Technologysummary: One Laptop Per Child is a non-profit organization that created the machine called the XO laptop. It is designed for educating children in the developing countries.

History and social factors of project:
"The nation's most precious natural resource is its children."
In the US: the government spends approximately $7,500 per pupil per year
where in developing countries: less than $20 is spent

When a country is developing too fast, the lower class, lack of privileges and opportunities, often gets left behind. Some say that with the right talents and hard work, one can gain reward and prestige. Unfortunately, that concept does not apply when everyone starts in different positions. The game of competition is already unfair from the beginning, it is sometimes too difficult for the unprivileged to even have a chance to catch up with the privileged. With the reward gaining system, the privileged has the opportunities to gain more and more while the others are left behind in the same position, never advancing. The lower class in developing countries lack the opportunity to learn and be educated. Their children are also not able to have education. What do we do with generations of uneducated children that crave for knowledge?

One Laptop Per Child came up with the ultimate designed technology- an XO laptop for every child in the developing countries. It is made especially for elementary school students from the age of 6 to 12. The laptop is supposed to allow the children to educate themselves through the applications of games and Internet. They have this idea that children would be able to "learn learning". Based on the theories of constructionism, a MIT professor Papert emphasizes that "learning learning" is the fundamental educational experience.
With this laptop, it is supposed to simulate children to have more creativeness and better problem-solving skills.

The project suggests that developing countries should abandon the traditional way of teaching, and instead provide the children with this laptop. The laptop is supposed to inspire children to teach themselves and others, turning them into 'teachers' as well as 'learners'. It is also a window to the outside world, learning through interaction with other students and exploration on their own.
The aim is to go beyond the goals of the public school system’s scheme or educational program, by enhancing the children's learning modes and turning them from passive students who just absorb, memorize, and repeat, into active constructionists who actively collaborate, investigate, experiment, and create solutions.


Progress Map:

(green) those countries we plan to pilot
(red) those countries we plan to include in the post-launch phase
(orange) those countries who have expressed interest at the ministry-of-education level or higher
(yellow) those countries who are currently seeking government support

Timeline:

• 2007

  • December - Children begin learning with the XO.
  • November - Mass production begins
  • April- First school server deployed.
  • March- First mesh network deployed.
  • January- Rwanda commits to OLPC.
    

• 2006

  • December - Uruguay commits to OLPC.
  • November- 875 B1-Test (Beta 1)machines roll off the Quanta assembly-line in Shanghai. XO is for real.
  • October- Libya announces it has signed up for 1.2 million laptops, one for every school-age child in the nation.
    OLPC has an Arabic-speaking launch country.
  • September- Red Hat and Pentagram present the user interface for the laptop. SES-Astra joins OLPC.
  • August -First working prototype of the dual-mode display is unveiled.
  • July- Wikipedia becomes first source of content for the laptop.
  • May- eBay becomes a member. $100 School Server is announced.
  • January- Negroponte and Kemal Dervis, head of the UN Development Program (UNDP), sign a memo of understanding at the World Economic Forum. The planned OLPC Gen-1 launch remains focused on 5–10 million laptops in large countries or regions. Over time, UNDP will serve as OLPC's ground force in many of the 166 countries in which it has offices, assisting with everything from communications with ministries to logistics for school rollout.

• 2005

  • December- OLPC announces that Quanta Computers, the world's largest maker of laptops, will become the ODM for the laptop. Nortel becomes a member.
  • November- At the World Symposium on the Information Society in Tunis, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan presents OLPC's latest iteration, the so-called green machine, with its distinctive pencil-yellow hand crank. At a jammed press conference with Negroponte, Annan breaks the handle. Time for a design review.
    “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
    Two weeks later, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria declares himself “enchanted” by the $100 laptop and commits his country to one million units.
  • August- After meeting in Bangkok with Negroponte, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announces that Thailand will adopt OLPC, the first country officially to do so. Unfortunately for Shinawatra, he would later be deposed by a military coup in September 2006.
  • July- Negroponte reports to a partners' meeting at Google headquarters that more than 50 countries have now inquired about the laptop. Twenty of the queries came from heads of state. Brightstar is introduced as a partner.
    Design Continuum becomes OLPC's industrial-design partner.
  • June- Brazilian President Lula da Silva meets with Negroponte and Papert in Brasilia, where he embraces the $100 laptop for Brazil. So that Brazil can move forward, President Silva gives his cabinet officers just 29 days to set an agenda, he says, because “anything longer than 30 days is uninteresting.”
  • May - First meeting of corporate partners at the Media Lab. Members include AMD, News Corp., Google, and Red Hat, which will create a Linux-based operating system for the laptop.
  • January- Negroponte sketches out his idea for a $100 laptop for the poor children of the world in an e-mail to his old friend, Hector Ruiz, CEO of AMD. Six hours later, Ruiz replies: “Count us in, and we would be delighted to take a lead role here.” Within weeks, News Corp. and Google also join as founding members of the newly formed program, One Laptop per Child.
    Later in the month, Negroponte presents the idea for the $100 laptop at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the political, economic, and cultural elite of the world gather each year. Although he has nothing to show his audience but a simple mock-up with no functioning parts, the machine makes a big splash. John Markoff writing for The New York Times, calls Negroponte “the Johnny Appleseed of the digital era.”

