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Peruvian Teachers Begin OLPC Training
eldavojohn writes "Today was the first day that Peruvian teachers from remote villages began training to use the OLPC in their day-to-day activities. From the article: 'Success of OLPC now depends largely on frontline teachers and, of course, parents and kids. Peru's effort, if successful, would be a model for other nations. In the training now under way, teachers must become versed not only in how to operate and maintain the laptops, but also in how to do their jobs within a newly laptop-centric educational model. The laptops will contain some 115 books, including textbooks, novels, and poetry, as well as art and music programs, cameras, and other goodies. What many of these kids won't get is Internet access: about 90 percent of the villages lack it, and may not get it anytime soon.'"
...Due to budget cuts the books on the laptops couldn't be translated.
Said, "There is one thing I do know.
A woman is fine,
and a sheep is divine,
but a LLAMA is Numero Uno !"
Baaa!
get free wifi gear from Sebastopol?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/26/0118237
Before you start trashing OLPC, see it how it's meant to be used:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/41
No sig today...
From the summary:
What many of these kids won't get is Internet access: about 90 percent of the villages lack it, and may not get it anytime soon.'"This is a serious drawback as the internet is a great source of information as well as a way to commercialize the computing efforts of these kids and (potentially) give them some good old capitalist reasons to study hard. Even so, while the lack of internet access is not as big of a drawback as it might be. These laptops will presumably still form their own mesh networks and connect to the school's XO server. I bet a lot of Windows using American kids wish their computers would allow them to network with friends nearly as easily.
Best of luck to these teachers. It is always hard being the guinea pig for a new technology and it will probably take a lot of dedication to alter their teaching methods to really take advantage of this new tool.
Wrong video (g), I meant this one: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/228
No sig today...
Sorry, left out an a in feca l matter...
Given Pringle's can technology, there's no reason they can't cobble together some internet access. ;-) http://www.netscum.com/~clapp/wireless.html
of course, while we all greatly enjoyed following the speccing out and design of these machines, the tech was the easy part. I sincerely hope there's the right follow-thru in training, and not one-shot "here's your crash course in the 21st century g'luck buhbye," but ongoing support and training.
I worked at a "high tech" charter school for a while; from laying the cable in the new building, to several months after it opened and class started. It was a mess. All too typical "let's throw technology at a problem and it will Magically Solve Everything By Itself!" Good intentions, poor execution. Hardly anyone on the *staff* had any technical ability. Infrastructure and purchasing decisions were made from political standpoint and funder's/administrations ego trip, not what might be best to introduce people to a completely new world for them. You've seen it all before...
I'm privileged to be teaching nowadays in a similar mission; un- or underemployed adults trying to retrain, at-risk youth, most with little or no technical background or even experience beyond webmail and IM. We take so much of our know-how for granted, it's easy to forget how arcane this is to most people. I guess i'm just saying, i hope the approach doesn't fall into "teach the same stuff the same way but we're reading off a screen instead of paper," y'know?
But here's hoping. And pretty darn cool. That pic of those two kids on those funky green plastic laptops gave me a sudden image of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer [wikipedia.org] :D
That which does not kill us makes us... st
while being read charges of orchestrating death squads, that godforsaken SOB, I'd like to say good morning Peru!
I know there's pros and cons VAV the OLPC, but overall it's a win-win if this can get kids access to tech that they otherwise wouldn't, and be (eventually) able to communicate with other kids at the other side of the globe and be able to learn to use a computer much in the same way as kids in the "developed" world do, and it likely gives them an economical advantage in the long run, but certainly and immediately the advantage of having broaded their horizon, which is always a treat to a young mind I think.
Sure, lack of internet sucks. But the intranet created with all these XO laptops would be neat... especially when someone gets a new piece of code (read:game). And ... it would encourage innovation, right? RIGHT?
....even without Internet access. There are quite a few applications built in that communicate directly with other XO laptops (ad hoc). My 7 y/o has one and get quite a bit of use out of it - no Internet there either....
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
What a coincidence... I'm reading this on the XO I just received today. I'm piggybacking on a neighbour's WiFi. It's a well-built, quality machine. It has a built-in Python interpreter called Pippy, with numerous examples and help to train tomorrow's programmers. It has a command-line terminal, which also provides a Python interprreter. 20 hrs battery life on one charge, I think I'll bring it with me on business trips.
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
That's funny. Have you actually tried measuring yours? Mine only gets about four. A friend of mine also gets about four hours. He recently hacked up some code to make it easier to shut off WiFi for travelling in airliners, and he says shutting off WiFi only extends battery life to about five hours.
There were great plans for power management that were intended to give a twenty-hour battery life, but apparently they haven't been implemented yet.
So, are you describing the real XO you actually have, or the XO of your imagination?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It is also worth checking out the OLPC wiki entry on Arahuay, Peru, where the first pilot project was set up. Very interesting account of the successes and obstacles the project has gone through there.
[alk]
Will they be online by September?
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Hmmmm...
Peru has no gauchos. The Inca people live in Peru. Different origins, different looks, different culture, different jokes.
Gauchos don't get to meet llamas, and where gauchos live, women are more beautiful than sheep. In Peru, it's a different deal.