Showing posts with label OLPC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OLPC. Show all posts

Thursday, June 02, 2011

Knowledge Economy Network - K.E.N. Maribor Slovenia next week

I will be speaking at the Knowledge Economy Network Forum in Slovenia nxt week presenting the case of One Laptop Per Child, OLPC.

Sunday, May 01, 2011

Belgian Rowing Championships

Successful Belgian Rowing Championships last weekend. About 4000 visitors visited the Championship venue at Hazewinkel. More than 720 atlethes and 500 boats participated during the Championships. A series of new sponsors made the event profitable again since many years: a.o. Presentation sponsor Office Shop, Mudan Rouge, Premier Cercle, Eurobussing, Brother, Province of Antwerp, Youth Sports Foundation Camille Paulus and community sponsor OLPC (One Laptop Per Child).

Pictures:
Above left: Mudan Rouge Dance Performance. During the afternoon break public and atlethes could witness a beautiful dance performance of sponsor Mudan Rouge and three dancers of the Ballet of Flanders. New Chinese-Belgian Lingerie brand Mudan Rouge created an 8 minute dance especially for the Belgian Rowing Championships.
Middle: line up of company cars of presentation sponsor The Office Shop near the arrival tower.
Below: Championship organizor Ronald Janssens and Head of the Jury Mrs De Wispelaere

For more information, click here


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

OLPC CEO Walter De Brouwer organizes World Premier of TEDxKids Conference

Join the world premier of TEDx Kids@Brussels taking place on June 1, 2011 at St John's International School in Waterloo, Belgium!

2 events in 148 kids, all of them born in 2000, are going to get their hands dirty, soldering, tinkering, hacking and composing. A series of hands-on workshops will introduce the kids to a range of skills and methods. At the same time 400 adults will be treated to an all day program of leading thinkers, experts and makers. They'll get regular updates on the workshops from some leading child psychologists throughout the day.

Maker Kids?The future aims of primary education could be a rich mix of learning by doing, hacking the physical world and taking direct control of the technologies around us. Kids could use this knowledge to be more connected to each other and the wider world. We want to give them the tools to directly influence the physical and social ecosphere in the hope that this creates freedom and empowerment for the future.

More info:
www.tedxkids.be

Thursday, April 14, 2011

OLPC in Kigali, Rwanda

Take a look at this CNN video on the development (including OLPC) in Kigali, Rwanda.
This is the second part of the most recent episode of Future Cities from Richard Quest. (minute 2.35) It was screened on CNN international.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Gert Van Mol Advising OLPC

As of this week Gert Van Mol will be advising OLPC Europe, One Laptop Per Child Europe, as a Non-Executive Director EU Policies. OLPC Europe is a public ultility foundation, part of OLPC, a project originally developed at MIT by Nicholas Negroponte.

Here are the 5 principles of OLPC:
1. Child Ownership
OLPC has created the XO laptop to be low cost, robust and powerful, beautiful and friendly. It was designed for elementary school children, the first of its kind.
A laptop can be transformed into a mobile school: a portable learning and teaching environment. A connected laptop is more than a tool. It is a new human environment of a digital kind. An essential aspect of OLPC is the free use of the laptop at home, where the child and the family together can greatly increase the practice time normally available at a school lab or library.
The ownership of the XO is a basic right, coupled with new duties and responsibilities: including protecting, caring for, and sharing this creative environment.

2. Low Ages
The XO is designed for the use of children ages 6 to 12 — covering the years of elementary school — but nothing precludes its use earlier or later in life. Children do not need to know how to write or read to enjoy and learn with an XO. Playing is the basis of human learning, and the digital activities on an XO help with acquisition of reading and writing.
Every year a new class of students will be incorporated into the program. The assessment of the OLPC program should be intrinsic to each class, and every student will have an individual portfolio or journal with the history of his or her learning paths in the many disciplines at school. Small children with learning, motor or sensory disabilities may use the computer as a prosthesis to read, write, calculate, and communicate.

3. Saturation
OLPC is committed to elementary education in developing countries. To attain this objective we aim to reach “digital saturation” in a given population. The key point is to choose the best scale in each circumstance. It can be a country, a region, a municipality or a village, in which every child and teacher will own a connected laptop.
As with vaccinations, digital saturation implies a commitment to maintaining these tools as part of primary education over time. With it, the whole community becomes responsible for this focus on shared education, and the children receive support from the many institutions, individuals and groups around them. Universal connectivity helps these different communities grow together and expand in many directions, in both time and space. Over time, the education network becomes solid and robust, without a digital divide.

4. Connection
The XO has been designed to provide an engaging wireless network. The laptops are connected to others nearby automatically. Children in the neighborhood are permanently connected to chat, sharing information on the local network or web, making music together, editing texts, or using collaborative games.
The laptop can be charged by solar or mechanical power, or through special bulk-chargers at school. The unique XO display allows the use of the laptop under a bright sun. All of this makes it easy for children in a community to connect to one another almost anywhere.
This connectivity will be as ubiquitous as a formal or informal learning environment permits. We propose a new kind of school, an “expanded school” which grows beyond the walls of the classroom. Last but not least, this connectivity ensures a dialogue among generations, nations and cultures. The OLPC network will speak every language.

5. Free and Open Source
All children are learners and teachers, and this spirit of collaboration is amplified by free and open source tools.
A child with an XO is not a passive consumer of knowledge, but an active participant in a learning community. As children grow and pursue new ideas, their software, content, resources, and tools should be able to grow with them. The global nature of OLPC requires locally-driven growth, driven in part by the children themselves. Each child with an XO can leverage the learning of other children. They can teach each other, share ideas, and support each other's growth.
There is no inherent external dependency in being able to localize software into their language, fix the software to remove bugs, and repurpose the software to fit their needs. Nor is there any restriction in regard to redistribution; OLPC cannot know and should not control how the tools we create will be re-purposed in the future.
OLPC's goals require a world of great software and content, both open and proprietary. Children need the chance to choose from all of it. In the context of learning, knowledge should be free. Further, every child has something to contribute; we need a free and open framework that supports the human need to express and share.