according to Rabi Karmacharya): 1) content, 2) educators 3) network 4) capacity

Some projets for OLPC Vietnam developers • Translate OLPC documentation, books, ﬂyers in Vietnamese • Translate Activities in Vietnamese (Scratch) • Test EToys in Vietnamese (font problems) • Develop vietnamese curriculum • Developers training: Sugar, Python, Squeak, ...

What do now for VVV ? • Made an evaluation of activities used by children • Reinstall machines with a selection vietnamese activities, update to the last version of Sugar (0.82.1 => 0.88) • Train teachers, develop local support (parents ?) • How to scale up to others villages ?

Some useful links • OLPC : http://laptop.org/ • Sugar: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/ • EToys: http://www.squeakland.org/ • OLPC Vietnam: http://olpc.vn/ • Smalltalk-vn: http:// lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ smalltalk-vn

Thank you for your attention. Cám ơn sự quan tâm của bạn.

Visit to Vung Vieng Village - OLPC Vietnam

by Stinckwich Serge

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