Teachers' comment:
Teachers are also new to the product so they first explore it themselves and try to learn as much as they can and teach their students what they know. After a while, they realize that students start to learn and teach themselves and are able to teach others as well be sharing information. Teachers are shocked by effect of the technology but eventually realize that it actually helps their work because now they do not have to try to teach each student individually in a large class. It lessens their work, which allows them more time to reflect and think of new ways of teaching their students.

This video is of a teacher from Peru describing her experience with the XO Laptops.




Aestheticaspect:

The product is very well designed. It is obvious that a lot of consideration was put into the design.
The laptop is very small with a miniature keyboard made for children.
It easily fits into schoolbags and there is also a handle bar to carry like a purse.
When it opens the antennas are up in the air like little ears, appealing for children.
Screen can be flipped around and be read like an e-book. (see picture on right)
You can also change the color screen into black and white so it is readable like a newspaper under the sunlight, because often times a class is taught outdoors.
It is known to be durable and sturdy enough for a 5-6 ft drop and also water and dust resistant, suiting to the children's age and environment.
Very cute and smart looking. Goes well with the young students. :)

XO inside bag


Interface:
sample of the interface
As you can see on the bottom there are several applications like drawing, writing, chatting, and internet.
The figures on the screen are the children around also within the network. They can connect with each other and talk and chat and draw together.



Design
Essentially, the OLPC project's XO-1 laptop was designed as a constructivist educational tool, built for encouraging collaborative, hands-on learning. It was viewed by some as a blank slate, free from preconcieved notions of what computing should be. The designers took an open-source approach, in hopes that the education industry would adopt the techniques of the open-source community.

At the core of the XO-1's design are the OLPC'sFive Principles:

Child Ownership - The XO-1 is designed for elementary school children to use in school, but also at home, extendinglearning potential beyond the class room or computer lab.

Low Ages - It is designed to be used by children between the ages 6 to 12, without excluding those older or younger than that. The OLPC claims that "playing is the basis of human learning," and suggests that children should not have to know how to read or write to "play" with the XO-1.

Saturation - Though they are to be owned by individuals, the XO-1 is supposed to support and be supported by communities of users.

Connection - It is designed to be useable anywhere, anytime, keeping the user "connected." As such, it is designed with a robust peer-to-peer network structure, a long-life battery with multiple recharging options, and screen adaptations for outdoor use.

Free and Open Source - The XO-1 is designed with an open-source philosophy. The net effect of which is that it is not dependent on any singlesource for localization, bug fixes, software changes or distribution.


Hardware
By first-world standards, theXO-1's hardware isn't particularly powerful, with a boot up time of over two minutes. The price, however, makes it hard to ignore.



Specs:
433 MHz AMD CPU w/ integrated graphics
256MB DDR266 RAM
1GB Flash Memory (Acts as a Hard Drive)
7.5" LCD Screen with backlit and reflective monochrome modes
Wireless Network Adapter with "mesh" mode capability
Localized Keyboard
Touchpad for mouse / stylus input
Video Camera (color, 640x480)
Built-in Speakers & Microphone (with jacks for external speakers & mics)
3x USB 2.0 ports

The XO-1's chassis is designed for use in remote areas, with a thicker than average plastic body andeasyto service construction. The cooling system has no moving parts to break or clog, and the whole thing can be stripped and rebuilt using only a standard screwdriver. The keyboard is made of a washable, water-resistant rubber, and all of the externalports arecovered by the attached wireless antennas when the laptop is closed for transport. These same ear-like antennas act as a locking mechanism to keep it from opening accidentally. The tablet-like body allows the screen to stand in a traditional laptop configuration, or swivel around and lay flat for e-book reading. In addition, a special button rotates the visuals 90 degrees to allow viewing from any angle.

The OLPC project developed a special LCD screen for the XO-1 that uses adiffraction grating instead of color filters to color each pixel. The result is a much brighter display for the same amount of backlighting. This allows for the use of cheap, low-power LEDs instead of a power-hungry cold cathode tolight the display. In addition, theseLEDs are seperate from the display itself, which means the backlight, a common source of trouble in LCD screens, can be replaced without trashing the expensive screen itself. In addition to a standard color display, the screen uses a special black and white mode for displaying textin bright lighting that would cause excessive glare on normal screens.

Low environmental impact was another design goal. The most obvious development to this end is the power consumption, at about 2W of power during normal use, compared to 10 to 45W for the average laptop. None of the typical power-hungry moving parts, such as the hard drive, optical drive, or cooling fans, are present on the XO-1. A number of options exist for recharging the battery, including mechanical hand cranks and solar collectors. In addition, all of the system's plastic parts are color-coded for ease of recycling.

Most of the complaints leveled at the XO-1's hardware have been based on the metrics of a typical first-world, adult computer user. Most prevalent are concerns about the small, akward keyboard, obviously designed for childrens' hands. Looking past first-world conventions and conveniences, the XO-1 comes across as a fairly robust piece of engineering. Because of their open-source attitude, a number of peripherals are already proposed or in-progress to solve some of these problems, as well as those of the intended audience. These projets arelistedon the OLPC's wiki, where their developers can post updates or recieve comments from other users or OLPC staff.


Software
The XO-1 uses a variant of Fedora linux operating system, running a custom user interface called Sugar. This UI does not use the "desktop" or "folder" metaphors, and focuses on running one task at a time in full screen. It employs "language-less" icons to access programs, and amap-like view of connected users. The operating system also has the process of collaboration built into it, with some myspace-like features that do not require connectivity beyond the local mesh network.



Several applicatons come with the XO-1, including traditional "school" utilities such as a calculator and word processor, and a static version of Wikipedia as a reference. A web browser, rss reader, gmail front-end,voice over IP application, and a few multimedia players give it the capabilities many expect from a PC. There are also a series of "activities" to provide hands-on learning and exploration, including a paint program, music sequencer, and several different scripting languages of varying complexity.

The XO-1 employs a new security model called Bitfrost, whichworks on the program-level. This system requires no passwords, anddepends on software developers to implement it correctly for their programs. The idea is an update to the traditional UNIX permissions model and intended to be unobtrusive but secure. An optional theft-prevention measure sets the laptops to function only when connected to and enabled by a central server.

Though the XO-1 is designed to be deployable out of the box, its open source philosophy allows for the development of additional software, and the modification of existing software, by third parties. Ideally, the users themselves would eventually become contributors to the system's content library. However, the decision to go strictly open source has drawn some criticism. The primary concern is that a high level of computer literacy is required to perform anything but the out of the box activities. This is due in large part to the use of a Linux-based operating system, which is built around a textual command line, and with which even the first world's mainstream computer users are not generally familiar.

The Mission
What the OLPC is attempting isn't really a quick fix,or a replacement for books or paper. Their real design is not a device, but a kind of educational experiment. It's a matter of exposure andgrowth that they are hoping will happen over a longer period of time or even a number of generations. "The OLPC project is really a special type of microfinance project that supplies a tool rather than cash," says their Wiki. That's a pleasant ideal, but it's a tool with a rather specific, and largely unproven benefit. It seems as though they have done a lot of things right with their hardware and software design, and they have solved a number of problems. However, it feels as though they are essentially asking third world governments to gamble on a constructivistapproach to education; putting money on the table that could be used for cheaper traditional tools, and hoping the cards fall in their favor. They might be more successful, and have a more obvious impact, if they were to reconfigure theXO-1for more specific applications in developing nations.





OLPC Implementation

Estimated costs - An OLPC project is estimated to be about 250 million dollars, according to Libya’s Memorandum of Understanding
There are additional costs to consider as well: -Training costs- 200 trained teachers whose responsibility was to train their extended network, who would reach in total to about 43, 500 students. Average costs was estimated to be about $138 per child and $27.60 per laptop per year in a three year period - hardware maintenance- hardware will likely damaged to the horrendous weather conditions found in developing countries. A damage to any part usually means a damage to the whole system. Estimated to be around $7.40 per laptop a year -software maintenance- OLPC foundation has developed a network of e-volunteers and this area is usually assumed to be zero - Internet access- If a developing country finds this area too expensive, they might not invest in OLPC for the near term due to a shift in government policy or leadership. According to a study done by the UN, the global average of 20 hours of connectivity per month is equal to US $36.91. This number is misconstrued because for lower income countries, the cost of connectivity per month is $56.31. Increasing the internet usage by double, researchers estimate could cost up to $135.14 per laptop per year.
The Bill

PER LAPTOP INVOICE, 5 YEARS
Setup
	Initial Hardware	$148.00
	Setup (1-time fee)	$108.00
Total Setup		$256.00
Training
	Yearly	$27.60
Total Training		$138.00
Maintenance
	Yearly	$7.40
Total Maintenance		$37.00
Internet
	First Year $1	$1.00
	Yearly	$135.00
Total Internet		$541.00
5 Year Total		$972.00

Case study in Indonesia “Indonesia has around 40 million students and buying all of them a laptop priced at $200 would cost $8 billion, a sum that is 3.3 times larger than the money set aside for Indonesia's mandatory 12-year education program in the government's 2007 budget”
Give One Get One Program Started from November to December of 2007: Give one Get One is a program that allowed donors to make a donation of $400 dollars to the OLPC foundation, for which they would receive a laptop of their own and a laptop delivered to a child in the developing world.
Program drawbacks
Second lines of shipping were truncated and ambiguous information due to problems faced by database software - Internal database problems caused updates to be lost such as Old data continuously reappearing with later changes lost
- Order changes might be lost by fulfillment contractors
- OLPC uses two companies to contract its services: Patriot LLC for customer service and Brightstar for Shipping and since they don’t share the same database software, data exchange problems can occur
- Order status emails have been snatched up by donor spam filters- status emails abnormally appear in spam filters possibly due to the text or the HTML markup used in them
- Initial Shipping Address was a PO Box –OLPC realized that orders done with Paypal cannot have PO Box as shipping addresses and many customers used Paypal. Patroit LLC never contacted the customers for a non PO Box address, which they should have according to OLPC’s response. A solution that was proposed was that the other company set up a special account with UPS to take care of shipping problem
- FedEx failed w/o the donor being aware- If FedEx labels something as “unable to deliver”, the rerouting process must go back to the shipping company and they usually don’t have the donor address so it must be rerouted to the customer company and this usually takes time since there’s a great possibility that information might be lost.
- FedEx marks address verification tool incorrectly marks an address as unshippable- the verification system is blamed for such things like being sensitive to small variations in addresses, incorrectly labeling something as unshippable when it is fine, and misrepresenting what the verification system is actually saying. This point is highly speculative at the moment
Recommended policy changes
1.) Align educational policy goals with social and economic policy goals- Handing a child with a laptop does not mean that economic and social conditions will improve. Rather, it is the social and economic objectives that developing countries want to achieve by tying in OLPC to their existing education systems. There has been many countries that have shown such strategy such as Singapore, China, Korea, and others.
2.) Revise the school curriculum- Let students develop their critical thinking skills. Teachers must try to tie in the material taught in school to solving real life problems. These problems involve student working in teams involving extended projects that extend across subject lines. Students must be able to use the technology to search, create, and organize new knowledge. Students can then set their own learning goals based on what they know and do not know.
3.) Redesign assessments- Policy makers must make consistetn improvements in assesments that lets students work in teams and to assess improvements in learning. Otherwise, this policy will be viewed as nothing but a failure.
4.) Provide extensive teacher professional developement- teachers play an integral part in the life of a student's learning and this is something the OLPC doesn't really advocate due to the laptop's style of self learning. There must be an extensive and supportive network of teacher professional development and is best done through cooperation with the government, professional agencies, and the private sector.
5.)Provide technological support- tech support has to include more than just e-volunteers. There need to be technicians on the ground that know what the problems are.

References:
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/price/the_real_cost_of_the.html
http://www.olpcnews.com/implementation/plan/
http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/g1g1/one_give_one_got_none_xo_laptop.html http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_laptop_delivery_breaks